A year? I did it in a week. It's not worth the long effort to do it over a year. Just rip that plaster off
Yes, I can confirm I got headaches for that week, but after that, it was fine. I no longer found myself getting drowsy mid morning or mid afternoon when I'd normally have cups of tea
But it's not worth dragging it out when it's easy to get over a caffeine addiction in such a short timeframe
Edit: And due to the quick quitting, the benefits were much more noticeable. Within a couple of weeks it was immediately obvious to me how much more alert I was throughout the day, how much of my normal workday sluggishness and brain fog was artificially caused by caffeine, and how much less greasy my skin was
> And due to the quick quitting, the benefits were much more noticeable. Within a couple of weeks it was immediately obvious to me how much more alert I was throughout the day, how much of my normal workday sluggishness and brain fog was artificially caused by caffeine, and how much less greasy my skin was
Interestingly, I also quit fairly quickly, about two years ago. Honestly though, I did not experience such major, obvious benefits. I was definitely overdoing coffee in the past, and when it got to the point that I needed two strong ones before 9AM to get going, I decided it's time to stop taking loans out against my sleep.
But basically post-quit, I have similar levels of energy/tiredness, overall (compared to a normal, on-coffee day). It's just less peaky and trough-y, and sleep is more predictable. The main difference I would say is that on that rare occasion when I now have a coffee, it has an extremely sharp effect. It's pretty odd, and I'm wondering if people are overblowing the effects, or if I'm just the odd one out.
Same here; coffee has never made me feel generally "bad" in any way that I can detect. I drink several cups a day - sometimes (not usually) as late as 5 or 6pm - and sleep like a baby anyway. I haven't ever given it up completely, but I did cut down to a single (8oz) cup first thing in the morning for a little while. The only noticeable effect was - as you said - the coffee I did drink had more of a punch than before. I didn't feel like I had more or less energy overall; I certainly didn't notice anything like "skin greasiness" before or after.
It's interesting that it affects people so differently. It takes a whole lot of coffee for me to even feel jittery; most of the time it's just a pleasant boost of emotional energy. Like an anti-depressant. I feel excited about life and ready to go dive into it. That's the main reason I drink it most days; not to keep myself awake. It just feels good, seemingly without downsides.
Don't forget that caffeine may not be the only thing causing lethargy. You may also be deficient in other vitamins (quite often people don't eat anywhere near enough vegetables), or you may just be getting a bad night's sleep. Maybe you're not sleeping for long enough, or suffering from sleep apnoea
Maybe you're simply sat in your office chair for too long every day and just need to go for a wander once an hour to get the blood flowing.
Quitting caffeine is just one step, but if it's not what's causing your issues, don't forget to look into other aspects of your lifestyle,
I suspect you're right. I've got most of the first paragraph covered very well, but definitely could have a more diverse diet, and my physical activity levels vary between something quite decent (walking / cycling to work, alongside other fitness routine) to periods of almost no activity (lockdown + no fitness routine). It could definitely be improved, and I will put a bit of focus on it.
For me exercise is vital, it wakes me up better than caffeine ever has. Working up a light sweat and getting your heart rate up seems to increase mental sharpness, likely due to the norepinephrine response.
The big benefit of caffeine for me is avoiding drowsing off. I haven't been drinking coffee very much at all during the pandemic, but that's because there is no risk if I drowse off at home. At work, if I didn't have my coffee I would be clonking off in every presentation, because who doesn't start feeling relaxed and tired in a dimly lit climate controlled room in a comfortable chair with nothing to do but sit in silence for a while? If I sit anywhere not doing anything I will start falling asleep, and I do get my 8 hours+ a night.
What was worse was if I had to drive. Same issue. Comfortable chair, light vibration from the car, warm interior, not much going on going straight on the highway, and I start dozing off. Coffee prevents that from happening. In desperate times I would start to rip out a leg hair every now and then to keep myself awake, or slap myself quite hard in the face. I keep emergency caffeine pills in my car now for this purpose.
If you look around on the internet (e.g. Reddit) for quitting plans, 2-3 weeks is the standard tapering time to avoid side effects.
If you don’t have the measurement tools or discipline, there are products with pre-measured doses you can buy to walk you through it, e.g. https://www.weancaffeine.com/
Following that regime I not only notice hardly any side effects, but also by day 3 or 4 feel noticeably better than during addiction.
2-3 weeks without side effects sounds like a good trade off. I guess the point of my comment is that dragging it out for a year is way longer than it needs to be.
This person is likely causing themselves more hassle than they need by trying to micro-manage their levels for an entire year what can be done in 3 weeks.
I'd been buying regular and decaffeinated coffee and mixing then for the last few years. One day a few months ago I just bought the decaff and used that and had no difficulties at all. None.
So yes, some/many people will have withdrawal issues, but it might also be that you have no side effects in quitting.
Many people in this thread are making the assumption that coffee produces its effects solely through caffeine. This is not true. Coffee contains large amounts of Harmala alkaloids that act as reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Their half-life in brain fatty tissues is several weeks.
This is a good point. I didn’t want to mention it since I’d only ever seen internet claims, but you prompted me to do a new quick search and it’s true:
Apparently tobacco is so hard to quit not just because of the nicotine, but because of the MAOIs. Maybe coffee is the same. Every time I’ve quit caffeine, I’ve kept up decaf.
The major finding here is that abstinent smokers preferred smoking denicotinized cigarettes over pushing a button to receive nicotine intravenously; i.e. ”keeping up denic”.
It’s interesting, that study was 10 years ago. I haven’t heard of non-nicotine compounds becoming a part of the therapy since then. But what also happened in those 10 years was nicotine vaporizers took off, and a lot of people traded smoking for those. Wonder what the study would have found if it had nicotine puffs in addition to de-nic tobacco and sham puffs.
Very interesting, anecdotally coffee always had a different effect compared to tea, this seems to be one important difference. Do you have any pointers for further reading regarding the half-life in the brain?
Thanks, that is a more general review than what I was able to find. I wasn't able to find anything agreeing with a half-life on the order of weeks, however. Is it possible you're mistaking the half-life of irreversible MAOI's (since it binds to the enzyme irreversibly, the half-life is essentially the lifetime of the enzyme, weeks) with reversible (minutes to hours), which seem to be the ones in coffee?
I found the same results when I kicked two separate nicotine addictions (one was chaw and cigarettes, the other ecigs). The ecig addiction was way more painful to go through. I suspect that's because you end up injesting quite a lot of nicotine when you can hit an e cig basically anywhere, and it doesn't make you feel nauseous like too much chewing tobacco or hoarse like too many cigarettes so you just keep hitting it.
I had splitting headaches and trouble sleeping for a week then it was done. Cold turkey is the way to quit nicotine imo. Patches, gum, ecig, etc, are all just ways to drag it out and spend more money on nicotine, with the side chance of still being addicted. Cigarettes aren't heroin. It's gonna suck but then suddenly it won't.
Interesting. I’ve found both tobacco and coffee to be extremely addictive and habit-forming, as well as various other mixtures of caffeine and MAOIs (e.g. energy drinks bombed to hell and back with flavonoids).
Pure nicotine (ecigs) and pure caffeine, on the other hand, are much easier to keep in check or quit.
The craving to take a puff from an ecig is almost nonexistent compared to the massive drive to get cigarettes. I would walk miles for them just to light one up.
Same goes for energy drinks. They are addictive as hell, but the addiction is not caused by caffeine alone — rather, the massive interaction between monoamine oxidase inhibition and caffeine’s stimulant effects.
>The craving to take a puff from an ecig is almost nonexistent
It wasn't so much a craving, more that I would getting a headache if it started getting too long between sessions. Sometimes it would show up within a half hour.
Thats funny, I always found quitting cigarettes way worse than ecigs, but I never tried the high impact nicotine salt versions.
I just attributed it to Big Tobacco finding clever ways to make the hit so much more satisfying in cigarettes and the mom and pop ecig blenders hadn't figure them out yet.
As someone who sporadically quits coffee throughout the year, the only differences I've noticed is that I feel the same without caffeine. I don't feel magically any better or worse. I just feel the same as if caffeine wasn't a factor. So I go back to drinking coffee and tea because I enjoy it. But I also hold that bit knowing I can always quit because I have done it. It's not addictive in the sense of cigarettes. It's a pleasurable taste. Caffeine has a side effect that has marginally minimal negative effects. So I don't get why we criticize outselves for enjoying something such as beverages with caffeine.
How do you know that these benefits came from quitting caffeine? There are lots of psychoactive compounds in coffee and tea. You need to get addicted to pure caffeine and wean yourself off that as a comparison.
Well I was drinking way more pepsi max than I was tea, but overall whatever caused the improvements from cutting them out worked. And those symptoms happened to be in line with caffeine addiction so it's quite likely
I think different folks have different experiences with quitting caffeine. I agree its worth the quick method for a lot of people, but I had a cousin who had to go slow like this.
It's clearly a thing that some people have significant physiological effects from/dependency on and others don't. I like coffee in the morning but I'm also fine with black tea and even herbal tea. I've no reason to want to give it up but if I had to for some reason, I could do so tomorrow without any real issue other than annoyance on the same order as giving up cheese or something like that.
I like a cup of tea too, and I really like pepsi max, but after a while I'm perfectly happy with a rooibos tea, squash, fanta, fruit juice and there's nothing wrong with the occasional pepsi.
My skin is very greasy, I drink about 4 big cups a day sipping constantly, to maintain the same level of caffeine to improve coding skills, but when I have long vacations (two weeks) I don't see any side effects like headaches and my skin is probably even greasier. Also I don't have any trouble sleeping with or without coffee, but I drink only until end of work (16:00 for me). So, everyone is different. If I don't drink coffee, I feel it very well when trying to code, I can even detect by effects if some cofee is low on caffeine.
Like others here, I also quit cold-turkey, getting headaches and light nausea for a week and a bit. The benefits were immediate, greater awareness, energy, and quality of sleep.
What I also found is that I had been using coffee/caffeine to control certain aspects of my daily life, such as when to have focus and when to get tired/sleep. Without caffeine I was felt distracted by little things I was noticing or thinking of, made worse by the WFH situation.
I've gone back to consuming a limited amount (~1.5 cups) only between 10am and 6pm. I used to have none on weekends feeling a bit off to reset but eventually even this seemed pointless, so 10am-6pm every day has been working well.
If I didn't have a job where I had to hold a house of cards in my head daily for hours at a time, or have a distraction-free work area, I could probably give it up entirely. But then I don't think I would, I enjoy the flavour and ritual of coffee and frequently drink decaf espresso or americano even when out, which is actually pretty good if you find a good local bean roaster.
> Without caffeine I was felt distracted by little things I was noticing or thinking of, made worse by the WFH situation.
Same here. I only drink coffee to make me focus, I don't care much about the taste. If there wouldn't be such a thing as coffee I probably would have to self medicate with adderall or ritalin.
Same here as well. I’ve quit caffeine before for months and gotten over the withdrawal hump. What did I find? I’m not nearly as sharp and focused.
I always struggled to pay attention in class a few decades ago, and when I look at my college career I can connect the dots and match up massively improved academic performance with when I started significant coffee consumption.
Nowadays I’ve discovered my “dose” and rarely exceed it. Even with tolerance effects, it still provides that same sharpness and focus. Given the semi-recent vindication of its health benefits and neuroprotective effects, I see no reason why I’d ever stop.
Agree. It’s a little less or more than a tsp of matcha per day for me. There are days I’ll step down to none or other days I’ll throw in a full cup of coffee. Caffeine is simultaneously too detrimental to take every day in large doses but too beneficial to ban completely. It deserves respect and appreciation even.
Yes, this is what I always tell people. I know people who swig mountain dew or dr pepper all day because they need them to concentrate or stay awake. Skip all the excess garbage that is in coffee and soda. Get a caffeine supplement that comes with l-theanine, it is thought to smooth out the effects of caffeine and help avoid the "crash" when it wears off.
I never quit, but I have gradually reduced the ratio of grounds to water so now I have become accustomed to a very weak coffee, which still has just enough caffeine and flavor but I can also have a few cups. I find that stopping drinking coffee by mid-afternoon really helps. When I was young, I could drink a cuppa at 10pm and be in bed by 11. Now, I aim for maybe 3-4pm at the latest.
That's a good point I forgot to mention. I used to always have double-espresso shots then one day I switched to single-shot and didn't mind at all. The 3-4pm is a better cutoff and used to do that when I worked in an office so I let that slide the 2 hours I save on commuting.
Would you be OK if someone did an illegal drug for that exact purpose, given that it has no side-effects (unless he overdoses, just like one could with caffeine), and is quite helpful for doing his job?
I am not asking only you, but anyone who agrees with you.
Many years ago I got into the habit of taking amphetamines for this very purpose. They can show you to concentrate for extremely long periods of time, but they are habit forming and have many negative side-effects, so it's really not worth it.
The simulants prescribed for ADHD and narcolepsy are pretty much the same.
Yes, habit-forming, but so is everything else. We are a people of habit. It is not necessarily a bad thing. If the substance works, we keep taking it. If we like something, we keep doing it, but even if we do not like something, we usually keep doing it, because we just cannot help it, for the most part. We really are creatures of habit. People go to work and back home using the same route, they may take coffee every morning, and so forth. I observed people before on a daily basis when I was learning behavior modification. It is really easy to predict people's behavior because of how much of a habitual creatures we are. You could be conscious about your own behavior and you will find that you are doing a lot of things out of habit, too.
So to reiterate: amphetamines may be habit-forming, but you have to ask why. The reason is simple: because it has positive effects and you like them and want to keep having them. Of course if the negatives outweigh the positives (up to the individual to decide), then it can become problematic if you cannot stop. Some people simply cannot stop on their own and will need help. I was on 4 different psychiatric medications and I stopped. It was a hellish phase of my life, but I succeeded. I did it all alone.
My friend takes opioids because it works as an antidepressant and anxiolytic for him. It makes him productive that he likes. He goes through withdrawals voluntarily once per a few months or something, so he will not have to increase the dose. We are different, I suppose. For the record: he has been doing it for years, and he gets regular blood and urine tests done, along with ECG, MRI, and so forth. It does not affect his health negatively.
Back to amphetamines: yes, amphetamines do affect the immune system. My other friend uses it for ADHD, and it lowered his immune system. He does not experience many negative side-effects and has been taking it for years now. He does experience some minor side-effects, and for him it is worth it, which is understandable as it essentially saved his life. Plus, he is particularly sensitive to it though, if he takes 10 mg more, he can definitely feel it, whereas I can take 10x more and would not feel a thing (without tolerance). This is a different story, but stimulants do not work the same way for me as they do for most people. It may be because of the autoimmune disease I have, or something else, I do not know.
When I was on amphetamines for 2 weeks, after that time I experienced PVCs (premature ventricular contractions), but that is because my heart is not 100%. I am sitting most of the time and it affects my health a lot more than amphetamines would, but they exacerbate the issues. I experimented a bit with it, and after walking every day an hour, the PVCs disappeared. Exercise really does make a difference, even just something as simple as walking does make a difference. I need to get into the habit (pun intended) of walking, because both my feet get swollen from sitting too much and it could mean a lot of things, bad things. It could be my heart for all I know. I will have it checked out as soon as possible, but this prolonged sitting is definitely not good and might be the end of me. :/ I also have a one-sided diet, so I gotta fix that, too.
If you want to keep taking it, you have to have a healthy diet, you have to exercise (and sit less), and take therapeutic doses only. Do not go above that. If you feel that it does not work anymore, you may have to find some time where you can decrease your tolerance: you can go cold turkey (stop abruptly), or you can gradually decrease the dose. If you take the abrupt cessation route, it will be gone from your system within about 2 weeks, and you can start over with the therapeutic doses, no need to increase the dose. Amphetamine withdrawal does not kill you, it is just unpleasant. You can make it less unpleasant by gradually getting off of it, but then it will take more than 2 weeks. It is entirely up to you. Some people can manage to gradually get off of it and still go to work, but it will be uncomfortable. To sum it up: healthy diet, exercise (and less sitting if possible), and therapeutic doses. If you still experience the side-effects, you could lower the dose and you might still have the positives. If all of this does not work, then you might really have to give it up, but it is worth a shot if you liked the positives. There are, of course, nutritional supplements that may help. Propolis & royal jelly & honey are great for the immune system, among other things[1].
By the way, did you take therapeutic doses? What were your side-effects?
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I apologize for the length of this comment, I made it longer than I initially wanted.
> I've gone back to consuming a limited amount (~1.5 cups) only between 10am and 6pm. I used to have none on weekends feeling a bit off to reset but eventually even this seemed pointless, so 10am-6pm every day has been working well.
That! I lived on zero coffee for many years, however, it is much more difficult to do so once I became a father. I am consuming a maximum of 2 cups of coffee: first one around 10am, the second one in the afternoon but strictly before 5pm. I do that Monday-Friday and I either consume less or no coffee at all on weekend.
I also use decaf if I want to a coffee (as a drink, not as a boosting drug) and if I already consumed my daily 2 cups.
The first time I quit I was drinking a cup per hour. I found this out from a time management course that had a time tracking activity for 1 week. So ~8 cups office brew per day. Two people at a company I was at before got diagnosed with caffeine poisoning. When I fell off the wagon the first time I kept it down to 4 or 5 cups per day.
Not the parent commenter but it might take you a few days. I used to be a 2-3 cups/day drinker and I was fine without coffee (while on a vacation) until around the 3rd day when I started getting horrible headaches. I used that vacation + about another week to fully quit.
I quit caffeine 6 or 7 years ago and it's easily one of the best quality of life† decisions I've made. For dependent users --- which I think is most users? --- a big part of the "benefit" of caffeine is just the cessation of withdrawal symptoms. It also has a relatively long blood half life and messes with your sleep.
For me, 95% of the trick was just finding a good decaf. You can drink lots of decaf (it's got ~5% of the caffeine of a normal cup) as a taper.
I have no discipline of, like, any sort whatsoever, and I don't even remember what quitting was like. I'm sure it's very difficult for lots of people, but just to chime in for the idea that it might not, for you, be nearly as bad as it is for some other people, and if you're interesting in ceasing caffeine, you should just give it a shot.
† Not health! My alcohol and nicotine affinities will attest to how little health has to do with any of this! I literally just mean life is more pleasant without the caffeine.
> That said, I think quitting sugar is harder than quitting caffeine.
It is, your intestinal bacteria take that sugar and secrete opioid receptor chemicals - i may be off, but between wheat, sugar, and i think corn your gut bacteria basically control your life.
This is why people crave cake and sweets when they go on a low carb / low calorie diet, it's not because they're hungry, it's because they're changing the other half of their brain chemistry through the destruction of their gut bacteria.
It's not a bad thing to destroy the gut bacteria you don't really want to have so much of.
Been on keto for the last 3 months. Can confirm. However once I got over the carb cravings I have a markedly lower appetite. I eat 1-2 meals per day now where on no restrictions I was hungry every 4 hours like clockwork
Alton Brown suggested adding a tiny pinch of salt to coffee instead of sugar. I like it, it takes the edge off the bitterness without an explicit "salty" flavor.
Serious question: why do you start back up? What do you miss about it? I had a 5-6/day habit towards the end, and all I really look back on is (1) having it be impossible to get moving in the morning, (2) insomnia, and (3) headaches.
I quite several times over the years, one time as long as 6 months. I go back, ultimately, because I love the flavor.
