Decaffeinating with Allie Zeff

Allie Zeff drinks coffee from her home in Detroit. Hastening Slowly with Merrill Garbus - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/202069_hastening-slowly-with-merrill-garbus--from-tune-yards-/ To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: In the meantime, you want to do some coffee talk? ALLIE: Yes. With Linda Richman. I am Allie Zeff and I am an organizer for an organization called Detroit Jews for justice. And I have a cute dog. ZAK: So tell me about your, your history of, of coffee ALLIE: High school. I would say my mom, I think quickly figured out that like having a cup of coffee ready on the counter was like the way to get me out of bed. Um, and to go to school. Yeah. I've been hooked ever since. Very heavy coffee drinker all through college. Haven't really taken very many breaks, maybe one or two. ZAK: And now here you are having arrived at a kind of coffee turning point. It sounds like. Yes. Tell me about your new strategy. ALLIE: No caffeine after noon. Decaf afternoon. It's like hard for me to allow those words to come out of my mouth. No caffeine after noon. ZAK: And so up to this point before you, you decided, no caffeine afternoon. What was your like typical coffee intake? Like over the course of a day? ALLIE: Some days I have a top five cups of coffee in a day and I'd be drinking it until I go home and then I would sleep like a baby. It, it just felt like it was normal. It was delicious. ZAK: Yeah. And so what happened, why it sounded like it was working for you? ALLIE: Yes, uh, the pandemic, uh, and the global uprisings. And when all of these global issues that affect my work were coming to a head and I was confined to my house. And I'm an extrovert. So I think like I didn't, I wasn't getting that like social energy out in the way that I needed to. The coffee just like pushed me over the edge of urgency. I was just like a panicked mess pacing, physically shaking and I'm confined to my home. Um, and the walls are closing in. Um, so yeah, ZAK: All these things still very much exist. Police brutality, rising death toll, et cetera, et cetera. Are the walls closing in less now that you're having less coffee? ALLIE: Yeah. You know, we're still grappling with this stuff. You're right. Like all this stuff is still happening. And when it first, when everything started to happen, I was like, Oh, this is like a, this is a crisis that I need to respond to immediately. And what I've realized in the past, and I know how long it's been four or five months is like, Oh, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And I have to be ready to deal with things as they arise, as long as they arise, maybe forever. Right. So, um, yeah, I think like lowering the amount of like stimulant and my body has really helped me to, to deal. ZAK: This has been another episode of Food Friday on The Best Advice Show. This one is more like Drink Friday, but still this episode pairs particularly well with the one called Hastening Slowly with Merrill Garbus MERRILL: The idea behind it is that there is urgent work to be done. And that in order to do that work slowing down is necessary. ZAK: I'm going to link to that in our show notes. If you have some advice on how you've made your walls stop caving in less, I would love to hear it. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices