I quit coffee almost a year ago and can never see myself going back. I basically have noticed improvements on all the dimensions that people typically drink coffee to "solve."
Some of the effects I have noticed:
- Less anxiety throughout the day.
- Fewer "highs" and "lows" throughout the day. My energy level is pretty constant.
- Easier to wake up. I rarely snooze my alarm more than once.
- Easier to focus. My level of focus (over time) is more consistent.
- Better hydration. This means less headaches, etc.
- More energy. I generally have the energy I need to do what I want basically up until I go to sleep.
- I can burn sleep. It's very easy for me now to go 2-3 days with very limited sleep, and then sleep 12 hours to recover.
- Coffee "works." The one or two times I needed coffee, it actually worked to keep me awake and energized.
The reason for this is pretty obvious. Coffee stresses your adrenals and sends your body an "awake" signal. Caffeine's half life is 6 hours, which means even if you have it "before noon" you'll still have a substantial amount in your system while you sleep. This impacts sleep quality, which means you are accumulating micro amounts of sleep debt every night which you never pay off. Eventually, you struggle to get up in the mornings until you have had some coffee in your system. The "I can't function without coffee" effect. This is a pretty much ubiquitous 21st century experience, as far as I can tell.
Furthermore, coffee impacts your body's natural processes that it uses to wake up. Your body produces cortisol in order to wake up in the morning, which is a "stress" hormone, which is also induced by drinking coffee (which overall impacts the endocrine system). Hacking this system to overproduce hormones everyday isn't great for when your body actually needs this system to wake you up.
For people considering quitting coffee I have the following advice:
- You will get a headache 24-36 hours after you quit. Take ibuprofen. (By the way, this should give you a hint to how long coffee actually meaningfully stays in your system.)
- You will feel weird for probably 2 weeks.
- You will have coffee cravings. (I found these hit when I was tired. I felt like I needed to drink coffee to fix my tiredness. I tried to replace this impulse with drinking water or herbal tea a lot of tiredness is caused by dehydration.)
- You will be tired sometimes. You'll just have to deal with that, but it's really not that bad of a sensation, and the solution: sleep :)
People often think cutting coffee out is "impossible" but many people also haven't gone a day or two without drinking coffee since they were 18, so, I would say it's worth a try at least.
I quit recently, and had all of the withdrawal, and positive experiences that you mention.
I got the 24 hour headache and it was horrific. But more importantly I have been getting a headache, once a week at least, for years. I haven’t had a single headache in the two months since I quit coffee. This is remarkable!
The craziest part is waking up and going to sleep are like switches now. On:off. So crisp.
One thing I had to relearn was how to drink enough water to stay hydrated. As I was drinking a lot of my daily water in my tea and coffee cups.
Some of the effects I have noticed:
The reason for this is pretty obvious. Coffee stresses your adrenals and sends your body an "awake" signal. Caffeine's half life is 6 hours, which means even if you have it "before noon" you'll still have a substantial amount in your system while you sleep. This impacts sleep quality, which means you are accumulating micro amounts of sleep debt every night which you never pay off. Eventually, you struggle to get up in the mornings until you have had some coffee in your system. The "I can't function without coffee" effect. This is a pretty much ubiquitous 21st century experience, as far as I can tell.Furthermore, coffee impacts your body's natural processes that it uses to wake up. Your body produces cortisol in order to wake up in the morning, which is a "stress" hormone, which is also induced by drinking coffee (which overall impacts the endocrine system). Hacking this system to overproduce hormones everyday isn't great for when your body actually needs this system to wake you up.
For people considering quitting coffee I have the following advice:
People often think cutting coffee out is "impossible" but many people also haven't gone a day or two without drinking coffee since they were 18, so, I would say it's worth a try at least.