That said, I would never work as early as 9am if I didn't have to. Caffeine allows me to jumpstart my brain for programming. I need coffee in particular: tea sustains but doesn't jumpstart.
Exercise first thing in the morning can act as a substitute for coffee in getting my brain jumpstarted. While I find it easy to exercise at 6:30-7am in the Summer and Fall, Winter and Spring in southern New England suck. At 6:30am, it's often dark, 10-20F, windy, and damp. It's an area made for depressions. I can't see ever giving up coffee while I live here.
It's important to point out that about every decade you're going to have to adapt your diet and exercise to meet changes in your body. I'm 53 now. When I don't exercise at least 5x/week I start to have sleeping issues. Alcohol affects me more, especially my sleep. Carb bombing happens with a portion of half the amount I could eat 10 years ago. Back to coffee, I have 2 espressos in the morning and, occasionally, one after lunch but never after 2pm. Breaking any of those coffee "rules" causes me hypertension, sleep loss, and/or a sour stomach.
Sorry for the tome. Hopefully some of it is useful.
IIRC academic studies have shown that people don’t ”love the flavor”; rather, they misattribute to flavor the craving they have for the neuropsychological effects of their preferred substances.
I tried black coffee for short durations and hated it. So, I'm willing to say my experience follows the conclusion of the study.
However, people have wide variations in what they taste (and smell) as pleasurable. Without reading the study, I have a hard time being as binary as "nobody likes the taste of coffee".
My comment was meant as a play on the old Mark Twain† bit about quitting smoking. I also now realize I misread your comment as saying quitting was "easy" when you said it's "easily one of the best quality of life decisions".
In reality I have quit caffeine and gone back to it. I didn't see the same benefits as you. After a few days of adjusting, I felt about the same as before. The only difference was I didn't get to enjoy a morning coffee anymore.
Don't forget the other effects of caffeine. It raises blood pressure. Hypertension is called the silent killer with good reason. I've quit caffeine 3 times now. This last time was at my doctors recommendation (slightly elevated BP).
It really helped along with not drinking all the gunk in soda. Since then, I've cut salt intake, sugar binging, and set aside 30 minutes most days to get the heart rate up. I'm no "health nut" but after breaking my sedentary habits, I do feel better than I have in a long time.
What happened for me was winter. I was waking up at 7, running every day in the morning, working on a project before work. Then winter hit and seasonal depression makes it hard.
So now I'm waking up earlier, and doing more work, but I'm using coffee again....
Even when I go a week to a month without caffeine, I tend to stay up late, but not late enough to get things done.
However, if I drink something caffeinated, then I can turn that into staying up late enough to work while it's quiet, and I become much more productive.
There are other reasons as well, however they are more specific to my personal scenario, and not really generally applicable. If you're curious, I'd be happy to talk about them in some other way, but not in a public forum. (My email is in my bio if anyone's interested.)
Are you sure all of these issues are directly resulted by caffeine intake? Two years ago I had to quit caffeine for some time (medical issues) and it turned out that my sleep problems where (are) mostly related to the lack of physical activity and stress. Of course if several of those 5-6 cups were late at the day, then yeah, that might impact your quality of sleep, but regular morning cup of coffee shouldn't cause such issues considering caffeine half life is ~5 hours.
> † Not health! My alcohol and nicotine affinities will attest to how little health has to do with any of this! I literally just mean life is more pleasant without the caffeine.
That's intriguing, could you expand on that? What about life is different, nevermind more pleasant, with or without caffeine?
For me I felt more rested and alert upon opening my eyes in the morning, since that was no longer the peak withdrawal time. And not riding a rollercoaster of cortisol all day made it easier to choose my own mind state, e.g. meditation or reflection vs. action and anxiety.
Have you tried a swiss water decaf from a serious third+ wave coffee place? Are you grinding? I hear decaf described as "weak" or "brothy", but not as "chemical" or "solvent-y". I pollute coffee with some cream (but no sugar) and I don't know that I could triangle-test-detect a good decaf.
This. If you’re in the US, Blue Bottle is easy to get in the mail if not in most cities. Vertigo is another brand making my current favorite, it’s more complex than 80% of even caffeinated 3+ wave coffees. Those are if you drink black / medium roast. If you use cream, any Starbucks or Philz decaf is pretty good these days too.
My guess is you're going to be fine and that you're through whatever withdrawal you're going to deal with. I go through stretches where I have some decaf every day, and I never even have to think about stopping; there is zero withdrawal from it.
I started with going from coffee to black tea, which is supposedly about half the caffeine... now I just skip tea sometimes. maybe i’ll stop it completely
Green tea would be a good next step - a bit less caffeine (although I'm sure this could vary between brands) but still satisfies the need for a nice warm drink. I've been having green tea for many months now (after quitting coffee) and I'm not even sure it's worth stopping - I don't get any of the anxiety that I'd get with coffee, for example.
Green tea can totally have more caffeine than coffee, especially if you re-brew like many people do. But the theanine in tea takes the anxious edge off.
On the one hand, like the article says, quitting caffeine can have its benefits...
But on the other, I would (comedically! <g>) argue that
Caffeine is the most beautiful substance known to Man!!!
I mean, think about all of the benefits!:
The Police can't pull you over for drinking too much caffeine, the FBI can't arrest you for trafficking caffeine (you know, moving caffeine across state lines; that old Commerce Clause thing of the Constitution!), there's no "caffeine crisis" in the U.S. (like the opioid crisis), etc., etc.
On the flip side, I suppose it could be argued that the U.S., while energy-independent(!) -- is not exactly "caffeine-independent"; that is, we still rely on foreign nations for a huge portion of our coffee supply... you know, that whole Juan Valdez (not that he isn't a great guy or anything like that!) thing! <g>
Also, Eric Clapton hasn't written any really great songs about caffeine! <g>
Disclaimer: I do not work for Starbucks, or any other
coffee company, or anything like that! <g>
(Also, I can just picture a "coffee famine" in the U.S. -- people knocking at the doors of Starbucks, offering to pay $20 a cup for coffee or more; but there's no coffee to sell! It wouldn't be pretty!
Also... you know, if it weren't for caffeine (mostly delivered via coffee!):
at least half of the work that America does on a daily basis -- wouldn't get done!
Which makes coffee/caffiene -- a vital National Security asset; a vital National Security interest! <g>
You know, vital for the defense of America!!! <g>
Like, if we're ever in a war -- if the enemy takes out our coffee supplies (and/or coffee supply lines!), then they've taken out at least half of the work that all of us do on a daily basis!
