I don't give coffee spelled backward until I have had my second cup. Let that sink in before you lecture me on the evils of coffee.
I’m going to be 75 shortly and I cannot remember when I started drinking coffee. All I can remember is that I used to love the smell when my mom went shopping. She went to the A&P and back to the grinders to buy 8’oclock coffee. I remember I was young enough to still be sitting in the shopping cart seat. Every time we got home, I would pester her to give me some because it smelled so good. She finally relented and I’ve been drinking it ever since.
Both my parents were southerners and drank strong black coffee. They didn't mind us kids picking up the habit. By age 14 I was a full blown addict. When I was about 17 I decided to go without cold turkey. 48 hours in I had a very bad headache and felt woozy. The only cure was to drink a big strong cup of coffee with aspirin and lie down until I felt better. Some people might have taken some kind of lesson from this but I didn't learn a thing. Sigh...
Ha! Funny you should relay that story. I was working at one lab in a pathology dept. and the departmental coffee maker was literally right next door. One day, when looking at my cup, I wondered just how much coffee I was drinking at work. When I calculated it out, it was 2.4 liters per day, not including what I had in the morning before leaving. I decided I should stop and, like you, the next morning around 10:30-11:00, I got this weird, awful headache. Same thing the next morning and I finally realized why. So, I started drinking again and slowly tapered off. No problem. I went about a month and realized that little pleasure of a cup of coffee was a much bigger pleasure than I realized. Being in a med school, I headed to the library to do some research on caffeine/coffee side effects. Everything I read was fairly inconclusive about any strong impact with some suggestion that it might have beneficial effects. So I started back again but restricted myself to 2 cups/day. Interestingly, I can miss some mornings now (e.g. Dr. appointment) and not have any headaches any more.