Limit myself to 1 coffee per day

Not sure whether I shared this here or not. We used to have coffee provided free at work. Nothing fancy, just a bog standard drip feed, but I developed a habit. I noticed I was getting tense and irritable and common wisdom says caffeine can cause that. Still I never suffered from any other consequences from drinking coffee. As an experiment I quit coffee completely expecting headaches and other symptoms of caffeine withdrawal - which seem to be suspiciously similar to symptoms of too much caffeine. Somebody should look into that. I didn't have any reactions though, except for the mental cravings you can get from any habit, in my case whenever work was calm or quiet I'd go and fill up my cup.

Several months go by. Out for dinner one evening, everyone was served a cup of coffee without ordering it and after the first sip, I had quite the emotional response. A warm, tingling sensation at the top of my scalp that spread like a wave down my body along with a deep feeling of bliss followed by goosebumps all over my arms. I was stunned.

I realised how much I liked and missed coffee so I spent some time each week looking for recommendations or places with good reviews of the coffee. It became a beautiful, solitary ritual I looked forward to every week. I'd go wherever my research pointed me to and order an espresso along with some other coffee based drink - sometimes just a regular cup of black or cappuccino, sometimes whatever ridiculous speciality dessert in a cup of coffee they offered. I've never enjoyed coffee so much in my life. Once I'd removed the self imposed denial I began to love coffee.

I've never had problems sleeping due to coffee in the past, but these days I can't seem to drift off if I drink any after about 3 in the afternoon. I'll have a cup in the morning and occasionally in the afternoon but I'm not snobby or obsessed with coffee. I did buy an aeropress and experiment with it but it's not suitable when anyone else wants a drink. The aeropress lets you easily adjust the most important parts (probably) of making coffee - the dose, the immersion and the time and the flavour is extracted under pressure which subjectively seems to be a great improvement. I've settled on the inverted method with some other adjustments I've read abuot and adopted.

Seems I'm just into coffee rituals. <3.