Jump Ropes and Caffeine

/ Jeff Cann

Every time I open Facebook, I’m presented with a video of a woman—thin, blonde, smiley—jumping rope. It’s mesmerizing. It’s stupid. I know that if I pause to watch, Meta will just give me more jump-roping videos, but I can’t help myself. She jumps, I watch. Months ago, when I read an article reporting that Facebook was adding and prioritizing “Reels” to their site to make it more like Instagram, I thought to myself: “Well, that’s it for Facebook. I’m not going to waste my time watching a bunch of useless videos.” But I do. Jump roping, soccer, weightlifting, mountain biking, magic tricks, repair hacks… Pause, swipe. Pause, swipe.

Now I spend five times longer on Facebook than I used to. Earlier today, between reels, I read a comic—another overrepresented genre in my feed. It was just a drawing of a tombstone. The inscription read:

1959 – Gave up smoking
1975 – Gave up drinking
1988 – Gave up red meat
1999 – Died anyway

I made a mental guffaw, but then I became introspective. A longer life? Is that why we make these changes?

Recently, and not so recently, I eliminated some vices in my life—alcohol, animal protein, caffeine. I didn’t do this to live longer. I simply wanted to improved the quality of the life I’m currently living. In two instances, these changes worked great, but giving up eating meat wound up being a major fail.

I became a vegetarian hoping to reduce inflammation within my body. I hoped to make my plantar fasciitis go away. Instead, I gradually became chronically dizzy, and it took me over a year to figure out that my iron levels crashed. After countless, tests and procedures, including an MRI, a simple blood test held the answer. My doctor prescribed adding meat back into my diet.

“You mean like chicken a couple times a week?”         

“No, I mean hamburgers for lunch every day.” So much for a long life!*

~ ~

This afternoon, the sun setting, rays slanting through the back window filtered by the barren woods that adjoin my property, me on the couch where I sat most of the day, I drank a beer. It’s my current fave, a Hazy IPA by Athletic Brewing Company, who claims the title of world’s largest NA brewery—NA meaning non-alcoholic. Until eight years ago, I drank alcohol daily. I toyed with cutting back, tried, weekends only, but I wound up obsessing about my next drink. Counting the days and then the hours until I could have another. I decided it was easier on my brain to stop drinking altogether.

Now I enjoy an NA beer four or five times a week. Unlike many beer drinkers, I love the taste. And thirty-five years of conditioning has programmed my brain to associate my first beer of the day with relaxation and reward. I still get this without the alcohol. It’s the one positive benefit that resulted from a lifetime of misuse.

~ ~

Four weeks ago, I gave up caffeine. Six weeks ago, I would have bet my life savings that I would never give up caffeine. I was a proud espresso addict, drinking a thirteen-shot stovetop pot every day. What changed? I gave up my Tourette medication, the twice daily dose that helped suppress my tics, my involuntary movements and vocalizations. The medicine disturbed my ability to communicate—more tics seemed like the lesser of two evils. But without medicine, my tics went haywire. I grunted nonstop. I squished my eyes together. I gnashed my teeth so hard I snapped off a crown below the gum-line. I was so miserable that Susan went online looking for relief. “You know, they say reducing caffeine will help.”

And so I did it. Half-caf for a week and none since. I drank a Diet Coke a couple of weeks in, and it made me agitated and anxious. So now I’m caffeine free, drinking that same pot of espresso I was before, only with decaf instead of caffeinated. And yes, I know that decaf has a bit of caffeine. Nonalcoholic beer has a bit of alcohol too. These are acceptable remnants that don’t produce the effects of the full dose.

At one point in my life, these changes would have disgusted me. I was mistrustful of people who didn’t drink alcohol and coffee. It seemed unnatural. But these changes fit me perfectly. Just like sobriety has given me freedom from obsessing, decaffeination gives me freedom from agitation, which fuels tics. Without caffeine and medication, I now tic about the same amount as I did with medication plus caffeine.

These changes may or may not help me live longer, but eventually, just like the guy under the tombstone, I’ll “die anyway.” But if those jump roping videos motivate me to give that a try, I might eke out a couple extra years of life.

