Coffee: an experiment

Abinav Ravi
3 min readMay 20, 2021

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DISCLAIMER: This is a personal experience and I don't wish to hurt anyone’s personal preference. This can be counted as a leaf from my personal diary

Growing up I never liked coffee. The taste of it was far bitter for me some people just add a lot of sugar to remove the bitterness and I don’t like anything that sweet too. Unlike many people, I also don’t like chai which is boiled a lot and gives a very bitter taste and a dark reddish color. My chai is boiled moderately in milk to give a sandish color and with one spoon of sugar in it. Very minimum to call it chai. I also add a spice mix with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom, pepper to give a very refreshing taste.

However, in the past two days, I decided I should try coffee and I can mix it up in the morning with the chocolate powder to maybe reduce the bitterness and probably get an amalgamation of coffee and chocolate and maybe this can provide me with a lot of energy for the day and kind of power me through the day.

The decision was a result of long work and some hobby open-source work that needed attention. This would mean that my days would last longer than the usual time of 9–10 hours before the computer working and figured that coffee could be that magic thing that can provide me with enough energy to sail me through.

I was wrong, Coffee didn’t suit my system and some of the effects have made me sub-optimal in work. The caffeine rush didn’t suit my body. The energy that caffeine gave me was very limited and needed refilling very soon. It was like a nitrous boost on Need for speed games, it ensured that the energy was enough for kind of accelerating enough but the energy died down very soon and I was groggy and out of fuel in 3–4 hours. This doesn’t happen with the tea that I drink and that is why I prefer tea to coffee.

Another very noticeable effect was a couple of coffees put me in a slump on the next day and kind of slowed down my responses. I was sleepy and moving around like a zombie. My sleep cycle was altered with one evening coffee at 5 PM and pushed my sleep back a couple of hours.

One more observation was that I had a very acidic feeling in my stomach and this feeling is not something that I enjoy. Like something that keeps burning in the stomach. The coffee I took was with milk and not an espresso if that is a mentionable thing.

If a couple of coffees can cause me this I am very unsure of what happens to people who drink multiple doses in a day. Maybe it is the mirage of energy that keeps drawing people to coffee.

DISCLAIMER: This is a very personal account and the experience may vary. If you enjoy your coffee please continue to do so and please don’t let my experience alter anything for you. If you feel like how I did, I would suggest you possibly introspect on whether coffee is a drink for you and take the necessary steps. My conclusion is that coffee is not for me even if it promises immortality the next time.

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