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The pain started on the second day.
It started in, like, the back of my neck. Then it crept up the sides of my head, lightly throbbing behind my eyeballs. A big headache would have been better. This was a chronic, lasting low-grade headache, like Old Testament God scraping His fingernails across the blackboard inside my skull. I never take aspirin. Suddenly, I was popping pills like those starlight mints you grab a handful of when you're leaving a Denny's. And I still had five more days to go. All told, a whole week without coffee.
And I picked the worst time possible. The week I quit? It was right in the middle of the Specialty Coffee Association of America trade show, the country's largest annual coffee convention. It's the one time of the year when a lot of the exporters and producers that Stumptown works with gather in one place. It's all about coffee. Talking about coffee. Talking about growing coffee, harvesting coffee, brewing coffee, coffee machines, innovations in the coffee industry. Coffee, coffee, coffee.
I purposely didn't go to the show floor because of the state I was in. I guess it would be like a pothead going to Amsterdam for the Cannabis Cup and not smoking any weed.
"I don't get it," says any normal person. What's the big deal? Skipping coffee for a few days isn’t a hardship for most people—I’m not most people. My caffeine routine looks something like this: Two or three Chemex pots in the morning; a couple espressos during the day; a pour-over or two at night. That adds up to eight to ten cups of brewed coffee a day, plus espresso. That's normal. That's a Tuesday.
Yeah, I’ve gone without the stuff before. But not on purpose—I just have a hard time drinking shitty coffee. I can't do it. I'm trained to just hit the brakes when I smell the bad stuff, much less when I taste it. Obviously, when I'm traveling there are times where I haven't been able to get my hands on good coffee. So I've skipped a day here, a day there—no problem, I can make do. Going into my week without coffee, I thought it would be the same deal.
The first day was harder than I expected. I was thinking about coffee a lot. I was getting a little nervous, a little anxious. But that second day. Can you get phantom coffee pains? I think I was getting phantom coffee pains. Doing this felt like cutting off a limb—like 127 Hours, but I was attempting to go 168.
See, I've been around coffee most of my life.
It's always been there for me—part of my morning, afternoon, and evening. I mean, looking back, it’s hard to remember life before coffee. I started as a barista at one of the first specialty "coffee bars" that opened up outside of Tacoma, where I'm from. Fancy grinders, beans stored in airtight containers, espresso machines polished and shined so they look like trophies in a former high school football star's den—the whole thing. I was 15.
Even at home there were people hanging around preaching specialty food and farm-to-table before everybody from Chef Boyardee to Applebee's adopted those talking points. My dad was a food artisan—he made incredible cured sausage and meats—but I was really attracted to coffee as my own specialty product. I guess I saw it as a way to do my own thing.
Since then—outside of family—coffee has been my life. I founded Stumptown Coffee Roasters in 1999 as a small shop and roaster in Portland and grew it into a business that spans the country, with operations in NYC, LA, and Seattle.
What's more, I have a relationship with coffee. When I drink a cup of coffee, I actually feel it coursing through my veins, being pumped to every inch of my body like it's my own personal, eight-times-daily blood transfusion. Coffee has never let me down.
So, yeah. Quitting. I knew it was gonna suck.
Most days during the trade show went like this. I'd run into an old friend or a colleague. They're psyched to see me. They want to tell me about coffee. Give me a taste. Offer me their best stuff. I politely decline. They look at me totally confused. I explain that I'm going without coffee for a week. They either laugh. Or get deeply concerned about my mental state.
"How are you going to be able to do this?" People asked about my chances of survival. "Are you crazy?" Those kinds of questions.
The thing that hurt the most? Oh, man. I just wanted to taste that coffee, you know? The smell was everywhere. And I'm wandering around with a low-level brain bruise I can't shake, obsessing about not only how good coffee usually tastes, but how good coffee can taste. I would catch myself losing focus on what I was supposed to be doing—working on my laptop, networking with suppliers, operating a motor vehicle, whatever.
I started dreaming about taking a bath in cold brew coffee on Monday morning, when this would all be over. At some point, I brewed myself a cup of tea, thinking that would help. Let me be clear for the record—tea is not in any way, shape, or form anything close to a coffee substitute. One sip of thin, watery Jasmine-Oolong-whatever tea only made things worse. It only made me miss coffee more.
But, hey, I wouldn't have tried the new LeBron's Mix Sprite if I didn't quit coffee.
On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I almost threw in the towel. Could my love of coffee make me break a solemn promise? It almost did. By Sunday, I was like, "it's just one more day," so I hung on.
And then, just like that, the whole thing was over. I sat at home on Sunday night, knowing that when Monday morning dawned, life as I knew it would return to normal. I had this nervous kind of excitement—it felt a lot like it does when I know I'm seeing my lady after being away for weeks on a trip.
I walked through the roastery on the morning that coffee and I reunited. At some point I just stood there, basking in the smell of it all—there's nothing like it. I wasn't just happy to drink down a cup—I loved finally being able to make people coffee again. For the last two days, I've been asking everyone "Can I make you a coffee?" and "Can I get you a coffee?" I want to share it.
The real thing I got out of this is appreciation. I appreciate coffee. And when you miss something you appreciate it more, you value it more. There are no more headaches. No more cold sweats.
Coming back to it, I feel almost a little guilty that I gave up coffee for a week. A little embarrassed. Why? Because of what coffee gives me. It gets me up. It gives me joy. It gives me security. Coffee's got my back. It feels very much like a physical, human relationship. Why would I give up something that does all that for me?
My first coffee back? An espresso. And, yes, it was fucking amazing.
It's good be be back, old friend.
—As told to Matt Duckor
