How bitcoin helped beat coffee addiction

As long back as my days as a teenager, I drank coffee. First a cup every morning, later it turned into lots of cups. I mean a lot.

The funny thing is, this coffee obsession existed alongside a phase where I was doling out life advice to people. I urged them to stop gambling, smoking, playing the lottery and invest these sums in bitcoin instead.
Yet, here I was, chugging coffee like it was going out of style.

Only past month, April 2024 -after all this time- I realized I had one last “fiat” pleasure left that needed to go. It wasn’t an actual pleasant experience anymore for me.

Drinking coffee had become a shore, a sort of habit, a empty drag something that’s too "fiat worldly" for any bitcoiner in my opinion. That might be a taboo subject for many. I guess I would be rather unacceptable to the idea even a few months ago. But hear me out. Think out of the box.
I dare to

Anyone stacking sats and drinking coffee should ask themselves if they should continue the ingrained habits of coffee drinking from the fiat world.

At the end of this post, I’ll share some steps to repeat my successful break from the coffee addiction.

Brown river

In 2023 I drank about 8 to 15 cups of coffee a day (not counting the brownish water substance at work as “real coffee” which I consumed on occasion as well).

I brought my own coffee thermos flask to work usually. I had four different brands of coffee, ranging from the gold packed arabica coffee at Lidl (cheap and rather good) to the special import Costa Rica Blue Mountain dark roasted bean packs I grinded myself.

There’s a cost to all of that, financially but also mentally.

Coffee is a wonderful thing of course, don’t get me wrong, I will still drink a cup of coffee now and then I’m sure. Only the drinking of your daily dose becomes a fiat-like habit, like buying lottery tickets or government bonds. It’s an avoidable habit at that.

How many cups of coffee did you make, and just stood there, getting cold? Next thing, you throw the coffee away (or reheat it in a microwave oven if you’re a barbaric person). You then make a new one, often to let it get cold again because you’re so busy.

If you’re in thàt stage of your coffee habit then I’m afraid to say you’re too addicted in my opinion.
I know… because I was there.

The cost, next to the mental addiction, is also financially.
Added that I not only bought coffee makers, Nespresso machine (talk about a fiat-like system, you move bad coffee with small flavor differences around with overpriced capsules), Bialetti coffee makers and the likes.
I even had the emergency supply of better instant coffee powder, filters, a grinder, French press… the whole coffee-nerd neckbeard wannabe barista instinct was there.
As a bitcoiner, I’m done with it.

It’s an expensive illusion that has this nerd-chique style poured over it somehow, and it’s getting more and more ridiculous over time.

On top of the home/office consumption, you’re also drinking the brownish fiat-drink on the road as well. When you turn a little bored in commuting, you step into a coffee bar.
I even had a short-lived blog sharing my experiences in various coffee bars.
These coffees are usually more expensive and taste like horse piss with foam on top. (few exceptions for the Portuguese and real Italian baristas in Antwerp and Brussels by the way)

But a typical Starbucks cup of 7 Euro is no exception. Stuffing expensive foam in your throat, telling yourself it's worth the money, while you're seated next to sweaty tourists or a local hippie charging his phone while giving life advice.
It’s a fiat habit, and you know it.

We’re not George Clooney

The thing is; as a bitcoiner I couldn’t look away from the realization about these short sighted cravings that fill up one’s time. It’s a short time preference way of living, and it won’t bring you much pleasure. It’s the equivalent of eating a big mac or a big family sized bag of potato chips.
You should stack sats instead and leave the habit for as far as you can. That was my main realization.

I always had this feeling of disconnect, this illusion about my notoriously bad morning temper. I felt it was just because I’m more of a night than a day person. Coffee helped me with that, or so I told myself.

I’m always “grumpy in the morning” - said the illusion - because I didn’t have my coffee. Once I had one, two or even three cups of coffee I would have been better.