Like, if an enemy deprived the Pentagon of its coffee during a war or other time of national crisis -- then the Pentagon would only be working at half efficiency! <g>
And we can't have no half-efficient Pentagon! <g>
That's why the military -- should be used to protect all coffee assets, foreign and domestic! <g>
I mean, National Security is at stake! <g>
Disclaimer: All of the above was said for comedy purposes, and comedy purposes only! I hope you laughed, but if you didn't, then know that I meant absolutely no offense to anyone who works in the above establishments! And, we appreciate your service!
On a less humorous side node, I remember having read there are scientific concerns about large-scale pollution caused by mankind high usage of caffeine: ground-water contamination, bioaccumulation in water organisms, detrimental effects on aquatic or terrestrial organisms like insects, or molluscs
> (...) definitive evidences have been provided that environmentally relevant caffeine concentrations exert adverse impacts on aquatic species and terrestrial insects, which included lethality, decreasing general stress, inducing oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation, affecting energy reserves and metabolic activity, neurotoxic effects, affecting reproduction and development, etc.
I too quit caffeine for 9 months in order to try and fix a perceived 'energy and alertness' problem. I was pretty serious about the affair and had some help from my wife to not only avoid coffee and tea but also the myriad snack-foods that sneak the stuff in. I've never been a soda drinker and consume nicotine about once per month.
The effects were negligible, the effort was an unproductive deviation from my normal routine and I stopped before a year had passed.
I did eventually fix the perceived energy problem. The answer (in my case) appears to be that I was spending too much time asleep in each 24 hour period.
Not OP but one thing I've started sticking to that has helped me a lot is paying attention to my sleep cycles when planning alarms. Sometimes you get enough sleep but wake up feeling shocking, while other times you'll wake up after getting less sleep but feel great. There's probably ways to do this much more accurately but I find if I get 6, 7.5, or 9 hours sleep, I'll feel great, but waking up in between those 90 minute intervals is rough.
Greater than 8 hours and I get mentally sluggish. Less than 6 and I'm effectively on drugs. 7.5 seems to be a really good number. The most strange part of it for me is the large effect created by relatively small adjustments in sleep time. This isn't novel, but since it was relevant to my own caffeine adventure I figured I'd share.
During my University days I've found out that I feel rested when sleeping for a number of hours divisible by 1.5, or to put it simply, only multiples of 1.5h. So, if I had to take a nap or work super late a 3h "nap" would've left me fresh and ready to work while a 3.5h or 4h nap would turn me into a zombie. I haven't thought of this in a while since it became a habit for me but seeing the 7.5h you mention along with small time changes making big difference it all came back.
People sleep in cycles. Everyone’s timing of a cycle is different. But the average is around 90 minutes. You’ll feel dramatically better keeping your sleep to obey the boundaries of those 90 minute cycles.
Also REM occurs in the last cycles of sleep. So sleeping 4 hours with little REM and sleeping 6.5 hours with REM is like night and day.
I have periodically stopped drinking coffee but didn't see any benefits, so went back to consuming it because I like it. I get plenty of sleep and don't typically have any caffeine after about 2pm. I have never noticed a difference in mental ability/clarity when drinking caffeine or not and the only physical effect I've noticed is a slight headache that lasts for about 2 days when I stop consuming coffee, but that is easily controlled with advil.
Yep. I've quit before, sometimes switching to tea. I end up going back because I just can't get motivated to get work done. I don't drink much coffee though. Usually a half to one and a half is enough unless I had a poor night's sleep.
In my experience, it's shockingly difficult to stop consuming caffeine.
N of 1: I had a similar experience to the author. I was fine for a few weeks, slowly weening down my caffeine intake (I did get to zero eventually w/o headaches).
But I never felt quite "right." I always felt a little slow/sluggish, and I missed the routine. Perhaps work just isn't as interesting without caffeine?
Anyway, I'm back on it now, but I limit myself to one cup per day (and perhaps a second 1-2 days a week).
Similar experience. Went cold turkey once and had quite strong headaches for 2-3 days. No trouble for the remainder of the fortnight. But I only stopped because of vacation and the resort only had terrible coffee. (Headaches were marginally preferable.)
That said, my consumption levels have been sane for a few years now. I understand the negatives of over consumption but I don't fully understand the case for elimination?
Caffeine is a vasoconstrictor. The headaches are from your brain trying to adjust to the blood vessel change. Quitting even a mild habit can shave some points off your blood pressure.
If you drink soda or add cream/sugar to your coffee or tea, you may also find yourself losing some weight from stripping out the empty calories.
> Perhaps work just isn't as interesting without caffeine?
Since I quit caffeine (or stopped habitually drinking it every day)I noticed I am so much productive when I actually do drink a cup of coffee or strong tea. I'll be focused and fast. A little worrying to me to have an addiction so I can be more productive at work. It helps with my art hobby too.
Part of me wonders if I have undiagnosed adhd or something since the caffeine is so effective and making me focus and work better?
I've quit cold turkey a number of times (sometimes after being sick). It sharpens the pain to about a weeks worth of headaches and just being FLAT, but then I seem to be fine.
However, I find when I quit over longish periods (months), i start to lose my focus at work, and become quite scatterbrained and not really productive. I probably would have been some form of ADHD when I was a kid, and in the real world, it seems caffeine keeps me on track and productive (and probably most importantly, motivated) when sitting in a chair and staring at a monitor all day... without the coffee, I'm just scatterbrained and not getting work done.... If my day job were different, I don't think I'd need all the caffeine... I dont usually have sleep problems if I cut myself off by 2 or 3 pm... and I don't usually have more than 2 cups/day.
It probably doesn't help that I love the taste of coffee...
I’ve managed a few times, and gotten over the hump too, but the problem is I’ll “just have one” a few months later and it feels amazing and now I drink coffee again
I suspect that's part of the problem with the slow weaning process, compared to cold turkey. Similar to when people who quit smoking by cutting down
When I quit caffeine cold turkey, the side effects were immediate, but getting over the side effects only took days. Then feeling the benefit only took days after that.
So each hit was sudden and very noticeable, where as I suspect trying to slowly wean yourself off over months misses that sudden hit one day of "wow, I just feel so awake"
When you keep it to 1 cup/day, and do something like not consuming on weekends to lower the tolerance, it actually feels like a drug again. A drug you can be productive on.
I quit caffeine this past fall and it was one of my best decisions and hardest things to do.
Months after quitting I feel like I have more energy than I did at my peak caffeine usage.
The withdrawal was tough. The muscle spasms caused me to hit my bedframe. The headaches left me unable to do anything productive for a couple days. I had spent the prior days taking the bare minimum to make the headaches go away but it was a fine line before deciding to forgoe it.
