It was a regular morning when I overreacted. Now usually I’m calm, composed, I’m the guy that lets things slide off my shoulder. But on this day, I became a linguist of profanity. It’s not someone I feel I am in my core or someone I consciously strive to be.
I was triggered, triggered by the way my body reacted to the caffeine; it was time to give up coffee.
As a business owner, I get clients that request meetings with me all the time, and who’s business is dependant on the melding of minds, I’m always meeting clients for the first time at trendy coffee shops. So kicking the coffee cup was a conscious decision. Something of which I thought of for a while, but my lack of focus prevented me from achieving the perk-free focus I wanted.
Now, I love coffee, and I have since my mid-twenties since I purchased an espresso machine, which I used for a few months before stuffing it in my cabinet. You see, it wasn’t just the coffee I loved or the caffeine I craved, but I loved the coffee shop culture. It was hip, cool, filled with busy, successful-looking people.
With every order, my inner voice always questioning, “hmm, I wonder what all these $6.50 coffees are doing to my body, should I worry?” or another question I’d ask myself, “am I an addict? Nah,” I’d shrug inside, as I placed an order for a drip coffee with room.
I convinced myself I had my coffee intake under control because I only consumed it around my business meetings, which were, on average, up to 3 times a day. And the caffeine karma was always clean because I would offer to pick up the bill for clients I would meet. “no-no, it’s ok. I got this!” It was full of warm goodness, positive energy over discussions of our software project together, or next movie production, and ideas seemed to explode.
Things changed. It started to become a problem because my want for coffee was percolating between meetings. A promise I made to myself that I’d only consume coffee during meetings, I figured, if I were going to have a bad habit, it would be while I’m going to be productive.
My days started with a morning coffee with my wife during breakfast, then I’d grab a quick cup to sip while coding a software project, or filming, which I’d have close to me on set in a to-go cup, and times it was at night when visiting with friends or family.
It’s only been three days since I’ve quit, it’s been the three most productive days of my life. That’s why I’ve chosen to write this article. I love to write, but while in my coffee-addicted anxious haze, I always had that false sense that I never had the time. But since I’ve quit the bean, I’ve felt present, focused, and just…happy. And now that I’m #CaffeineSober, I realized what coffee and the caffeine in it did to me. I’m sharing this because, a quick google search, I couldn’t find a decent article I could connect with, so I thought I’d write one.
I’m well aware the drug affects people in different ways, but my coffee consumption made me:
foggy in my mind
feel like I never had enough time
react or overreact to stressful events
feel like I was carrying the weight of the world’s projects
feel distant from my wife and kids
feel like I couldn’t handle my daily stress loads and would push myself to get through them.
not find the joy in the admin tasks of my business, like invoicing, or writing an article like this.
not want to go to the gym because I would see a workout as an unachievable entire body, two-hour commitment, where now I see them as more focused, micro workouts.
feel bloated around my waistline
The list goes on, but I didn’t feel GOOD.
I enjoy my coffee with lots of cream and lots of honey. I suspect there’s a possible combination of the three, caffeine, dairy, and sugar, a triple whammy of things which are affecting my mental health, and something I’m going to be tracking, but that’s an entirely different article. But for now, I’m enjoying a flatter stomach as well.
I’m not basing my article off any science. But there seems to be a common observation of the side effects of coffee. According to WebMD, coffee containing caffeine can cause insomnia, nervousness, and restlessness, stomach upset, nausea and vomiting, increased heart and breathing rate, and other side effects.
I’m not arguing about the benefits either. I’m sharing my own experience in hopes that if you’re like me, there’s nothing wrong with finding the solution for your happiness.
Roasting the bean from my life hasn’t taken the joy out of meeting clients at trendy coffee shops — sipping something over discussions about video game development, software development, and movie production projects. I’ve switched to teas, I still pick up the bill, and my days are a bit brighter, and my resting-smile-face just a bit larger.
About me, the Author: I began my career as a graphic artist when I was still in high school, then followed with eight years of developing software before having the courage to create my own Windows XP based software in the mid 2005s with the goal of licensing it to users around the world. During that time, I had a secret passion for film, and making shortfilms and music videos, of which I wasn’t public about…. Fast forward to 2019. I’ve accumulated nearly a million users of my softwares, and developed over 2000 unique projects of which I’ve spent as the writer for, leading and developing my skills for the larger projects I create today which I post frequently on my channels.
The FDA old guard criticized the new leadership in a Dec. 3 New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) letter over a higher regulatory bar for vaccines, namely the expectation that most new vaccine approvals will require randomized clinical trials, arguing it could hamper the market.
“Insisting on long, expensive outcomes studies for every updated formulation would delay the arrival of better-matched vaccines when new outbreaks emerge or when additional groups of patients could benefit,” the former commissioners wrote. “Abandoning the existing methods won’t ‘elevate vaccine science’ … It will subject vaccines to a substantially higher and more subjective approval bar.”
But while the former commissioners disclosed their conflicts of interest to the medical journal — per standard practice in scientific publishing — reporters didn’t relay them to the broader public in reports in the Washington Post, STAT News and CNN.
The headlines about a bipartisan rebuke from former occupants of FDA’s highest office give the impression that the Trump administration is contravening established science, but closer inspection reveals a revolving door between pharmaceutical corporations and the agencies overseeing them.
Three of the signatories have received payments totaling $6 million from manufacturers or former manufacturers of COVID vaccines.
Scott Gottlieb has received $2.1 million in cash and stock from his position on the Pfizer board of directors, where he has advised on ethics and regulatory compliance since 2019, according to company filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Stephen Ostroff has received $752,310 from Pfizer in consulting fees since 2020, according to OpenPayments.
