"I just love the taste"

This deserves a straight answer, because it's the most honest thing anyone says about coffee and it's often true.

Coffee is one of the great flavours. The smell of it, the bitterness, the warmth of the mug in the hands on a cold morning. Tea has its own version. I'd no more ask you to give that up than I'd ask you to give up bread. And the good news is that nothing in this book requires it.

But I'd separate the taste from the habit, because they've grown together and the habit hides behind the taste. Here's a test, and it's mine. Do you love the taste at ten past three, when you're standing by the kettle waiting for the fog to lift? Or do you love the pick-up, and drink whatever's in the cup to get it? If the three o'clock coffee is instant, in a chipped mug, drunk in four gulps at the desk, it's not the taste you're after.

A second test. Decaffeinated coffee tastes, these days, close enough to the real thing that many people can't tell in a blind tasting. If the thought of switching your three o'clock cup to decaf feels like being cheated, notice what you'd be missing. Not the taste. The taste is still there. What you'd be missing is the pick-up, and the pick-up, as chapters 3 and 5 argued, is the removal of the shortfall. The disappointment you'd feel is the disappointment of not being medicated.

So here's what I'd suggest, and it's the arrangement the rest of the book builds towards. Keep the coffee you drink for the taste. Have it in the morning, from good beans if you can, made properly, sat down, with attention. That's the coffee worth having. The three o'clock instant at the desk is a dose, and doses can be decaf, or tea with less in it, or a glass of water and a walk, without any loss to the person who loves coffee.

You'll find, I think, that once the afternoon doses are gone, the morning coffee tastes better. It's no longer the thing that stops you feeling terrible. It's just coffee, drunk by someone who's awake.