Teenage me had built up to taking 700mg/day on average. A year before quitting I'd start the day with a bottle of 5 hour energy and a 200mg caffeine pill just to get out of bed.
I still drink the occasional tea or take a small energy drink before going for a long workout.
I refuse to ever drink coffee again. I've become appalled at how ingrained coffee and caffeine is in the cultures around the world. It's become normalized for people to say that they're grumpy before consuming caffeine. I don't want to be dependent on anything like that ever again.
the author states that they _still_ get withdrawal symptoms if they miss their caffeine window -- which is now a single jasmine tea ball every other day? Sure that's not some kind of placebo? If I replaced the jasmine pearl tea ball with a decaf placebo would you still feel the difference
Yes, they are most likely addicted to the reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitors present in the brew (coffee/tea, decaf too).
It is amazing how people don’t know about these substances even though they consume them ritually. Most people attribute their effects to caffeine/nicotine, because those are all that gets talked about.
It seems to affect different people differently. I grew up in a house where coffee consumption was measured in pots, not cups, and consequently, I like to drink 5+ cups / day.
I usually give up caffeine completely for a month each year just to see if I'm actually addicted; I've not had the experience of the author.
Worked with a laborer who would drink an entire pot of coffee before 10 am. I have no idea what his total consumption was but it was extremely high. Myself, I can't stand the taste of coffee so I've never tried it.
He got a job at a pawnshop years after I left that particular job. He was at work talking to a customer one day, had a massive heart attack and died at age 39.
Genetics are a significant factor in how you metabolize caffeine. Some people can have a cup right before bed and be find. Others, won't be able to sleep the entire night. Maybe you metabolize caffeine quicker or something
I usually quit caffeine for a month 3 or 4 times a year. Cold turkey gives me bad headaches for a few days, but I’ve been tapering over 4 days with almost no withdrawal.
The main reason I have to take a break is eventually it starts giving me muscle spasms. Combined with a little stress or being low on sleep, and my muscles will sometimes twitch nonstop. The worst is when it gets to my eyelids. Green tea, however, makes eye twitching worse than coffee does.
> It took 10 years to get to this level of caffeine dependence. Spending one year to unwind this addiction is relatively fast!
I don’t believe that’s how caffeine actually works. Dependence builds in a matter of days, and withdrawal symptoms dissipate in a matter of days.
Best ones are magnesium citrate and magnesium chelate. Supplement about 3x suggested dose for a week, then maintain 1x dose. Best time is during or after meals. Taking lots of magnesium without any food will work as a laxative.
Anecdotally, I had a high tolerance for caffeine and my wife's was low. We did 23andMe together and the results from them predicted exactly that.
I used to drink 2 pots of brewed coffee a day (using an airpot) with no apparent effect. I still drink a lot of coffee but have switched to decaf after noon.
I drink 1 cup of green tea something every other day. I've been doing this for a a few years and definitely see some benefits:
1. My dependence is way down, sometimes I go 2-3 days without caffeine and I'm fine.
2. It gives me something to look forward to for certain days (quite needed in the pandemic)
3. Allows me to stop fully without any side effects (I always take January off from caffeine)
4. The caffeine high lasts about 6-8 hours with much higher productivity during this time.
5. For me, the green tea doesn't typically give me an anxious caffeine high.
I think caffeine intake is highly personal though. When pushing this to an every day schedule, I definitely feel more addicted and dependent on it. Once in a while (once every two months maybe) I'll feel like the caffeine high tips into an anxious feeling which I hate.
For the record, I drink Honest Tea Moroccan Mint which has 56mg of caffeine. Obama drinks Honest Tea Green Dragon Tea.
Serious question, is caffeine all that bad? I mean, like most things, I understand you probably shouldn't overconsume but what if you drink a cup of day? I read these articles and it makes caffeine like its absolutely detrimental to you like smoking. Is that really the case?
Nah, that's a pass for me! Life's too short to not have one vice. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't drink soda - but I do enjoy my 4 cups of coffee a day. I drink it black, zero sugar or milk/cream.
If you're drinking so much that you get migraines, you should cut down. I don't get that though, ever.
I love the taste of coffee so it would be very hard to quit. If you like black coffee look into a decent espresso machine. I do 4 cups with that and it’s incredible. I believe in the Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks) school of thought.
An option for quitting/cutting down that I don't see mentioned often is using low-caf coffee rather than having to go for cold turkey or "quantum leap" full-caff to decaf cups in the same day.
Perhaps it's so obvious that people don't think of it, but you can just mix your normal coffee and decaf in the same drink to get the dilution you require.
I have decaf and normal coffee beans, grind them and store them in separate bags and just gradually decrease the caffeine dosage through the day, and the daily dosage through a longer period if I'm trying to cut down.
I don't understand the idea that a week of headaches is somehow worth it in return for quitting caffeine.
I've cut down my caffeine intake, but frankly I don't see any real benefit in quitting entirely. I take one caffeine pill in the morning and another at noon. It's so much easier and cheaper than drinking coffee (less than $10 for an entire month), and unlike coffee or tea, it doesn't stain my teeth! My sleep seems fine, since I don't take any caffeine later in the day, but the dosage is still sufficient to maintain my "addiction" without withdrawal symptoms.
The only downside is the rare occasion when I forget to take caffeine at noon. This happened once a couple months ago, and it made me feel like complete crap, the equivalent of a bad hangover, until I took caffeine again. The experience reinforced my feeling that quitting "cold turkey" is never worth it. Who has a whole week, or even days to spare to be miserable and unproductive? Should I take a "vacation" for that?
Obviously it would have been preferable to not become addicted to caffeine in the first place. I blame graduate school for that. But given the fact that I am addicted, it seems to be a relatively harmless addiction compared to most others.
I think of caffeine now explicitly as addiction maintenance. I only take it on a schedule and don't use it as an alertness aid. The latter is the dangerous path leading to increased dosages and diminishing returns. I just take a minimum regular dosage to avoid withdrawal symptoms.
Having energy and focus without the need of an external substance, better quality sleep due to residue caffeine not in your body not allowing you to have full REM cycles and not over working your heart. How these points are getting lost in this conversation is beyond me.
Oh my, what's that, the first link? And subsequent links from different health authorities? Oh my, what a difficult google search that was... Seriously, don't be lazy. That's bad for your health too.
> So you take caffeine just because you're addicted to it, but see no upside to getting rid of the addiction?
I agree that freedom from addiction is an upside. I would say that goes without saying. But the withdrawal symptoms are truly nasty, for me. And as far as I know, taking this amount of caffeine is not bad for my health, may even be good for my health to a small extent. If there were negative health consequences, like with smoking, then I would certainly quit.