* Note: My iron levels rose and stabilized with three-day-per-week supplements and a reasonable amount of red and white meat. Sad to say I don’t get to eat hamburgers every day.

Photo by Rafa De

21 thoughts on “Jump Ropes and Caffeine”

  1. I love it when I learn about people who make dietary changes that reap real, positive results. I’ve been making changes myself to help me feel better and, yes, live longer. I want to be around for awhile to enjoy this new phase of my life, which my husband and I have dubbed the Peaceful Years. I hope it’s so.

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  3. My doctor prescribed one glass of dry red wine a day.
    I love my doctor.
    Every day, at five, I pour my wine and sip it for about an hour and a half.
    I eat meat on a daily basis.
    Mostly game.
    No antibiotics.
    Works for me.

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  4. Hi Jeff, I gave up alcohol six years ago and since then it has been a steady eradication of all sorts of things. Because I realised how much better I felt with each change. I haven’t managed to kick the coffee habit yet – I still drink just one cup straight up in the morning but none after that and I can’t make myself believe that there would be any benefit to giving it up. I did find that giving up chocolate caused me to have a lot less anxiety. Actually I had given up chocolate for ages – not on purpose, just hadn’t felt like any – and then for some reason I ate quite a lot of it on one particular day. I was so anxious and jittery that I thought oh heck – it’s the chocolate. Tried it again with a lesser amount – same jitter jitter mood drop. Sadly, I have had to give it up completely. My mental and physical health is just worth so much more than a passing craving these days. I’m so glad you seeing such positive results with your changes.

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    • Well, I personally don’t see any reason to eliminate 1 cup of coffee. My tourette is a special condition, and a lot of recent research has shown that coffee (decaf & caf) are healthy for you – moreso than tea. Giving up chocolate would be tough, but I also know it includes caffeine and it’s something I’m considering.

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  6. Loving this update, and the positive impacts these changes have had on you.
    I’ve stopped alcohol the past few months, not because of anything aside from the realization I didn’t really need the extra calories. I had a drink at a friend’s last night while watching the Oscars and that weird middle of the night anxiety came back, over ridiculous trivialities (I was in full sweats worrying about the tartar buildup on my dog’s teeth at 3 am). Sigh. Guess I’ll have to cut it out for good, but if it means no more of that stupid anxiety, it’s worth it.

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  8. I would glitch like a cat having urs toe beans touched by human hands if I gave up caffeine. I gave up nicotine out of the fear of contracting Covid. Now I don’t smoke cigarettes but I will have a cigar once in a blue moon. It’s not something I can do every day or even want to do every day.

    Caffeine is part of the fabric of my being. I wouldn’t know what to do with my mornings or energy levels tanking. Decaf just doesn’t do it for me… maybe there’s a better tasting decaf than Folgers???

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    • I thought the same about myself and I’m really pleased that it turned out to be untrue. I miss caffeine, the idea of it and the buzz, but for me, it just wasn’t the right fit anymore. Better than Folgers? Yes, definitely.

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  9. Oh my gosh, Jeff! I didn’t know that you gave up caffeine! I remember when we joked about that as a tragedy. What a big change! How remarkable to read that it fits you now. It’s inspiring, this possibility of surprising ourselves. Cheering for you,

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    • As someone who took years adjusting to life without alcohol, I’m astonished at how easy this was. I really don’t notice a difference in how I feel. Really the biggest disappointment to me about the whole thing is that I can’t have a diet coke when I get a fast food meal because they never have caffeine free. On further reflection, I’ve probably overstated the benefits of the change. I’ve decided my tics are a bit worse than they were before. I need to decide if I want to do anything about it or just accept it.

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  10. Since I tied the knot with my wife, I’ve made significant changes in my life. I’ve bid farewell to indulging in fast food, bid adieu to alcohol, and embarked on a journey of better nutrition and self-care. Sometime around 2022, I bid farewell to social media entirely. It seems in today’s world, departing from platforms like Facebook renders one invisible to the masses. I’ve always marched to the beat of my own drum, and despite dedicating decades to a career in public safety, I’ve since retired and embraced a more secluded lifestyle. Yet, I can confidently affirm that these transformations were essential, and now, for the first time in my existence, I am genuinely content. 🙂

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