Gottlieb and McClellan did not respond to requests for comment. Ostroff could not be reached for comment.
FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad outlined the higher standards and shared the results of an internal analysis validating 10 reports of children’s deaths following the COVID-19 vaccine in a Nov. 28 memo to staff. He called for introspection and reform at the agency.
The NEJM letter criticizes Prasad for cracking down on a practice called “immunobridging” that infers vaccine efficacy from laboratory tests rather than assessing it through real-world reductions in disease or death. The FDA under the Biden administration expanded COVID vaccines to children using this “immunobridging” technique, extrapolating vaccine efficacy from adults to children based on antibody levels.
Norman Sharpless — who in addition to previously serving as acting FDA commissioner also served as the head of the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute — consults for Tempus, a company that collaborates with COVID vaccine maker BioNTech. He has helped steer $70 million in investments in biotech through a venture capital firm he founded in November 2024. Sharpless also disclosed $26,180 in payments in 2024 from Chugai Pharmaceutical, a Japanese pharmaceutical company that markets mRNA technology among other drugs, on OpenPayments.
“I was grateful for the opportunity to serve as NCI Director and Acting FDA Commissioner in the first Trump Administration, and strongly support many of the things President Trump is trying to do in the current Administration,” Sharpless said in an email.
Margaret Hamburg, another former FDA commissioner and signatory of the NEJM letter, has since 2020 earned $2.8 million as a member of the board of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, which markets RNA interference (RNAi) technology.
Hamburg did not respond to a message on LinkedIn.
Most signatories disclosed income from biotech companies testing experimental cancer treatments. These products could face tighter scrutiny under Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist long wary of rubberstamping pricey oncology drugs — which Prasad points out often cause some toxicity — without plausible evidence of an improvement in quality of life or survival.
The former FDA commissioners disclosed ties to Sermonix Pharmaceuticals Inc.; OncoNano Medicine; incyclix; Nucleus Radiopharma; and N-Power, a contractor that runs oncology clinical trials.
Andrew von Eschenbach, who like Sharpless formerly served both as FDA commissioner and the head of the National Cancer Institute, disclosed stock in HistoSonics, a company with investments from Bezos Expeditions and Thiel Bio seeking FDA approval for ultrasound technology targeted at tumors.
Some FDA commissioners who signed onto the letter opposing changes to vaccine approvals have ties to biotechnology investment firms, namely McClellan, who consults Arsenal Capital; Janet Woodcock, who consults RA Capital Management; and Robert Califf, who owns stock in Population Health Partners.
Califf did not respond to an email requesting comment. Woodcock did not respond to requests for comment sent to two medical research advocacy groups with Woodcock on the board. Eschenbach did not respond to a LinkedIn message.
The two signatories without pharmaceutical ties may find their judgement challenged by the FDA investigation into COVID-19 vaccine deaths, having either implemented or formally defended the Biden administration’s headlong expansion of vaccines and boosters to healthy adults and children.
David Kessler executed Biden’s vaccination policy as chief science officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, helping to secure deals for shotswith Pfizer and Moderna.
Meanwhile Jane Henney chaired a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report published in October 2025 that praised the performance of FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine surveillance during the pandemic — underwritten with CDC funding.
That assessment clashes with that of a Senate report, citing internal documents from FDA, finding that CDC never updated its vaccine surveillance tool “V-Safe” to include cardiac symptoms, despite naming myocarditis as a potential adverse event by October 2020, and that top officials in the Biden administration delayed warning pediatricians and other providers about the risk of myocarditis after their approval in some children in May 2021, months after Israeli health officials first detected it in February 2021. The Senate investigation named Woodcock, a signatory of the NEJM letter, as one of the FDA officials who slow-walked the warning.
HHS is also working to “reverse the Biden administration’s attempt” to classify gender dysphoria as a type of disability.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services unveiled a multi-pronged regulatory effort Thursday to curtail gender-affirming care for minors, including gender transition procedures at hospitals.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has drafted a rule that would prohibit pharmaceutical or surgical gender reassignment procedures from receiving federal Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program funding. It’s also proposing a rule that would allow it to withdraw Medicare and Medicaid funding from hospitals that perform such surgeries on minors. HHS is also working to “reverse the Biden administration’s attempt” to classify gender dysphoria as a type of disability. If gender dysphoria were to be defined as a disability, then health care providers who don’t want to perform what the department has dubbed “sex-rejecting” procedures could be in danger of violating anti-discrimination laws.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., described gender affirming procedures as “unsafe” and “irreversible,” and framed the administration’s actions as “[protecting] America’s most vulnerable.”
“Our children deserve better – and we are delivering on that promise,” Kennedy told reporters Thursday.
The department is acting on directives from an executive order from President Donald Trump’s first few weeks in office. The Jan. 28 order called on government agencies to “[defund] chemical and surgical mutilation” of children, seemingly in the manner that HHS has proposed, as well as “rescind or amend all policies” relying on guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
The Food and Drug Administration is also taking regulatory action against some organizations that market breast binders to minors.
“Illegal marketing of these products for children is alarming, and the FDA will take further enforcement action such as import alerts, seizures, and injunctions if it continues,” said Food and Drug Commissioner Marty Makary.
Kennedy signed a declaration Thursday that gender affirming procedures for minors “do not meet professionally recognized standards of health care” and the Assistant Secretary for Health and Head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, Admiral Brian Christine, signed a public health message stating the same.
“Evidence shows sex-rejecting puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries are dangerous. Providers have an obligation to offer care grounded in evidence and to avoid interventions that expose young people to a lifetime of harm,” Christine said.
The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would criminalize the act of providing gender affirming care to minors.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login