You can taper without the side-effects. But like you said, the addiction isn't really bad for you.
I went cold-turkey because i was half of a week in without coffee and then just stuck the rest of the week out. It only took a week for me to not be addicted.
It's really nice not to need the pick me up in the morning. I have a cup of coffee about once a month and up to once a week, but I'm very sensitive to caffeine now. I find this a benefit as i can "save" up for when i really need it.
I quit caffiene about a decade ago before taking it up again six or seven years later. Quiting wasn't really that great a decision. A lot of the problems that I had attributed to caffiene or caffiene withdrawl such as migraines and periodic brain fog didn't go away without caffiene. Some of the more accute issues did, but I used to get regular insomnia (and still do) and I'd have no crutch to get me through those days after a sleepless night had thown me off balance.
What's worse is that I couldn't really get away from caffiene altogether, things like chocolate contain caffiene as well as a surprising number of drinks which aren't required to advertise their caffine quantity. So I'd occasionally end up getting some caffiene by accident and because I had been avoiding it, I wouldn't have enough of a tolerance to deal with it. I'd have a drink that I didn't know contained caffiene and would suddenly find myself wired with my hands shaking uncontrollably. That hasn't happened since I starting drinking coffee on weekdays again. Having more caffiene than I meant to is still a problem, but not nearly as big a problem as it used to be.
Thanks for sharing your experience. This is the kind of thing that makes me question if removing coffee from my routine is really worth it in the long run. I have two young kids so a bad nights sleep (not from insomnia but from kids) is going to make my next day super unproductive.
I definitely drink large cups in the morning but don't feel like it's causing my problems except if I don't drink coffee and the afternoon lull. If I was being honest the hope would be that going cold turkey would have a completely level, focused energy all day long but that isn't a realistic outcome and I trade out an enjoyable morning routine (coffee w/bagels, coffee w/biscotti).
The outcomes everyone talks about don't quite resonate with me - though I don't love the idea of being beholden to coffee/caffeine. Not being dismissive of everyones benefits I find myself questioning the long term benefit. I feel like I'm missing something.
I consume one light black coffee late in the morning. It’s about one teaspoon of Nescafé Gold instant coffee in about half a liter of hot water (yeah, I like that it’s instant and am not hooked on to gourmet coffee or having the best coffee ever).
I quit that habit for nearly a year, but it didn’t have any effect on my mildly high blood pressure (monitoring regularly). So I resumed it. I don’t have any withdrawal symptoms like headaches or anything else when I’m off it for a few days or even weeks.
I have no idea how to estimate how much caffeine (in milligrams) that one large mug has and what effects it has.
I do know that the morning coffee’s alerting effect lasts till late afternoon or evening. I have tea in the evening and that also has some effect on wakefulness.
So I’m left with the feeling that whether or not I have coffee in the amounts I’m consuming, it doesn’t make a big difference. Maybe it’d be good to quit it once and for all. But I just don’t have enough information on why I should and how it would benefit me, considering several reports that go back and forth on the benefits and harms of coffee that happen to crop up every few months.
For anyone else that is more addicted to the habit and culture of coffee (and not willing to give it up), I really recommend Swiss Water Process decaf. It isn’t perfect, but it’s 90% of the way there. The caffeine level is negligible and a few cups per day has mostly no effect.
Does anyone else get sarcastic "what's the point?" comments when ordering or serving decaf? How do you deal with it? I would drink coffee during the work week and have nausea headaches at the weekend, once i established the cause and effect here I stopped the coffee habit. What I find tiresome are the macho comments about being a real coffee drinker. Yes, I also love the double-shot whatever, but dependency isn't cool and I don't want to have coffee at the weekend just to avoid headaches.
Maybe I’ve been lucky, but when I get “what’s the point” comments it’s usually in a good-natured, just-making-conversation way, and a response like “I know, right?” is all that’s required. I try not to say uninteresting stuff that people are likely tired of hearing (_new haircut?_) but I mess it up all the time.
If a barista or anyone else was truly trying to shame me for drinking decaf, I think I’d find another place for coffee. Back before the virus, when I worked in an office, half (or more) of the pleasure of going for coffee was friendly human contact. Or, bonus points if you want to gently correct the person; as I said above I mess stuff up all the time and appreciate when a friend makes me see when I’ve been unintentionally rude.
People don’t ”like the flavor”; rather, they tend to misattribute to flavor the craving they have for the neuropsychiatric state produced by their substance of choice.
In your case, both the taste and effects are produced by certain monoamine oxidase inhibitors (Harmala alkaloids) created in pyrolysis of L-tryptophan during the roasting and brewing of coffee.
As a similar "addict" who quit caffeine almost cold-turkey last year, I have to say, the withdrawl symptoms are very real. But they also fade as days pass.
Attempt quitting when you can afford to not be at 100% for a few days at a time.
Cut it out cold turkey. No waning off. Nothing. Just no more caffeine.
Day 1 goes alright. Day 2 is a little worse. You'll wish you were dead on day 3-5. But day 6 feels better. Day 7 even better. And slowly, by day 30, you're off.
This worked for me. YMMV. and I believe it's because I consumed zero cups of coffee in this entire time.
> Attempt quitting when you can afford to not be at 100% for a few days at a time.
This is what I did, I had a bad cold so I was staying home from work and couldn't drink coffee anyway. It was on my mind for a while and a doctor suggested cutting out the caffeine to help with digestive issues. I just used the being sick time to get through the withdrawal and brain fog anyway. It was crazy to get through though. It took me about 9 days to feel normalish again. headaches, dreams about coffee, insomnia.
Each time I successfully quit (eg: got over the withdrawal symptoms) it was by switching to decaf + caffeine pills and then slowly over a week or so cutting out the caffeine pills. Cold Turkey sounds unnecessarily dramatic.
I agree with this this. The headaches are bad from quitting cold turkey, but it's not worth dragging it out for a year just to avoid a few days of headaches
The longer process wasn't to avoid withdrawals. I already went through the withdrawals while I had the flu.
I've quit cold turkey before, going through the withdrawals for ~1 week. Problem is, the habit didn't have enough time to change. I was back on coffee within a month.
This particular process allowed me to cement this change permanently.
I guess I could've made it clearer in the article.
I am a caffeine addict, but I have not had any caffeine for over 30 years. I was drinking 5-6 cups of coffee per day during work days, but not on the weekends. As I ramped up to my daily dose, I began to notice a decrease in the quality of my work. I would come in fresh each morning and review what I had accomplished the day before, and I would notice lots of errors in the work that I had done.