It kind of neutralized my grumpiness. (Other people in my surrounding didn’t see it that way, I felt better maybe, because of the belief in coffee). But I was a total ***k in the morning anyway. No matter how many dark roast stuff I drank.

So I drank more coffee. Which turned me more angry and sad at the world and made me drink more coffee. It’s a short term boost, more mentally than anything else.

If you’re classy and totally not grumpy like these George Clooney ads show us, then you’re lucky; with or without coffee.

Solution

In April 2024, I went to visit a friend who lived in a city in Switzerland. During the first morning there, I realized there was no coffee to be seen. The woman is a bitcoiner and she doesn’t drink coffee. So I went out, in search for a cup of coffee, like a maniac.
But I soon realized I had to “route around problems”. In this case it meant just avoiding the problem in the long run and not drink coffee anymore.

I didn’t find any good coffee. Sure, I found a bakery serving something that tasted ok’ish, but it wasn’t doing anything.
The habit was more mentally. I was confronted with the fact that I lived in a coffee illusion, and I was not George Clooney. At all.
Once I had that cup of coffee in front of me I felt like I was a bit of a conceited person.

Somehow, I realized that I was living in an illusion where coffee would bring me something I needed. It isn’t. All I needed was good company. And a cup of overpriced brown water isn’t good company at all.
While walking around that morning, with a view on the Swiss mountains, I felt NOT grumpy at all. Which was the first time in an very, very long time.
I didn’t change. I didn’t have good coffee. All I had was good company.

The illusion bubbel burst in my face, as I realized the coffee itself did this to me. Of course, living in a bleak corner of Belgium a few years ago, didn’t help with countering that illusion of needing coffee to survive the day.
Then and there I decided to quit drinking coffee. I felt like someone who was a bit slow to come to that conclusion, but hey, we all live and learn. I would continue the experiment. Which still lasts until today.

To make something bitcoin-related about this, I’ve set up a regular buy order on Pocket app ( https://pocketbitcoin.com/ code: MAT4HX )- and Strike.

So I set up an account to stack sats and auto-buy bitcoin for the same amount that I would normally spend on coffee.

For me that ranged around 40€ to 75€ a month in my case (not counting machinery and filters, just purely the coffee itself). That’s easily around 80,000 sats a month.

I share my experience here now. As I think a lot of bitcoiners will have the exact same problem. And it’s a damned hard one to get rid off. A fiat habit as stubborn to beat as cigarettes.

The queue at the coffee bar at the Madeira conference in 2024 tells me, a rather high percentage of people are addicted to coffee as well in the bitcoin space.

Coffee is just an expensive way to drink sugar and cream. And when you leave these two out of your coffee diet, you’re still addicted to something that doesn’t help you through the day but delivers you the mental illusion.

Some guidance for people that want to try this:

1) Realize coffee is either a habit or a necessity for you.
Before you think it is the latter, ask yourself how much better coffee makes your life for real and how many cups you leave out there to die a cold death every day.

2) Calculate how much time and money you invest in that brownish water.

3) When you’re ready to try to quit, just do it cold turkey.
But do so in nice environment, with good distraction, company and support. It might sound dramatic, but it’s a real addiction of the mind, if you want to break free from it you’ll need some support. Go on holiday, take a break, but don’t do your usual habits or sit at an office building. Your habits are the coffee, and coffee is the habit.

4) Count on headaches the first few days, that’s normal; just don’t be a weakling and get over it.

5) Eat healthy

6) Don’t drink “compensation” drinks with caffeine (it’s no use quitting coffee and starting to drink energy drinks instead of course, that’s even worse)

7) Set up a DCA (buying bitcoin on a regular interval) weekly or monthly for compensating your coffee habit in sats. That way you feel your bitcoin stack grow the longer you’ve ditched that coffee habit.

deadeyes
@avbpodcast

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PS: If I helped in any way beating your coffee habit, please support my writings: https://allesvoorbitcoin.be/donate