He thought Stephen King got over cocaine. He just drank coffee.

This is the confession of a writer who couldn't write without caffeine — or at least that's what he told himself for years. Four dollars a day at Dunkin' Donuts. Eight cups at Denny's, scribbling on legal pads. Friends who mocked him the moment he ordered hot chocolate instead. A girlfriend who believed in him. And a blinking cursor on a blank screen that became the most terrifying thing he had ever faced — sober.

He tried to quit three times. The headaches were brutal. The disorientation was real. The withdrawal peaked at 48 hours and nearly broke him every single time. But it wasn't the physical pain that kept pulling him back.

It was the page.

Without caffeine, the words stopped coming. Or so he believed. His friends rated his caffeine-free writing somewhere between "unnerving" and "get help." His identity as a writer was so tangled up with his identity as a coffee drinker that he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

Then one month without writing anything. Then one line. Then a poem. Then another. Then the most rewarding experience of his life.

Turns out the caffeine wasn't fueling the creativity. It was blocking it.

What You'll Hear in This Episode

• How caffeine became the psychological crutch behind an entire creative identity
• The brutal reality of withdrawal — vision problems, disorientation, headaches that bent him double
• The social pressure to keep drinking — from waiters, friends, and an entire culture that treats quitting like a betrayal
• The terrifying moment of staring at a blank screen with nothing to write and no cup to reach for
• How he finally broke through — and what came out on the other side surprised everyone, including him

Key Takeaways

• Caffeine doesn't just create physical dependency — it creates psychological dependency tied to identity and creativity
• Withdrawal peaks around 48 hours — knowing that can be the difference between quitting and caving
• Social environments actively punish people who try to quit — even friends and waiters become obstacles
• The creativity you think caffeine is giving you may actually be creativity that caffeine is suppressing
• Breaking the cycle opens up something deeper, cleaner, and more authentically yours

Who Should Listen

This one is for every writer, artist, musician, coder, or creative professional who believes they can only do their best work with a cup in their hand. If your identity and your caffeine habit have become the same thing — this confession will shake something loose. It's also for anyone who has tried to quit and been mocked, dismissed, or made to feel weak for even attempting it. You are not alone. And you are not crazy for trying.

🌐 Visit us at https://linktr.ee/UnwiredLife

📖 Confessions of a Caffeine Addict book

📩 Share your own caffeine confession: https://linktr.ee/UnwiredLife

🛒 Live Unwired Merch: LiveUnwired.org

Writer's Block I tried to quit caffeine a few times. I'm not exactly Batman in the willpower department, so withdrawal was a big block for me. There was also some light peer pressure from my friends.

But my biggest problem was I thought I couldn't write without caffeine. At first I wanted to quit because a $4 cup of coffee every morning was killing my wallet.

A large cup of coffee with a shot of espresso from Dunkin Donuts comes to around $3 with tip. I was spending about $112 a month, so I stopped buying it.

The first day, I felt dizzy, tired, and achy, but I figured it was probably a bad night's sleep. Second day putting inventory on shelves hurt my arms, I had trouble walking in a straight line, and my vision seemed limited to a thin cone.

The headaches alone with have kept a weaker man home.

Unfortunately, every time I felt sick enough to take a day off, the really annoying part of my brain reminded me that my father had never taken a day off work in his life, or that the assistant manager of my last job once worked at the register on Black Friday. Running off every 15 minutes to vomit took me a while to figure out that the problem was caffeine.

I made it to my lunch break and ran to the nearby Dunkin Donuts, which made everything better. My friends, my girlfriend, and I would usually go to Denny's on Wednesday after we got paid. Okay, almost any night was Denny's.

We would get drinks and fries. We would hang around for hours doing different things. My friends drew, I wrote, and my girlfriend would admire my friend's art and my writing.

Our waiter, Glenn, knew our drink orders by heart. Three of us had coffee and one had tea. Somewhere between my fourth and eighth cup of coffee, I would pull out a legal pad and write about my day.

When I skipped the coffee, my friends rated my writing as somewhere between unnerving and get help. Around the second time, I tried to quit. On the second night, I was on my way to Denny's, where I was meeting more than the usual crowd.

