After over twenty years as a coffee drinker, I am now the owner of a drip coffee maker for the first time. Its make and model are nothing special, and it doesn’t actually brew better coffee than my AeroPress or French Press or Chemex ever did. In fact, the coffee it produces (with far less manual effort) is actually a little worse. Strangely enough, that is the whole point. I want coffee to be less enticing to me, because I am trying to wean myself off caffeine and maybe even cut coffee out of my diet entirely.

I think my (modest) coffee habit is causing me some health problems, and I finally came to a mindset where it seemed possible to do something about it. So far, in the few weeks since I drastically reduced my daily caffeine intake, I have noticed digestive benefits, which I expected, and also, unexpectedly, a decrease in day-to-day anxiety—which is something I didn’t even know I had until it was gone. Up until this week I worried about removing something pleasurable from my daily routine, but I am finding that there is something pleasurable in being even keeled, and, of course, in not being dependent on a drug, albeit a socially acceptable one.