The biggest issue for me is that I respond very negatively to caffeine withdrawal (I get extremely cranky and it often triggers a migraine). What keeps me from drinking more is that I don't want a missed dose to ruin my whole day.
Second biggest issue is that I tend to get hypoglycemic an hour or so later if I don't have a carby snack at the same time.
A cup a day (with a cup of tea in the morning) is the best balance of enjoyment versus drawbacks that I've found. If I want more I brew up a cup of decaf.
Also I find an Aeropress is easy enough to be convenient but not so easy as to trigger overconsumption (Cf. K-Cup). It doesn't hurt that it makes a great cup of coffee.
Yeah, I get a headache when miss my dose. I have a variable schedule which causes that to happen about every other week so I've stopped drinking tea or coffee on any kind of regular basis. Now I only drink some when I need it and usually not more than once a week.
When you don't drink it all the time even a small cup goes a really long way, at least for me.
I'm the same. I once tried going cold turkey from four cups a day and my headaches were so bad I was useless for three days before I gave up and started drinking coffee again.
Today I'm still at about four cups a day. Similar to you, I use a Chemex instead of an automatic machine to slow my consumption.
I went cold turkey a couple months ago because I didn't like the afternoon headache and general feeling of uselessness that I'd suffer on days when it wasn't practical to get coffee. Nor was it pleasant to live with the very fact of a chemical dependency... I'm not quite as sharp in the morning on just chamomile, but afternoons and sleep are much improved.
Second biggest issue is that I tend to get hypoglycemic an hour or so later if I don't have a carby snack at the same time.
A cup a day (with a cup of tea in the morning) is the best balance of enjoyment versus drawbacks that I've found. If I want more I brew up a cup of decaf.
Also I find an Aeropress is easy enough to be convenient but not so easy as to trigger overconsumption (Cf. K-Cup). It doesn't hurt that it makes a great cup of coffee.