Hey, friends.

I mentioned cutting back on coffee recently and I’ve been carrying out a number of experiments recently to see what the best quantity, frequency, and timings are for energy levels, alertness, feeling good, getting good sleep, and minimising side effects. If you want to know all about this experiment (like fellow writer and friend, John Crinan) then read on, if not you might want to skip to one of the other sections.

Let’s start with the headlines. This is what I’m doing going forward.

• Starting the day with lemon salt water (one tablespoon of lemon juice, a generous sprinkling of pink Himalayan salt, mixed into a large glass of water).
• Drinking my first cup of coffee after breakfast (not before or during). If skipping breakfast then experiment with timing from drinking coffee immediately to two hours after waking—depending on how much sleep I got, this would likely be 1–2 hours after waking for me.
• Restricting coffee quantity to a maximum of 40–45g of freshly ground light-roasted coffee brewed via a V60.
• Consuming all coffee before 1:30pm/immediately after lunch (whichever is earlier)

Here are some other things I found out/some obvious suspicions confirmed.

• The biggest reason for my after-lunch energy crash has nothing to do with coffee consumption and everything to do with carb consumption. I now have a low (virtually no) carb lunch and that provided the biggest bang for my buck in terms of mitigating the post-lunch energy slump.
• To the surprise of nobody, the amount of sleep I’ve had the night before will play a huge role in terms of how awful I feel before drinking my first coffee, how depleted of energy I am, and how much I generally hate existing and everything around me.
• Getting outside and seeing the sunlight has a huge effect on my mental health and mood. Doing this earlier is better for me.
• Other ways I get a little more energy or just find comfort when not chugging coffee throughout the day: exercising, listening to death metal (or whatever upbeat/loud/energetic music you like), drinking water, eating a lot of sugar-free mints (bonus, breath smells better—my mint of choice here in Japan is Frisk—funny name—strong mint flavour).

To get into more detail and my results and findings.

• I spent a few weeks drinking just lemon-water with salt for the first two and a half hours of the day. This meant lemon-water drink, breakfast, commute to work, and only when I was at work did I finally drink coffee! The last few days I have added the coffee after breakfast (7.5g then 10g of coffee) so about an hour after waking. I found no detrimental effects and rather the positive effect of not hating everything whilst commuting into work (okay, hating everything a little less—I’m not in the greatest moods when a little sleep deprived).
• Before coffee and breakfast I do easier tasks like studying Japanese, emails, podcast editing. If I was to jump into writing first thing, I’d probably have breakfast immediately and then drink coffee and write after. If I want to write first thing, I’d just forego the benefit of coffee post-breakfast and drink it straight away.
• The times I felt most alert throughout the afternoon were when I drank a significant amount of coffee just after lunch at the 1:30pm mark. So, I suspect the following is the sweet spot for timing and dosing: 10–15g cup of coffee after breakfast and before work (about an hour after waking). Bring 30g of coffee to work split into two doses. The first 15–20g consumed between 8:30am and lunch at about 12noon. The final 10–15g consumed around 1:30pm post-lunch.
• If I increase the quantity of coffee per day or I drink it later then I’m likely going to either have trouble sleeping or have some caffeine withdrawal symptoms that or the next day such as headaches, neck pain, and restless leg syndrome.

Okay, that’s probably more coffee talk than you ever expected to get in a horror and writing newsletter. I won’t talk about coffee next week (probably).

What I’m Listening To

Firstly thank you SO MUCH for all your metal and death metal recommendations. I have been discovering and rediscovering so much extreme metal recently.

I mentioned Six Feet Under last week and I’ve been listening to their first album HAUNTED a lot. It isn’t so good for writing to because the lyrics are easily decipherable but my god is it good. Easily the best Six Feet Under album. It’s as if Pantera were a death metal band. Another Six Feet Under shoutout has to be Maximum Violence, it hits harder with less groove than HAUNTED but holy shit is it a classic. The harder to decipher vocals make it better for writing to, too (though still easier than, say, Dying Fetus or early Corpse). Speaking of which Butchered At Birth is the Cannibal Corpse album I’ve been writing to the most. I tried writing to The Bleeding but the riffs are so catchy I find myself concentrating on the songs too much. A bloody good album to rock out to or learn some Kanji to (which I’ve been doing a lot of lately).

I used to listen to atmospheric instrumental music whilst writing but after giving death metal a shot recently I returned to another one of my loves, black metal. One of my favourite bands is Shining (from Sweden not Norway, though they aren’t bad either). Whilst V. Halmstad is my all-time favourite, I’ve recently been giving their self-titled latest album a spin and it really is pretty good. Perhaps not Halmstad or VII Ford Forlorare level but very enjoyable nonetheless. If you want to know what suicidal depressive black metal sounds like (seriously), this is the band for you.

Listening to Shining this week, led to me returning to another of my favourite bands of a similar(ish) genre, Wolves in the Throne Room. “Celestite” used to be a favourite album to write to and so I played it for a session this week, too. I imagine this will be a much more accessible album for people to write to than the relentless pounding your ears will get listening to Cannibal Corpse or Dying Fetus. It’s atmospheric, it’s foreboding, and it’s perfect for writing horror stories. No vocals either, just instrumental.

What I'm Reading

The latest Stephen King collection, You Like It Darker. This is very much a King collection that could only have been written in 2024 at this stage in his writing career. I won't say much about it now because I'll be dedicating a lot more space to it in the near future … 

What's on This Is Horror this Week

Over on the This Is Horror Podcast YouTube channel, we have put up the final in our three-part series with Adam Nevill. And on the podcast itself, there's a brand new episode with Gwendolyn Kiste. Conversation with Kev Harrison and Chris Panatier will drop soon.

Well, that about does it for another week. Don't forget to check out what’s been going on in This Is Horror world below.

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But until next time, have a great day, friends.

Michael David Wilson

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