My Coffee Origin Story
I’ve had a weird relationship with caffeine over the years. It all started when I had my first taste of coffee during my work experience placement in my fourth year of high school. I remember tearing open one of those Nescafé coffee pouches, adding some sugar and milk, and WHAM — a mouth full of deliciousness.
Of course, at the time I had no idea that the reason I enjoyed it so much was because of the full-fat milk and sugar, but at least then, as a dumb teenager, I attributed my delight to the “coffee” itself.
Back then, I thought I’d simply discovered a tasty new adult drink — the beverage of choice that powers the daily grind of those fulfilling their role in the “I hate my job” economy. What I didn’t realise was that I was actually entering a covenant with a false god.
Fast forward to my second year of university and that’s when I started to drink coffee more consistently — this time, fully black. On occasion I noticed that if I drank my black coffee on an empty stomach, I’d have discomforting heart palpitations.
At first, I didn’t know what was wrong. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Later, I learned it was due to the excessive amounts of caffeine I was consuming, plus the fact I drank it black on an empty stomach didn’t help either.
Anyway, that was the first moment where I thought to myself that this coffee stuff was probably not 100% pure upside, but there were negative side effects which no one ever talked about.
The problem though, was I began to build a greater and greater addiction to this stuff. By addiction, I don’t mean slamming four venti Starbucks a day. Why? Because firstly, Starbucks is trash. And secondly, four ventis a day would’ve 100% killed me by now.
For me, addiction meant drinking one solid Americano a day, and if I didn’t drink it on any given day, I’d feel like trash. Even on the days where I got plenty of sleep and felt rejuvenated, I still had that impulsive need to bank my cup of joe — as if to prove to my subconscious brain or whatever: “I had my coffee. Now make me awake and energized please.”
The Turning Point
So what changed? How did I go from a pretty modest daily coffee drinker to writing an essay called Caffeine is Satanic?
(And no, in case you’re wondering I’m not slamming down a coffee as I write this. I’m actually fired up on a green smoothie, endorphins from my leg workout, and my evening INTP creativity wave.)
Well it started a couple weeks ago when I went to visit my friend Jani in Vienna. Jani is a great guy, but a bit eccentric — kinda like me. Anyway, over the seven days we hung out, I noticed the extent to which caffeine ruled his life.
Like me, he was a big fan of the Americano affair. But unlike me, he’d slam at least three a day — morning, afternoon and evening — and wash it down occasionally with a double espresso.
Of course, the man is loaded with cash so he can afford to drench himself in €4 cups of coffee if he wants to. But that’s beside the point.
As I was watching him, I thought about how my own life — albeit on a smaller scale — was still dictated by my own daily cup. For me, I couldn’t start work until I drank my coffee. Sometimes, if I slept in, I’d have one around 11 or 12, which meant it would mess up my sleep schedule that night.
Other times, I’d be boiling some water to do my pour over, realised I’d forgotten to meditate and pray, but because I’d already committed to the coffee, I’d skip my spiritual time just to time my caffeine hit perfectly.
And that’s when I finally saw things with clear eyes. I wasn’t calling the shots. The coffee was. My morning wasn’t mine — it was held in bondage by a stimulant. Caffeine had hijacked my brain and become the scheduler of my soul.
Living for Caffeine, Not for God
It’s not only that coffee seemed to drive my life and dictate when I did certain things, but also the impulsiveness it induces in me.
As someone who’s believed to have mild autism and therefore hypersensitivity to everything — and I mean everything — gluten, dairy, hydrogenated oils, even annoying sounds or random people getting too close — caffeine sends my nervous system to the moon. It causes me to make short-term decisions, react to impulsive desires and lack the discipline needed to hold out for long-term gain.
This may manifest practically as making dumb investing decisions, breaking a habit I was supposed to stick to, or rationalizing not doing something I was supposed to — all because I was “busy working” and had to “make the most of my caffeine hit.”
