Coffee Through the Lens of Anxiety

I felt it coming. The shaky hands, the pounding heart, the profuse sweat.

I paced back and forth outside my college classroom in an attempt to calm myself.

Living with anxiety, every day was like this. And in those shaky hands, I held the one thing that made it worse: coffee.

Caffeine is a stimulant. If I quit coffee — if I quit caffeine entirely — my brain might feel less jumbled. But caffeine is also addictive, so even with the sound logic, I can’t stay away.

I am in no way the outlier here. The National Coffee Association found that 62 percent of Americans drink coffee every day. Coffee shops are a sight of social gatherings, a place to bond with friends and family. Coffee is ingrained in American culture. Coffee is everywhere I look. Even in moments of anxiety. Especially when I’m trying to quit.

I don’t often think about how long I’ve been drinking coffee. But when I trace it back, I can picture myself at 10 years old holding cups of it, something that might be mildly shocking to see a child tote around.

But my habit wasn’t entirely unique. A 2014 study determined that around 73 percent of children in the United States consume caffeine every day. Coffee intake specifically increased to 24 percent around 2010 as soda has seen a decline.

In some ways, my adolescent self viewed drinking coffee as a badge of honor. I have a suspicion that many kids might feel this way. By age 12, I approached Starbucks counters with confidence. I knew my order and its cost by heart: a mocha Frappuccino, one of their signature drinks that blended coffee with ice cream and chocolate. It was syrupy sweet and full of sugar, a drink that satisfied all my adolescent cravings in one single-use plastic cup.

The caffeine content for a tall Frappuccino is 70 milligrams in comparison to an average cup of coffee’s 90. Despite the drink’s amount of caffeine being relatively light, I could still feel myself fighting a jittery sensation after finishing a Frappuccino. I dismissed this reaction in the most childlike way possible: I told myself I had butterflies in my stomach, and they would go away on their own. This became a bit of a mantra as I began to establish a caffeine addiction.

Eventually, coffee slipped its way into my routine and everyday life.

On Sunday mornings with myself and my siblings in tow, my mom would stop for coffee and bagels on the way to church. At the mall, I would beckon my friends toward the coffee counters with signs that displayed twin-tailed sirens and advertised sugary drinks. I still remember the thrill of feeling older. It began to feel like coffee was my ticket into maturity, adulthood. I felt ready to take on anything, convinced that if I could handle coffee, I had it all figured out.

But I didn’t know that the coming years would be filled with panic attacks and anxiety, things that I didn’t fully understand but would soon be forced to confront head-on.

As I got older, life, as it always does, became complicated. No longer was I able to mindlessly roam the shopping malls of my youth. Instead, days were spent bogged down by homework, looking at colleges and planning for a future I wasn’t sure I even wanted.

While middle school was awkward and unrelenting, high school would see me falling into my first spiral of depression. Trauma would occur throughout this period of life, lurking in the shadows of parking lots and teenage bedrooms. My anxiety, as a result, worsened. There were days I remained in bed, crippled by my own emotions. Laundry would pile up on the desk chair, my hair unwashed and messy.

Through it all, coffee remained steadfast in its presence. It was the one thing that would get me out of the house.

Around the age of 18, arguably my lowest point, the ritual of morning coffee became a reprieve from the melodrama of daily life. I’d wake up, get dressed and drive myself to whatever coffee shop was nearest. The alone time offered me a chance to cry in private without hearing a parent’s knock on the door.

To this day, even when my anxiety makes it unbearable to eat, coffee is one of the few things I can manage to stomach. It’s become something of a comfort. Unfortunately for me, coffee also triggers my anxiety. And I know this, but I can’t stop drinking it.

There have been studies conducted and interviews with doctors and professors and healthcare professionals that caffeine and anxiety go hand in hand, but every time I’ve tried to quit I last a few days at most. When an ovarian cyst landed me in the emergency room and I was told to cut out caffeine until it went away, I found myself crawling back to coffee after only two days.

The routine of it all was now ingrained in me like it had been into the cultural norms, etched into my brain forever. I felt unable to function without it. Wake up. Get dressed. Get coffee. That was how it was supposed to go.

Even if my hands are shaking afterwards. Even when I know my thoughts will start running a million miles a second. Even if I have a panic attack outside of my classroom that leaves me disoriented and drenched in sweat.

That was how it always went.

When I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep, I know it’s from the caffeine. The rabbit holes I fall into that lead me to catastrophize into the early hours of the morning are a direct consequence of however many cups of coffee I had prior. The memories and thoughts that surface in these late night anxiety sessions can be unnerving, and sometimes I stare at the ceiling for the entire night, not getting a single minute of rest.

But when the sun decides to make an appearance, creeping through the busted blinds of my bedroom window, I’ll make my first declaration of the day: I am going to get some coffee.