I drink caffeine. Like, a lot of caffeine. I have for a long time. Every once in a while I go on a ten-day caffeine fast to prune back my adenosine receptors, and when I start drinking coffee and yerba mate again, a tablespoon at a time, I think, wow, this is strong stuff!, and it’s a whole experience.

[ Skip to how to have whole experience without fasting. ]

But most days, after the first few sips of my cup of {coffee, yerba mate, pu-erh}, I bring it to my desk. I no longer consciously drink it, but as I work, the level goes down, and occasionally I catch myself holding the cup to my lips and making gulping sounds.

The other main time I drink tea and coffee is while visiting with people, which is more conscious, but only slightly.

Last month, I tried an experiment. I thought of caffeine as Nitro, and made a rule that I was only allowed to burn Nitro while the car was pointed in the right direction. So, I could take sips of caffeine while I was: doing nothing, going for a walk, sitting out-of-doors, reading a paper book, writing, working out, visiting. But I was not allowed to drink caffeine while surfing the internet, doing promotions and marketing, responding to emails, checking stats, or otherwise in my normal haze of low-value, life-sapping activities.

What happened is I realized why I like caffeine so much.

One day, I sat for somewhere between half and hour and an hour, in a comfortable chair by the woodstove, doing nothing, and nursing a large and very strong cup of coffee.

I am one of those people who wakes up impossibly groggy, almost every morning.

As I sipped my coffee, I could feel the grogginess being banished, more clearly than I ever have. And then, I could feel it being replaced with the sort of buzzing feeling that caffeine gives: and specifically, the sort of flushed, excited, go-getter version of the caffeine high that is unique to coffee.

I’m not a stranger to the feeling of having had too much caffeine: the tight feeling in the chest, the shaking, the sweating, the dry mouth, sometimes even heart palpitations. But this was different. Because I got to feel the good part, just before the too-much point, with a vividness that is usually reserved for when I overdo it. Glorious!

This is something that’s best tried on one of those vanishingly-rare Sunday mornings when the house is quiet, and it somehow feels like there’s nothing that needs to be done, and nothing, even, that I want to get done, and the day stretches before me, and time has the feeling of molasses.

But that’s a lot to ask. Even if you don’t have an hour to devote to it, I highly recommend trying some version of this. Queue up the amount of caffeine you usually drink in the course of one morning (ideally in a single cup of unusually good coffee). Sit somewhere comfortable where there isn’t human chatter. And then slowly, slowly drink the caffeine, while doing something even less productive than meditation, and feel what it does to you.