Being a college student, I practically live off of a morning coffee to get me through the day. But this one specific week I decided to do something I didn’t think I would do in my left mind. This is my experience of what happened when I cut coffee out of my somewhat everyday routine for one week. One week meaning from Monday to Friday. I should also add that this took place during the week of November 13th through November 17th.

Monday

The whole reason of why I decided to try a week of no coffee was because I felt really crappy Monday morning and I knew my stomach wouldn’t do well with coffee in it. I planned on getting some after my first class and then I read this article about saying goodbye to coffee (which I personally can’t do) and at the end, it talked about trying to go without coffee for a day or a week or a year. Knowing me, I decided on a week to see how I would function. Especially with having classes before nine am all week.

So for breakfast, I bypassed the Starbucks and just had a granola bar and orange juice. Lunchtime came around and I was miraculously doing alright. I got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and apple juice. I only had two classes that day so I got to work on some homework and that was due this week.

After an indoors band practice I went with some friends to a dining hall and what do I get? Lo mien noodles with Sriracha on it. That woke me up big time. I also had two glasses of fruit punch and a bowl of yogurt to calm the heat.

So day one of this hellish idea wasn’t so bad. I just can’t wait to see how the rest of the week goes...I’m doing this for you, Odyssey.

Tuesday

I feel like the real name of this article should be called “watch Maddie suffer through college without any sort of caffeine for a week”. Why? Because that’s how I’m feeling right now. My stomach is still being a bitch, but by the end of the day, it was alright.

I was able to have a breakfast with an apple and lemon tea to help settle my stomach a little and then got lunch at the Oaks before one of my classes. I knew that I was missing some sort of dairy from my meal at this point so I bought a half gallon of milk before band. No, I didn’t drink it all yet. My stomach was still a bit upset after band so I only had fries and ice cream, but it’s able to settle in my stomach.

The thing I’m realizing that’s hard is that I’m wanting to go to sleep earlier now and normally I’d still be wanting to stay up. At this point I feel like I should cut this challenge down to two days now. I suffered without coffee on Friday, November 10th (I was in Indiana all day) and Saturday, November 11th (I don’t know why) but then I got coffee the next day. And tomorrow is game day and it starts at 8 p.m. against The School Up North so... how am I going to survive if I feel tired at 9 p.m. now?

Wednesday

I think the picture below is enough evidence about this experiment...

So yes, I did get coffee this morning. I was definitely feeling dead and knew that with game day today, I’m going to need as much caffeine. It sucks that I couldn’t do an entire week of this, but I know I was able to get two days worth of this in and it shows that I am able to survive without coffee. Just barely. However, I think that with how much coffee I drank so far this semester, I’m in need of it in order to survive school.

In the end, I miraculously failed. But I will take the L for this specific reason.

Here are some things I took out of this little experience.

1. If it wasn’t obvious already, I’m addicted to coffee.

2. Everyone functions differently during the day.

Whether someone needs a certain amount of sleep or they need to have some certain drink to keep them up and active.

3. Thank god I had coffee on Wednesday because I didn’t get back to my dorm until past midnight after the game.

Not to forget I had an 8 a.m. Stats class later on that I DIDN’T SKIP, MOM!! I got coffee after class.

So in other words, I did learn a bit from this. But, I won't be doing this again because in short, I felt like this was torture.