What Michael Pollan Learned from Quitting Caffeine for 3 Months

And one of the things I'm trying to do with This Is Your Mind on Plants is start that post-drug war conversation about drugs, which is one of the reasons I included caffeine, you know, a totally legal drug that everybody uses. What does that have to teach us? In a way, one of the most powerful drug experiences I've had in my life was the first cup of coffee after three months off. Really? It was psychedelic. Really? Incredible. Come on. I was trying to get off caffeine for a while. Three months? Three months without caffeine. How am I going to do a podcast? You may have to take a hiatus. I'm going to run out of things to talk about or fall asleep. It was really hard. I did it actually. It's a suggestion of Roland Griffith, who, you know, the psychedelic researcher, who before that was the world's leading expert on caffeine. And I was interviewing him about caffeine for this chapter. And he said, well, you're never going to understand your relationship to caffeine until you get off it. So it was kind of a dare. And it was really hard. It was one of the hardest things I've done. Really? I was a mess. For how long? Three months. You were a mess until you... I was functional after a month. The first week I was not functional at all. I felt like I had contracted ADD. I could not stay on track. Everything, the periphery just kept intruding on my thinking. I couldn't write. I mean, writing is the most linear thing you can do, right? And it's all about concentration, obviously. And I couldn't concentrate. And I felt like there was this veil between me and reality that, you know, I was not quite seeing, getting, feeling. And it was weird. I didn't feel myself for the whole time. And I thought, what does that mean? It means yourself is caffeinated. And that is baseline consciousness for me and for many people. And that's not a bad thing, but I think we have a debt to these plants that we owe them. And so I spent a lot of time researching that chapter, looking back in history for when caffeine enters the West. And it doesn't happen until the 1650s in Europe. So we actually have a before and after, which we don't with a lot of drugs because they just go back, you know, millennia. And before caffeine, it was a very different world and a very different consciousness. People were drunk a lot of the time, buzzed almost all of the time. People drank morning, noon and night because it was safer than water, right? Water was really how you got diseases. If you fermented things, even low, you know, low alcohol, it killed a lot of the microbes. So people, even kids, you gave your kids hard cider for breakfast. And this was true in America up until the 1800s, up until prohibition. But anyway, caffeine comes along in the 1650s and tea and chocolate and coffee all arrive in the same decade in England, which is kind of like great decade, right? And things start to change. In the form of coffee? Coffee and tea and chocolate, which also has caffeine in it. And so what would they, they had never experienced coffee before the 1600s? That's right. They had in the Arab world. They'd had it from like 1200 or something like that. Supposedly it was discovered in 800s by a herder in like Ethiopia who noticed that his goats were getting very frisky when they ate this particular berry and would stay up all night. And so he, yeah, so he kind of like started experimenting or he brought it to these monks and they made a drink and it was like, It makes sense that it was in the Arab world. Because if you think about all the science that was being done in the Arab world, all the literature back then, all the writing. So one theory is that the Arab world had coffee first and had this incredible golden age. Yes. And there is a historian of psychoactives named Wolfgang Schivelbusch and he correlates. What a name. Isn't that wonderful? German, of course. Wolfgang Schivelbusch. It's a great book. It's called Tastes of Paradise. Highly recommend it. And he said this was the perfect drug for the culture that invented mathematics and had this incredible, and it helped the culture in two ways. One was as safe as alcohol made water, boiling it made it much safer. And coffee and tea, of course, both require boiling water. No one ate, drank boiling water or hot beverages before. So this gave this incredible public health boost to these places. And then you have the drug that basically fosters a kind of more linear, rational, focused way of thinking. And so there is a lot of evidence linking coffee and tea consumption with the Enlightenment in France and with the Age of Reason in England. And people in the 1600s started writing about it. So they're like, wow, people, you know, we have this new civil and sober drink that we, and it was so popular because it was new that people drank less and they used more caffeine. And that, I think, makes possible things like the Industrial Revolution. Because when you're doing physical labor outdoors, which was most of history, right, you could be buzzed. You didn't have to know what time it was. You worked from sun up to sun down. There were beer breaks actually on farms in England. They would give you beer because it gave you calories and made you happy. When you start moving into like running machines and doing double entry bookkeeping, you need a clearer head. And when you start moving toward night shifts and overnight shifts, you couldn't do that without caffeine. And that's when it begins. There's a whole new, like, it freed us from the rhythms of the sun, which dictated everything in Western culture. You could only work till the sun went down. So it had a profound effect on capitalism, the rise of capitalism. And the clearest illustration of that that I came across is the coffee break. Where did that come from? The coffee break actually has a history. We know the company that came up with it. And it was a necktie manufacturer in Denver called Wigwam Weavers. And Wigwam Weavers made these very intricate silk neckties. And during World War II, they lost all their best loom operators to the war effort. So they hired these old guys to do it, you know, who weren't getting drafted. And they couldn't do it very well. Then they hired these women to do it. And they could do it beautifully. And there were very intricate patterns, very complicated looms. I mean, you've seen how the patterns are neckties. And the women could do it really well, but only for about four or five hours. So they called a meeting. And the owner said to the workers, what could we do? We have to improve your efficiency. And you know, we need more output. And the women said, well, give us a coffee break. They didn't call it that initially. And give us some time at like 10 in the morning and four in the afternoon and give us some coffee and tea. So we started doing it. And overnight, like their productivity and efficiency goes up. Quality control goes up. And so he institutes the coffee break. And think about it. Your employer gives you a drug and then gives you time off in which to ingest it during the workday. Why would they do that? Because it contributes mightily. So the coffee break might seem like it's something your boss is giving you, but it's a way to extract more value from you. And I'm sure employees that have little breaks and get to enjoy just a little bit of free time, they'll be happier employees. They'll probably be more productive. Like the counterintuitive. Calling Mr. Bezos, man. He should institute. I don't know if he has coffee breaks. He wants to order it on Adderall. 