Whenever we make decisions that are misaligned with long-term truth, are we really making good decisions which are aligned with the disciplined nature of God? I don’t think so. It sounds more like Lucifer has got us by the balls there.
Satan whispers to us, “Keep going. You don’t need to slow down. Slowing down is for losers. You’re not a loser, are you?”
And we buy the lie. We reject the rest which is needed for us to keep journeying ahead in a sustainable manner over the long-term, in favour of greater power and achievement today.
And this might sound weird, but I do have a vague belief (not confirmed by fact, just speculation) that many of the brutal tragedies of this world — war, economic disasters, crazy financial bubbles and even extreme work cultures — can probably somewhat be attributed to caffeine.
Why? Because a world caffeinated to its core becomes a world that never pauses.
A world that never pauses is a world disconnected from divine wisdom — wisdom we can only hear through silence and stillness.
When stillness disappears, so does discernment — replaced by the satanic urge for more, more, and—you guessed it—even more.
When we’re supposed to be patient and disciplined, caffeine says “Give it to me. RIGHT NOW.” This creates a never-ending anxiety and sadistic hunger for what can only be provided in God’s timing, not ours.
When we stop drinking caffeine, we’re now back in touch with divine guidance. We no longer have this demonic fluid flowing through us, screaming over the gentle voice of God trying to get through to us. Ironically, by doing this, we actually reclaim control over our lives again.
We also hear His guidance nudging us gently to where He needs us to go.
If we’re tired and sleepy, He says “rest.”
If we’re awake and energized, He says “work.”
This natural rhythm of work and rest is a fundamental truth about life.
Rejection of it leads to dysfunction and misery.
Acceptance of it leads to peace and long-term achievement.
Accepting the Cyclical Nature of Life
Life is cyclical. Everything has two poles, or “opposites.”
Life and death.
White and black.
Hot and cold.
Rest and work.
Move and be still.
This is the law behind the laws — the rhythm inscribed in Genesis, in agriculture, and in breath itself. Work and rest. Expansion and contraction. When we override this rhythm with synthetic wakefulness, we suppress divine revelation for artificially induced action.
The problem is the modern 9-to-5 industrial complex over-indexes on work, productivity and hustle at the expense of rest.
They worship the Alex Hormozis, Dan Peñas and productivity gurus who preach:
“Work 14 hours a day or you’ll be left behind!”
“Rest is for beta male losers!”
“F**k your family, friends and hobbies! Productivity above all!”
These platitudes sound noble, but they are fundamentally flawed because they fail to honour the cyclical nature of life.
When anything is taken to an extreme, dysfunction inevitably occurs. Success isn’t achieved by doing one thing endlessly. We must cross-pollinate our lives with variety — to inject yin when we’re living too much in yang, and to inject yang when we’re drifting too far into yin.
We need to know when to rest and when to work. We must accept what the ego perceives as a “limitation” of being human — the need for rest — and actually rest when God calls for it. Otherwise, we fall into disobedience, and the result is burnout, physical degradation, emotional emptiness, and — if taken to the extreme — death.
Can a machine in a factory work 24/7/365 for 20 years without shutdown, maintenance and repairs? Nope.
Can animals be awake 24/7 doing animal stuff all day, without sleep? Again, no.
Rest and sleep isn’t a “nice to have.” It’s an essential core ingredient to long-term, divinely guided success that is provided to us because it works.
Caffeine overrides the quiet wisdom of the body and mind. Where God says “rest,” caffeine says “resist.” Where the spirit whispers “wait,” caffeine screams “go.” It’s not stimulation — it’s disobedience disguised as energy.
By honouring rest and slowness, we become tuned in with our creativity and our intuition.
Some say it’s the Holy Spirit — I don’t know for sure — but it definitely feels like divine wisdom.
Our intuition is what leads to breakthrough ideas that even ten years of grit and hustle wouldn’t be able to come up with.
