This is part of Quit It, a series of essays on stopping things—or not.
My freshman year of college, I was hired as a barista at a small café near campus, and during my shifts, I could have as much free coffee as I wanted. Not that I wanted all that much, but you always pull shots in multiples of two, so if someone ordered one shot, or three (hello, all-nighter!), there was a perfectly good shot of espresso just sitting there. What was I going to do, toss it down the drain like some psychopath? Waste not.
I should have realized I had a problem when the debilitating abdominal pains began. The doctor had me drink some radioactive fluid, then X-rayed my stomach. “How many shots of espresso are you drinking a day?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “Eight. Maybe 10?”
The doctor’s eyes went as wide as mine apparently had been for the past few months. Needless to say, I had to cut back, but by then I was hooked, not just on coffee culture but on caffeine, which kept me alert and on time. It felt like a good friend, albeit one who would get vindictive if I didn’t hold up my end of our daily ritual.
Around that time, I was getting to know another substance too. In my German family, it wasn’t unusual for the teens to have some wine on special occasions. But in college, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the culture of alcohol. Those first months, I went with my friends to frat parties, where I was plied with bottomless mixed drinks of unknown proportions by guys whose idea of consent was “Didn’t say no!” After a month or two of getting puke-drunk each weekend and narrowly avoiding sexual trauma more than once, it hit me: This sucked! I never went to another frat party, though I would still have a drink or two at family gatherings, or with friends.
In Italy of all places, land of wine, I quit cold turkey—tacchino freddo—but not by choice. Five weeks into my study abroad program, I was wrongly accused of murdering my roommate Meredith Kercher, and I had to say goodbye to wine the day I was arrested. I didn’t miss it, though I did try prison hooch once, when a cellmate mixed some pineapple juice with pizza yeast and hid it in a 2-liter bottle behind our toilet for a month. It was even worse than pineapple on pizza. But my good friend caffeine found me inside in the form of a Moka pot on a hot plate. Every morning, my cellmates and I would share the ritual of making espresso together, and on court days, a guard would often slip me a Ferrero Pocket Coffee from his personal stash.
I was acquitted after four years, and after a dizzying car chase through the darkened Italian countryside, I found myself on a plane back to Seattle. I hadn’t eaten anything in a day. The hostess had no clue how to comfort that shell-shocked girl but to offer her champagne—which made me even dizzier.
Back home, with my newfound and unwanted notoriety, a lot of old acquaintances were coming on a little too strong. Among them, caffeine and alcohol. I embraced caffeine but kept alcohol at arm’s length, a couple of glasses of wine every now and again—I’d been living as a prey animal for so long I didn’t need another reason to feel vulnerable.
But then, four years into freedom, I started dating the man who would become my husband, and he was a crack-a-beer-at-5-o’clock kind of guy. Soon enough, I had become that cliché of clichés, the chardonnay girl. I didn’t get a painted wooden sign that said “Wine O’Clock!” but I might as well have. And as the pandemic set in, it only got worse. On a typical day, I’d have four cups of coffee before noon—coffee and I had stayed tight all along—and two or three glasses of chardonnay at the end of the workday. I had one friend slapping me awake each morning, and another working out the knots each night.
Then the pregnancy test came back OMG YES FINALLY. (They should sell tests that really say that.)
Pregnancy forces you to question all your routines and habits, especially dietary ones. There are the prescribed guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“There is no known safe amount of alcohol use during pregnancy!”), but that’s not the way they do things in Europe, where an occasional glass of wine during pregnancy isn’t uncommon. After doing a bit of research and interviewing Emily Oster, author of the bestselling and controversial book Expecting Better, I decided to cut back to two cups of coffee a day and one glass of wine a week. Then I had a miscarriage. I was devastated. Four months later, when I found myself pregnant again, I wasn’t taking any chances. I decided to cut my caffeine intake back to a single cup of coffee in the morning and forgo alcohol entirely for the duration of the pregnancy. My husband even joined me in solidarity.
Weeks before my due date, I could already taste that crisp glass of chardonnay. After the birth of our daughter, my husband and I returned to drinking, with an eye toward moderation, only on special occasions. But as the months passed and our infant became a toddler, “special occasions” seemed to come faster and faster! Her first word! Her first steps! Her first … pizza?
One of the joys of no longer having my life steered by forces beyond my control is that I can change the course of my life, just because. So on a whim at the start of 2023, my husband and I decided to try out Dry January for the first time. But about halfway through the month, I found myself pregnant again. Again, on a whim, we thought, Why not? Let’s both do Dry 2023!
New research was now saying that any amount of alcohol really wasn’t good for you after all. I’d been so willing to believe that a glass of red wine was actually healthy, but had that just been the alcohol talking? And what about caffeine? I thought of a silly mug of my stepdad’s that featured a picture of Yoda and the phrase “Coffee I Need or Kill You I Will.” It suddenly registered as profoundly sinister. It got me thinking: What if I cut it all out altogether? Wouldn’t I be a great example to my kids to not be addicted to anything?
I announced to my husband that not only was I sober, but I was switching to decaf. Ever the ride-or-die, he switched too.
Once we got through the weekslong funk that comes with giving up caffeine, I found myself alert in the mornings without my coffee fix—miracle of miracles! What a false friend coffee had been. Not only that, I was sleeping better at night, had plenty of energy during the day, and felt truly in control of my own life—even after our son was born in September, amid the chaos that comes with a newborn.
My husband and I are still abstaining. But as I write this, 2023 is winding down. The question we’re now faced with is: What happens come New Year’s? I’ve enjoyed the clarity of my mind, the way my body feels, and the independence, knowing that no substance has a grip on me. Would I really trade all that for a glass of chardonnay and a jolt of caffeine? It’s a clearer answer for my husband, who discovered the booming business of nonalcoholic beer this year. He says he may never go back. There are brewers who take making NA beer seriously, as well as some interesting developments on the horizon about synthetic alcohol, which can get you tipsy without the health risks or hangovers. But none of this satisfies my inner chardonnay girl. I tried nonalcoholic wine, and I am here to tell you the truth: It’s gussied-up grape juice. I’d like a glass of the real stuff.
But it’s more than that. As much as I’m drawn to staying dry and decaffeinated indefinitely, total abstinence also, strangely, feels as if I’m allowing the substance to maintain power over me—as if I don’t have the guts to show the door to that friend who won’t take the hint and leave at the end of the party. What I’m considering now is treating both caffeine and alcohol as mindful substances, to be approached with the same care as psychedelics. Perhaps my husband and I will share a bottle of wine on our anniversary. Maybe I’ll indulge in a real cup of coffee if I’m on deadline to submit a book manuscript, say, and desperately need a boost.
I know, more than most people, what it’s like to be stripped of your agency, to be totally powerless against forces beyond your control. Relying on a substance to wake up and to relax can also be a kind of prison. I want to be in control of my own life, and what I’ve realized is that having a glass of wine every now and again is a way for me to affirm that control. Kicking the habit doesn’t mean you have to quit something entirely; it means what it says—not letting it be a habit. If I’m going to enjoy a glass of wine or a cappuccino, I’m going to do so with intent. I’ll savor the taste, and the mental shift, but also the decision itself, the act of choosing. Freedom, too, has a flavor, and a mental buzz. That’s something I never want to quit.
