Romesh Ranganathan’s midlife crisis

I love the smell of coffee, morning, evening and night. Maybe it’s time to cut down

I look back on pre-lockdown Romesh as some sort of caffeine-fearing dweeb. There is no stopping me, now

Back in the old days, I drank a lot of coffee. I basically ran on it. I am a terrible sleeper and regularly tackle days on three to four hours of sleep. The only way I can survive this is by drinking so much coffee that my synapses crackle and I take on the irritability levels of a bear in a trap. I thought nothing of buying a large average-quality coffee to tide me over until I got to another coffee shop where I could buy one I would actually enjoy.

Today I look back on pre-lockdown Romesh as some sort of caffeine-fearing dweeb. There is no stopping me, now that I am never farther than a few feet away from more coffee. I switch on my pod machine, and savour every drop of black gold, ignoring the fact that I have no intention of composting the pods, which renders buying environmentally friendly ones completely pointless. My every cup is essentially a middle finger to mother nature. This very publication has published numerous articles about the fact that, if you use a coffee pod machine, you are two rungs below Katie Hopkins on the sliding scale of evil.

I love everything about coffee. I love how it smells better than it tastes; I love the frothy bit on top. I love how, for half an hour after drinking it, I feel I can achieve anything. I also love how I often drink too much of it, become intensely annoying, and then too wired to care. I have read that coffee can potentially reduce the chances of getting dementia, something that has affected a couple of people I care about, and have become intensely paranoid about getting. The other night, on a Zoom get-together with friends, I forgot a word I was looking for, and instead of explaining, just stopped mid-sentence for such a long time that one of my friends thought I had frozen. I then pretended to engage with the rest of the evening while Googling methods of preventing mental deterioration.

It is awful when you overdo the coffee, however, and I have been overdoing it a lot. On more than one occasion, I have found myself unable to sleep at 3am, and convinced I have stumbled on an incredible comedic idea. I sit up in bed and note it down, before finally going to sleep, excited about putting the idea into action. I then wake up the following morning to find a series of nonsensical words and hieroglyphs.

So I have decided to cut down. The truth is, I need to stop drinking coffee altogether to recalibrate, but there is no way anyone in the house could survive it. Instead, I have decided to limit myself to one cup a day. The internal debate has shifted to an argument with myself about when I have this single cup. I say internal, because I tried to engage my wife in the debate externally and she informed me that they would find a cure for Covid-19 before she found something she cares about less than what time I have my one coffee. I thanked her for her feedback. After a lot of consideration, I have settled on an uncontroversial first thing in the morning.

The early days have been difficult. I have a coffee, feel great for a bit, then suffer a slump; it’s encouraging in a way, because it means that this is definitely a problem worth tackling. My family say I have less energy and am much quieter. Am I any happier? I don’t know, but they are absolutely delighted.