A couple of my other friends were there, including a few of those whom I didn't talk to anymore. When my girlfriend and I sat down, Glenn came over and confirmed our usual order. Coffee and coffee, right? Actually, could I get a hot chocolate?

The caffeine content is low and it's the only other hot drink with free refills. The table was more silent than it probably should have been. What's the matter? Said Glen. Our coffee's not good enough for You?

Yeah, dude, what the hell? Said one of my friends. Others were more malicious.

It's not like they were saying anything different, but there was a definite difference in their tone. I was a target of their jokes for disrupting the status quo that night. The jokes were cruel. I had a headache from caffeine withdrawal.

Felt Grogan wasn't in the mood to put up with it. I left early that night. When I arrived home, I researched as much as I could about caffeine, caffeine addiction and its side effects.

I found out that caffeine dehydrates the body.

I learned all sorts of statistics when a caffeine high peaks, how long it lasts, how much caffeine was in my morning coffee, and how much it takes to create a physical addiction. I also learned that withdrawal peaked at about 48 hours. That explained why the second day had been so bad.

Armed with an arsenal of data, I resolved to quit. Not from my wallet, but for my health. I lasted about three days. It wasn't the headaches or the disorientation, though. They didn't do me any good.

On the third day, I opened a blank document and put my hands on the keyboard. And that was as far as I got. I couldn't write. The cursor was blinking as if to say, feed me. Feed me with your words.

I let my fingers twitch a little and stopped on the home key of my keyboard. I still couldn't write a damn word. I made a pot of coffee. It was another few months before I tried to quit again.

Money had gotten tight and I was looking for things I could cut out of my budget. Coffee seemed an obvious choice, but the memory of that blank monitor always came back.

My girlfriend reminded me of my favorite non fiction book, Stephen King's Memoirs on writing. In it, he discusses, among other topics, his addiction to cocaine and how he once thought that he couldn't write without getting high.

Keeping that in mind, I shamed myself into quitting. Stephen King got over cocaine addiction. I drank coffee.

It would be like me telling my former assistant manager that I couldn't work because I have an allergy. I did a lot of reading about how to quit drugs. One piece of advice was to tell friends what you're doing.

So I explained to my friends that I was going to quit caffeine. One friend told me I was pathetic because I couldn't handle caffeine. Another said it wasn't even worth trying.

The third said I wouldn't be allowed in his house because he didn't want to deal with me moping around. They are not my friends anymore. My close friends, the Denny's group, were completely supportive, barring the occasional snide joke.

I went about a month without writing anything. I tried a few times, but it was painful. I'd sit at my computer staring at the screen. I'd write a sentence, so there's this guy.

And I'd know it was drivel. Not only was it drivel, but I didn't know what came next. I'd write scraps of a story with no plot or outline a plot and be unable to write the story.

Every time I'd write, I'd think about having a cup of coffee. I finally stopped writing till my body got used to not having caffeine. Then one day I got some lines in my head.

They were the first few words of a poem. I wrote them out. I came up with a few more lines. I edited the first ones and then wrote more until there was a poem in front of me.

It was almost good. I started to write more poems. I'd write two or three poems in an hour. Usually one of them was good. It was like a high. I was getting giddy.

I call it the most rewarding experience of my life. I'm saving the best of these poems from my first best seller. It's been about four months since I quit caffeine.

I've written three short stories, a number of poems, and have gone back to work on my novel. I write every day now. It's fantastic. I'm doing better financially, but the extra hundred dollars a month I'm saving doesn't hurt.

The only problem is avoiding thoughts like just one cup. Furthermore, I feel better physically. I'm not dizzy as often, and getting out of bed has become easier.

I used to believe that people weren't able to think well without caffeine or some other drug. However, I've proven myself wrong. I'm much more capable now. Without headaches and dehydration from caffeine.

It feels as if a weight has been lifted from my mind. I'm also not triggered by the wired people with whom I converse. I've only been caffeine free for a few months, but I really think I've quit for life.