I completed my month without caffeine, and it wasn’t too bad. Occasionally the thought would pop into my head “Coffee sounds good” or “Ooooh, look at that shiny Coke bottle”, but I managed to resist.
This last week, the opera scenes at NMSU went up, and I was tasked with conducting them at the last minute. I had a Coke the night of my first rehearsal with them. Yesterday, I bought my first bag of coffee. Truth be told, I really like coffee and soda. I’m a vegan, so I have the capability of letting go of certain foods, but gosh it would be hard to totally stop drinking caffeinated beverages.
That being said, I do plan to seriously lessen the amount of caffeine that I consume. These are my reasons:
- I was using way too much at all points of the day.
- The crashes did stop once I let it go.
- The frequency of muscles aches declined.
- My anxiety dropped considerably.
- I saved money.
As for my singing, I didn’t notice too much of a difference. When I drink too much caffeine, I can sometimes feel a shortness of breath during very strenuous singing, but aside from that, I feel and sound the same using or not.
If anything helped me improve this last month, it was my regular yoga practice.