These ideas can be so revolutionary and paradigm shifting they create a 10x or 100x leap in your results.
But those ideas can’t be forced. They come only when we slow down and stop living in this hyper-frenetic do-do-do mode.
Caffeine Doesn’t Give You Energy
Contrary to popular belief, caffeine doesn’t actually give you energy. When you drink it, it certainly feels like you’re being energized by it, but what’s actually happening?
Caffeine attaches to the adenosine receptors in your brain — the neurotransmitter which makes you feel tired — and blocks them. Over time the adenosine builds up, and when the caffeine fades, your brain gets slammed with a truckload of adenosine — resulting in the well-known caffeine crash we’ve all experienced.
Most dumb — uh, I mean uninformed — people just drink another cup. That only keeps the addiction cycle going as tolerance builds, forcing them to consume more just to not feel like a supporting cast member of The Walking Dead at 9 a.m.
Most people don’t understand that everything in this life has a price associated with it. Caffeine gives the illusion of energy up front, but the price you pay for it is addiction, dependency, anxiety, jitteriness and unnatural stress levels.
Real energy doesn’t come from blocking adenosine, but from things which stimulate blood flow, ATP, oxygen and mitochondrial efficiency.
It’s the basic things which are free and don’t cost you hours wasted queuing at Starbucks (side note: if you still frequent Starbucks then WTF?).
Things like sunlight, eating healthily, drinking plenty of water and exercise. These don’t sound very exciting but they cost little to nothing, provide real energy to the body and don’t incur the same debt load that caffeine does.
If we think about it like a financial balance sheet: these build equity (genuine wealth), which is sustainable and doesn’t come with weird long-term side effects because you paid the price upfront via physical exertion, drinking boring water or making the effort to get off your butt and into the sun.
On the other hand, caffeine doesn’t just artificially stimulate the body — it begins to enslave the soul. The ritual becomes a sort of secular prayer to Coffee Corp Inc.: “Let this drink give me life.” But it’s not real life that we’re given. We don’t own that energy, like equity. Instead, we borrow it from our future selves and pay it back later along with interest in the form of addiction, spent adrenals, social anxiety and emotional impulsiveness.
The other important note is that this interest ain’t simple interest — it’s compounding interest. This is due to the extreme boom-and-bust cycle caused by caffeine. You get a big kick up front, followed by a devastating crash. For most people that simply means “drink another,” leading to a continuation of this cycle. To me, that translates to “addicting yourself to a quick death.”
The truth is you can never escape this cycle unless you break it for good — either by quitting cold turkey or by lowering your consumption to a moderate dose that isn’t going to ruin you over time.
Final Thoughts
What annoys me the most about caffeine — or coffee culture more specifically — is how it’s so glamorized and normalized. What other drug has such mainstream allure? There’s no stigma to caffeine — and that’s exactly what makes it dangerous.
I’d bet plenty of marriages failed because someone said something impulsive, fuelled by caffeine jitters or irritability from a crash. I’d bet plenty of bad career and financial decisions came from the same place.
True, sustainable productivity can never be attained from being enslaved to the boom-and-bust cycle of caffeine dependency. It can only come from stable, low-volatility energy and emotions — the kind that helps you tap into flow, not fight-or-flight.
No other drug has such universal appeal — coffee is the official beverage of burnout. It’s not just accepted, it’s ritualized. A socially sanctioned addiction paraded as sophistication, work ethic and moral superiority. But beneath the latte art is a quiet spiritual bankruptcy.
In the end, this isn’t about caffeine alone. It’s about what happens when we trade divine rhythm for the arbitrary 9-to-5 rhythm, stillness for hyper stimulation, acceptance for velocity. Caffeine is just a symbol — a sacrament of the synthetic age.
To reject it is to remember that real life is not caffeinated — it breathes, it pauses, it obeys something higher — not the Luciferian rebellion that says, “My will be done.”