Life sans coffee

For most of us the morning begins and ends with coffee — it is the drink that signals our animal brain that it’s time to wake up. But what would happen if you gave up coffee — especially if you’d been drinking it since the age of 10.

That was the question asked by Robin Barooah, a coffee addict who had attempted to go “cold turkey” on several previous occasions but always succumbed to the withdrawal symptoms and pervasive belief that he needed coffee to concentrate.

But over concerns that mood swings and crashes were becoming a problem, this time he took a scientific approach, slowly weaning himself off coffee in small increments between April and July of this year. He would eliminate coffee altogether when he got down to half a shot glass each morning.