I thought I had anxiety. Turns out it was just a coffee addiction

"When something is so ubiquitous and ritualised, it becomes almost impossible to see it as anything but a normal way of being. So why didn't I feel normal?"

Eleanor Katelaris

5 min read

May 9, 2023 - 1:00PM

Image: Supplied

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Over-caffeinated.

That’s how I can retrospectively summarise the last 10 years of my life.

I say retrospectively because it wasn’t something I thought twice about at the time or ever considered evaluating.

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My huge blind spot

As a self-identified, self-improvement obsessive, it’s almost comical that I had such a huge blind spot.

I quit drinking alcohol almost four years ago in the name of wellness, I cycle religiously every week, I get 10k steps, I drink my three litres, I eat a wholefoods diet, I (imperfectly) meditate, I fiercely protect my eight hours of sleep - and yet the stimulant I consumed in the form of three large coffees a day remained entirely unexamined.

Was it really because I thought it was essential for me?

Or was it because something like 90% of people drink coffee regularly, making it the most widely used psychoactive drug in the world? That sounds more likely.

When something is so ubiquitous and ritualised, it becomes almost impossible to see it as anything but a normal way of being.

How can you see yourself as being in an altered state when it’s a state that virtually all of us share?

It’s as though there’s an unofficial pact between us all that’s like, ‘Hey, no one bring up that little self-medicating habit we all do and then none of us has to stop it, k?’

Better yet, let’s form an entire cafe culture around it in order to disguise it as something social and ~communal~.

This phenomenon is something that author Michael Pollen has called society’s “invisible addiction.”

And it wasn’t until about a month ago that I discovered mine.

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My intake gradually crept up

When I was 16, I had my first taste of the good stuff via a dirty Chai latte. As I entered my 20s, I turned to straight-up lattes and then eventually the very adult, very large, long black, sometimes hot, sometimes iced.

My intake crept up on me and until recently, I would regularly sling back a few of these a day, all with three shots each.

Sometimes, I’d chuck in a cold brew if I wanted to feel particularly spicy.

It was around this time that I started feeling the anxiety.

Funny thing that.

To paint a picture of my mental state would have to start by making sure the artist was blindfolded. They would be splattering paint everywhere, sometimes they’d use bright colours, sometimes dark. Sometimes, they’d miss the canvas altogether and it would get on the shirt of someone close by. Other times, they’d come up really close and hyper-fixate on one particular corner until it was perfect.

That was my mind for months.

It was all over the place, erratic and unpredictable. Some days, I’d be bouncing off the walls with energy in the morning and completely lethargic in the afternoon.

I was irritable and quick to snap. It was like I was constantly in fight or flight mode, scanning the horizon for threats and always ready to pounce. I had a barrage of worrying, especially about mundane things. I was constantly on-edge.

My chest tightened at the slightest inconvenience. I was uptight and moody around those I loved. I felt the need to be in control of everything which just left me feeling in control of nothing.

Then came the panic attacks.

What a joy to have such a new experience!

Here I was thinking I was going to escape my 20s without a mental breakdown.

But maybe they're a rite of passage.

"I tried to identify any life-altering events that were out of the ordinary..."

Those panic attacks were actually a wake-up call. I couldn’t keep living life like this, it was exhausting.

So I did what any anxiety-ridden gal would do and overthink the hell out of my situation, trying to identify any life-altering events or stressors that were out of the ordinary and could be causing this.

Nada.

My life had stayed the same, even though my reaction to it hadn’t.

So naturally, I gravitated towards thinking I had developed an anxiety disorder.

After doing one too many online questionnaires to figure out ‘Do you have anxiety?’ (I was checking allll the boxes), I decided I should book in to see my GP.

But then out of nowhere, it came to me.

And that’s not some literary phrase I’m using to be dramatic. I genuinely had a moment of clarity… think Shutter-Island-when-Leonardo-DiCaprio-comes out-of-his-psychosis level of clarity.

Okay, maybe I used that reference to be dramatic, but honestly, this was some movie moment sh*t.

My little brain was unscrambling itself and the thing that was SO OBVIOUS to the viewer (hello friends, partner and family), finally became obvious to me.

I had a coffee addiction and it was making me feel anxious.

Cue: cinematic music over a sepia montage of all the times I’ve sculled coffee in blissful naivety.

Image: Supplied

Suddenly, it became clear.

I think the reason I didn’t immediately consider coffee as the culprit was because my intake had increased so gradually, the change was basically imperceptible over the decade.

But once I figured it out, there was no denying that it was most likely the coffee.

I still went to my GP and a psychologist, just to be sure. They confirmed that my coffee consumption was causing my body to mimic anxiety-like symptoms like nervousness, a fast heart rate and jitters.

The psych even told me that the first thing they ask their anxiety-presenting clients is, ‘How much coffee do you drink?’

I was told to minimise my intake but monitor how I was feeling in case any symptoms still remained.