Back to coffee
I gave up coffee because I started losing my sight. I was getting visual migraines, auras that would creep in until I stopped seeing out of one eye for several minutes. It was terrifying the first time, and not much better the tenth.
It turned out coffee wasn’t really the cause. The stress from a past job was. But I was only drinking a single cup a day, so quitting felt like the one thing I could actually control.
That single cup was harder to give up than I expected. The week I stopped was the hardest of my life. Nothing dramatic happened, nothing to point at, just a flat grey feeling that sat on everything. It felt like being depressed. Over one cup of coffee.
I ended up staying off it for almost four years.
Now I’m back, and I only drink pour over, V60 and batch, weighed and made properly like a real expat. Not out of caution, I just like it more this way. The auras are gone, the job is behind me, and the two minutes at the counter watching it bloom are the calmest part of my day.