I didn’t socialize easily when I was in high school, not with people I didn’t know well. I wasn’t shy, exactly, but I was sensitive and casual conversation did not come easily to me. I’ve grown out of this over time (though whether I’ve really done so and whether this is even an appropriate way to think about one’s nature is a subject for another post), but socializing still takes energy from me, and on most days I wouldn’t be naturally inclined to be out and about with a group. A quiet night at home just seems more interesting and less likely to fatigue.

Unless there are beers involved. On a Friday night, after a long week, the prospect of having people over for dinner would ordinarily seem like a chore, but when a few drinks are added a social evening suddenly seems much more appealing.

I drank a lot when I was in the Peace Corps and in the years thereafter. I have many embarrassing memories from those years. But for the most part alcohol was a wonderful portal to adventure, to depth of feeling, to good times spent together with friends. Over time it has become more than a social lubricant for me: it is a reward, a symbol of the relaxed life, even an element of manliness, a way that men take the edge off and reflect.

Over time, as well, I have come to drink less — much less. Having two small kids does that to you. In most weeks I might have five drinks or less.

I do have the sense, though, that while alcohol no longer plays a significantly negative role in my life, no longer leads me to play the fool, it also plays less of a positive role. I always expect a beer to clear my head and calm my nerves, to bring me a sense of calm and joie de vivre, but for the most part it does much less than this. It does help me unwind a bit but usually I’m just left feeling tired, with a headache. Often enough I find myself having a drink by myself after J and the kids have gone to bed, just sipping slowly and surfing the same websites. I go to bed late and unfulfilled and wake up feeling exhausted.

So, for the last six weeks, I gave up booze. I’ve done this before, many times. It has never had the miraculous consequences I was looking for. I find myself a little less tired, but there is no sudden influx of vigor and health. And a downside of giving up alcohol is that it’s also giving up one of the few agents that help me disorder my life, turn the straight lines to squiggles. So yesterday, after a hard week and a plodding Friday, I had a few drinks. Predictably, they brought me a brief high but mostly just made me tired.

G woke up at 4:00 a.m. and took a long time to go to sleep, calling out alternately first for J and then for me, at intervals of ten minutes, for a good hour. After he eased back into sleep I still lay awake in bed, J breathing gently beside me, L snuffling sweetly in his bassinet by her side. I couldn’t go to sleep. I was unbelievably tired, enervated, sapped of all life force, but all I could do was stare at the ceiling and ruminate on how soon everyone would be up.

I was an excellent sleeper when I was a boy. My mother reports finding me sleeping soundly on the floor on occasion in the morning, after rolling out of bed overnight. My sister and my dad were always the light sleepers, while my mom and I could sleep through most anything. J is usually like that, an outstanding sleeper able to fall into deep slumber in moments (though the babies have disordered her sleep, too), but I can no longer say this about myself. I don’t suffer from insomnia any more, as I did during law school, but I do not fall asleep easily and almost never wake up feeling refreshed.

It’s not hard to date when my sleep grew more uneasy. It was a year after I started drinking coffee, in law school. I drank such prodigious amounts of coffee in law school, with lots of sugar and milk; I am amazed, looking back, that I was able to sleep at all. I have toned it down over the years, but coffee is still such an integral part of my life, and I continue to sleep poorly, to feel always tired.

Coffee has done for my work what alcohol did for my socializing. It gives me a prescribed and simple method of snapping to attention and focusing. I can read long and dry documents with coffee. I can write. Before I began drinking coffee, in my desultory work life to that point, I had never been able to put together full days of productivity. I’d work for an hour and then find myself trailing off, losing the thread. Coffee helps me find the thread, brings me back to the task at hand. It eliminates contingency, gives me control over my relationship to work.

And, like alcohol, coffee has become more to me: a reward, a trusted companion to a good book, a fragrant memory of cups in the morning by the seaside, or looking over green hills. A couple years ago, I put together a short list, with maybe five or six entries, of things that made me happy and that could not easily be taken away from me. Coffee and books, and booze and buddies, both made the list. They are an integral part of the good life to me.

But coffee, like alcohol, has had diminishing benefits for me. Having a cup in the morning revivifies me for an hour or so, but then I begin to drag again. The tendency is to have more over time, to maintain the same effect. Some days I have coffee and follow up with tea, and still cannot focus. And coffee has had many, many ill effects in my life. I am much more irritable, much more prone to anger and argument. I am tired in the morning before coffee and exhausted in the evening once its effects have worn off. My sleep, as mentioned, is poor. Because coffee, together with alcohol, stresses my system, I fall sick more. My muscles have tightened, my joints ache — a side effect, I think, of caffeine slowly ratcheting up the tension throughout my body, tuning me ever tighter, and tighter. I cannot read any more without a cup of coffee. Even going to a park on the weekend seems less fun without a cup. And because I have relied on coffee to concentrate, I have not developed in myself this stand-alone capacity.

I’ve tried giving up coffee, too, with much less success than with alcohol. There always comes a morning at work a few days after initiating a caffeine fast when I look at my inbox and think, “Well, none of this is getting done without coffee.” I think the longest I’ve given up coffee in the past twelve years is about eight weeks.

But, as they say, “If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you’ve ever got.” And I am tired of being tired, of this constant feeling of malingering. And, as luck would have it, Thanksgiving is coming up next week, and I will then take two weeks off from work to look after little L thereafter. So this is a great opportunity to take a break from coffee and alcohol and see how I feel.

The goal is to give up coffee (caffeine) and alcohol for 30 days, and to record here what difference, in any, this makes in how I feel. After 30 days I can continue or discontinue the experiment: just in time for Christmas and New Year’s.

The rules are not to have rules or goals other than this mere abstention. In the past, I’ve always coupled fasts of this type with other resolutions — to run more, to meditate every day, to stick to a healthier diet. I think heaping discipline upon discipline is just too much for the organism. So I’ll try to abstain from caffeine and alcohol but otherwise do as I please. One interesting point will be to see if my desire to act, to run, to write, comes back slowly as my dependency eases.

Today is Day 1: November 23, 2019. Day 30 will be December 22, 2019!

Let the experiment begin!