Background

Recently, a friend of mine sparked a conversation on lucid dreaming which reminded me of how much it used to happen to me as a kid.

Although much less frequent nowadays, I still tend to dream rather vividly for a male and experience pockets of awareness, conscious thought, problem solving and personal realizations.

Coffee

My relationship with coffee has not been a usual one – I’ve always loved caffeine as a drug but always seemed predisposed to being sensitive to it.

Yearning for the peace of mind to be able to drink it like everybody else, I’ve long experimented with timings, doses, preparations, etc. to try and see what ‘fit best’. Alas in recent times I think I had found a sustainable / healthy way to drink 1-2 cups per day and have consistently enjoyed the habit as-is.

Dreams

However, given my predisposition to side effects of caffeine like increase sleep onset latency (insomnia ish) and poorer sleep quality, I’ve begun to wonder what my caffeine habits may be taking away from me in the dream department.

We’ve all at one point missed good sleep for a night or two only to experience much more vivid dreams on a night of recovery thereafter. In this sense, there may be a level of ‘depth’ or ‘vividness’ to my dreams which, although not devastating, is slowly accumulating a debt of sorts.

Subtle Awareness

Now enter the more intangible and elusive aspect posed to be investigated: a slow and subtle sort of awareness or thought process which is always present in us.

For those who aren’t familiar with Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, the book highlights an idea of two systems of thought which co-exist between us that are in constant competitive balance with each other.

As summarized by Scientific American,

System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.
System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.

System 1 and 2 are always concurrently within us; only one inevitably occupies the seat of agency.

In line with the stereotypical jitters and anxiety-like state of mind associated to caffeine, I would expect somebody more caffeine-susceptible would experience a subtle shift in mind towards favouring system 1 over system 2. Never completely occluding one over the other or anything, but causing an ever-so-slight shift in frequency or tendency to use one or the other.

Insight & Productivity

It is no secret that a key insight can save us hours of work at times. It could be realizing that a certain convention in a assignment problem simplifies the entire solution, or that new clients’ phone numbers are stored in a different folder by default.

Hours of deliberative work can instantaneously be saved by merely knowing that a set of starting conditions or the current task heading is slightly off or misdirected.

In this sense, then, it may be asked how these moments of insight or realization can be encouraged? Some obvious ways would involve exposure to information and procedures (i.e. simply asking the right questions or paying attention to instructions), but going beyond that requires a sort of subtle insight or awareness which must be producible on the fly.

The Experiment

The premise is quite simple actually: stop drinking coffee and otherwise eliminate regular consumption of caffeine.

Making conclusive assessments is going to be the tricky part given the absence of standardized measurements for dream lucidity and incidence of subtle awareness.

Naturally, beyond the ‘trust me bro’ quality of evidence, I think something could be said about simply paying attention to how my overall sense of wellbeing, dream recall/lucidity and productivity feel.

Again, not the peer-reviewed quality evidence worthy of a journal publication, but sufficient for a personal decision and evaluation to be made.

Although this assessment will varies wildly from person to person, caffeine feels like a small thing to give up with potentially long-term upsides. The better quality sleep alone stems into prevention of nearly every known chronic and late-onset illness.

Results

Night 1 – Sleep paralysis??

Not to be dramatic, but I may have experienced my first bout of sleep paralysis. If it wasn’t, it was a dream which mimicked every aspect of it.

1. I was in my bed half asleep, and I tried to wake up. I had the impression that I was waking up ‘at the wrong time’.
2. I was unable to move or see very well, and differentiating reality from dream was tough.
3. I quickly entered a state of panic or anxiety at my condition – and I was consciously running through the motions to remind myself that I will be ok and that it will pass.
4. I was experiencing waves of mild pain/discomfort running through my body at times.
5. When ‘aware’ of the room around me, I could at times hear shuffling or steps and an ominous buzzing sound petruding the background.
6. My limbs felt as though they were stuck in glue or molasses, any attempt to move or vocalize just made me feel ‘stuck’. A sort of phantom limb sense was also ongoing as my arms felt contorted into weird or awkward positions as I lay stuck.

This eventually culminated to me facing a closed light-switch panel on the wall and me ‘falling to my knees’ so to speak in surrender. My last utterance was ‘show me the way of God’ or something. Humbling stuff.

Right after this scene I sort of come to my senses all of a sudden and have the opportunity to calm down. Although I knew I’d turn out alright, time isn’t exactly linear or predictable in the dream realm.

Sidenote

It should be noted that:

1. I took a fat nap around 6-7pm which may have played a number of my sleep pattern.
2. I periodically fell asleep and woke up all night, this first incident happening in the first hour.
3. I drank the night before and stayed up late, which may have contributed to some REM debt.

In this sense it is hard to tell whether my sleep patterns were disturbed by caffeine withdrawal, the unusually timed nap or the REM debt, or a combination thereof.

4 days in…

The worst of caffeine withdrawal has certainly passed.

It was not half as bad as I was expecting – having drunk 1-2 cups of coffee per day religiously for the good part of 6-8 months left me expecting at least a day or two of headaches and lethargy. Really the worst of it was a minor sensation of bulging around the cranium and an increased urge for naps.

My energy levels are good and I continue to sleep well. It is hard for me to assess precisely at this point whether or not my dreams overall have become more vivid or meaningful. Part of the reason is that partying and alcohol has been involved in some of these nights, and alternation between early and late bed times have occurred in succession to each other.

More reports coming.

2 weeks in

I’ve continued to sleep well and feel good, however I do not believe I’ve returned to my baseline clarity, focus and productivity.

There is something which is personally noticeable to me in the ease I can do work, especially when it is mentally demanding. And despite getting good sleep onwards of 8.5 hours, I still have the urge to take naps 1-2 per day at least.

Some quick readings online of other long-term coffee consumers stopping cold turkey tells a similar story: Michael Pollan quit for 3 months and reported needing a month to become ‘functional’.

Nonetheless, it has become questionable to have initiated this experiment in the midst of one the busiest semesters of my school program. I wince at the thought of quitting early, I wince at the thought of falling further behind in coursework.

Bargaining

Call it a bargaining phase if you want, but I’m engaged with the idea of drinking coffee in ‘bursts’ – that is, to use it with more deliberate intention and less frequency. Michael Pollan concluded at the end of his 3-month break to drink coffee “once a week”. And this may be the way to go while things are still busy.

The partially sipped coffee sitting on my desk at the moment may be speaking volumes to where my position currently sits.

So my question stands: in the pursuit of this experiment, is there room for caffeine consumption at a reduced frequency?