24-7, running to the next package. Tell me about your experience, what your experience was like with the three months off and then having the caffeine. So I had this three months that was really unpleasant. The only things that were positive about it was I slept like a teenager. It really did improve my sleep. I had some great sleeps like I remember from when I was a teenager, when you can sleep 14 hours. That was really good. I also felt, and I'm not proud of this, self-righteous. How? So, and I remember one morning having to get a 6 a.m. flight and I had to get up and get myself moving on mint tea. I get to the airport and it's just when they're opening the pizza and the Starbucks and the line is like snaking for those people getting on 6 a.m. flights. And I'm looking at these people and they look like junkies you see in Amsterdam. They look so pathetic. And that they were hooked and they needed their fix. And they look kind of miserable and withdrawal was starting. Because that first cup of coffee is not about the pleasure it gives us. It's really about stopping withdrawal symptoms which are beginning overnight because we haven't had it for 24 hours. And I felt self-righteous. I'm not proud of that. And I knew that I was going to rejoin them as soon as I could. So when I hit the three month mark, I decided and I needed for the ending of the piece to have a cup and see this was going to tell me, because drugs are very different the first time you take them before your body is accustomed to them. So I had this first cup and I gave a lot of thought to where I would have it. I thought about the original pizza in my neighborhood, the very first pizza. But I don't love their coffee. It can be kind of burnt tasting. So I went to a place called the Cheese Board which is a cafe bakery in my neighborhood. And they have a little pocket park out on the street and I got a special which is sort of like a cappuccino but more coffee and less milk. Like a flat white in Australia. And we sat, my wife and I, Judith, sat there and I drank this drink and it was so good. I mean, I just felt these waves of wellbeing and then it turned into euphoria and I was like, wow, this is such a strong drug. I had no idea. It was like cocaine or something. And that lasted for maybe 20 minutes. But then something turned that was kind of interesting. Across the street there was a garbage truck that was grabbing hold of two plastic garbage cans and shaking them like this and making this horrible racket. And it really got under my skin. I was getting kind of irritable. And I said to Judith, can we go home? And I felt like I got to get something done. I felt kind of compulsive. And so we walked home and I went to my office and I just had this desire to get shit done. And so what I did was, this is really weird, I unsubscribed from like 100 listservs that I was getting on my email that were really annoying. I just killed them one after another and after and after. And then after I finished that, I went through the sweater in my closet, all the sweaters in my closet. And I threw out some, I gave some away and I... It sounds like meth behavior. This is what I hear. I had a friend of mine, a data girl who was on meth and she always would clean. She would come home and organize and clean things. He's like, so if your girl starts cleaning incessantly, she might be on amphetamines. You have a problem. Yeah I was really compulsive and very productive. And I said to myself... Did you keep drinking it throughout the day? Well this is... no, but I was tempted to. So I said to myself, how can I hold on to this power that this drug has? Because if I start using it every day, I'm going to lose it. I'm just going to be another caffeine addict. And I came up with this idea, only do it on Saturdays, once a week. And I did that for a while. So that very day after cleaning out my closet, I worked in the garden and there were some plants that needed replacement. So I started driving down to this garden center called Flowerland. And I realized, why did I pick that nursery and say, oh they have this Airstream where they sell espresso drinks right out in front. It was like, it was the voice of the addict putting me in position to get another cup the same day. And so I resisted that. And I did this Saturday thing for a while and it worked pretty well. I really look forward to Saturdays and I got a lot done... On Saturday. On Saturday. But I wasn't addicted anymore, so I could get through the week. Oh sure, you're fine. It wasn't hard. But then gradually it was like, you know it's Thursday and I got a deadline. And this would really help me get over the deadline. So I started making exceptions. It was complete addict thinking, right? Did you try any other forms of caffeine? I would, yeah, I would do green tea as I'm drinking now. Green tea is a very good source of caffeine because it's really even. There's another alkaloid in it that stretches out the effect. So you don't get a jolt, but it kind of keeps you nicely titrated. What is the caffeine content of green tea, the average cup? It's probably a third of what you get in a cup of coffee. It varies amazingly. If the tips were plucked when they're brand new, first flush green tea, that has a lot more caffeine in it and is a lot more valuable. So there's a lot of variables that go into it. The plant is producing caffeine of course as a pesticide. And that was a whole question I looked at. Why do plants produce these things that have these effects on our minds? Isn't that amazing that a plant could devise a chemical that can unlock a receptor in your brain? That's astonishing. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips. Easily seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. 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