Aside from the errors, I would get withdrawal symptoms during weekends so I decided to quit. At the time it did not seem like a big deal. I quit cold-turkey and had some serious headaches, but felt okay after 3-4 days. It takes some effort to avoid all forms of caffeine, and I fell off the wagon a few times. Each time, I could justify my actions because caffeine is so common, and nearly everyone uses it.
The second time I quit, the reaction seemed worse. I felt so bad that I missed two days of work, but the symptoms weren't really much different.
The third (and final) time I quit, the symptoms were pretty serious. Aside from the headaches, I had cold sweats and vomiting. I began to feel better after 4-5 days. It was so bad that I was certain that I never wanted to go through it again, and I haven't.
I still crave coffee, and I am tempted every morning when I make some for my (addicted) wife. I've been off caffeine for over 30 years now, and I have no regrets.
Alcoholism runs in my family, but fortunately I am not an alcoholic. I've taken prescription pain medication on and off for over 20 years, but have never become addicted. Caffeine seems to be the only drug I have ever had a problem with.
The way I quit coffee and Starbys (Starbucks) was when I looked at my year end CC summary and realized I was sinking ~$600 per year. Easiest thing to quit in my life.
This is likely on the low end for most people and it was about ~100 transactions in total, but at least now I have an extra $600 every year to save or yolo.
(also I hate Starbucks now after realizing ~80% of their products contain a significant amount of sugar. It's no wonder they are a multi billion dollar industry, they got their customers hooked on sugar)
I had a Starbucks problem before the pandemic also, but the solution was just to buy a few bags of grounds (Caribou Coffee Medium Roast is the best tasting I've found so far) and a pourover (I'm sure whole beans and a grinder is better, and I might upgrade to that eventually, just haven't yet).
My wife and I have gone through about 6 bags this year (we only drink one large mug in the morning). So that's $66, or about $7 a month for both of us.
Whenever we're properly past the pandemic I can see the Starbucks problem coming back a bit, because part of that was having a place to go to in the morning to be around people and get some writing done before work.
I'm mainly a coffee + a little half and half, so my drinks don't usually have a ton of calories.
> I'm sure whole beans and a grinder is better, and I might upgrade to that eventually, just haven't yet
In my experience, you won't get better coffee from grinding the beans yourself, but you'll be able to let beans sit a little longer before they start to get bitter. That said, you can get cheap, high-quality grinders that are good for pour-over coffee relatively inexpensively (Hario makes pretty good hand-crank burr grinders in the $35-$40USD range; I bought mine in 2012 and it's still going strong with occasional cleaning) if you want to go down that road but not sink a bunch of money into it.
I wouldn't recommend getting an electric blade grinder, though. It's too difficult to keep things consistent.
I feel like I rarely see anyone taking a reasonable approach to caffeine or coffee. Everyone is chugging down a half dozen massive mugs of it every day or quitting cold turkey.
I drink one (1) cup of coffee pretty much every weekday and I tend to buy Arabica beans which have about half of the caffeine content of Robusta and I feel like I don't have any of the issues people talk about here. I don't get withdrawal symptoms on the weekends or much of a crash in the afternoon.
At one point, I couldn't skip coffee for a day without getting a full on migraine by mid-afternoon. That alone was worth massively cutting back. I wasn't even drinking that much coffee at the time. Usually a double shot cappuccino in the morning and possibly a cup or two of regular coffee in the early afternoon.
These days I drink a single ~300ml cup of coffee each workday morning, brewed with a 3:1 blend of decaf and regular coffee. I went an entire week over the Christmas holiday without any caffeine and all and had no ill effects.
Caffeine is a drug where you must consume it habitually, or never at all, or else face regular headaches.
Like others mention here, I had aura migraines nearly each week, which bad enough to cause vomiting which were seem to be getting worse with age. It took me a while, but I eventually linked it to caffeine withdrawal. Mind you, not even complete withdrawal would still cause me headaches (eg. If I had 2 cups of coffee one day but normally 1 cup otherwise, I'd still get a headache). Quit 10 months ago, and have had only 1 headache since, and feel slightly less anxious.
That said, there's also been studies suggesting that it affects motivation in subtle ways (e.g. productive people become more like slackers). But who knows how valid such studies are, given their makeup, and how often studies seem to oppose each other. But then again, I'd imagine almost all drugs affect us in subtle ways we almost never realize, especially after having seen multiple people become abusive - some after having alcohol, others amphetamines - only to deny that they seem like a completely different person when compared to them being sober.
I just finished a 6 months no-caffeine trial, and there was literally not a single thing that changed in my life for those 6 months, except for the lack of tea/coffee (I replaced coffee with roasted grain drink for the 6 months). No withdrawal syndrome. Nothing has improved nor worsened.
I started drinking coffee again 3 days ago. Can't feel any change, either.
Quitting coffee sans side effects is actually quite easy.
1. Measure your starting doze. Use a kitchen scale to weigh the ground coffee.
2. Create a spreadsheet schedule from tomorrow and reduce your amount by 1 or 2 grams per day.
3. Every day only drink the exact scheduled amount.
I find using a French press for this process is best. As you can make really small portions. For example brew just 4 grams of coffee with a small amount of water.
I actually just started drinking coffee this year or so.
I never drank coffee because I hated the taste and always prioritized a good night’s sleep and regular exercise so just never felt I needed the boost.
With a job change pre-COVID, and then the switch to exclusive work from home in 2020, I’ve found my motivation levels are a bit down and it’s quite easy to lose focus. I exercise less and am a bit more restless when I sleep. I’m less energetic overall.
I have a very small cup of coffee, which is half milk. So never more than 4oz total, usually less than that, and not more than one a day. I try to only have it when I find I can’t get myself to focus. It’s such a small amount that I’m hoping the effect is more due to placebo than caffeine, but it does give me that bit of extra energy and helps me focus.
Ultimately, I see caffeine as a crutch, and that I really need to regroup and exercise a bit more, which should help me sleep soundly at night and help restore my focus and energy levels.
I havent smoked in year but I m addicted to nicotine lozenges and gum
For me it works so much better than cigarette. Its like all the pleasure of the cigarette without the smoke and the bad smell. It doesnt required prescription. Its a pity because it is certainly not so safe on the long term (this post just recall me that I really needed to stop)
I did a hard cut to a vaporizer a few years back (long enough that I can't remember). I smoked for at least 20 years. I cut the nicotine out very rapidly but kept using the vaporizer. Being able to nerd out about coils and mods and whatnot helped keep me interested because it allowed me to tinker too. The first year or two was difficult, when I'd go out for drinks. After that, the vaporizer did the trick and the two times I tried a cigarette, they were gross. These days, I just stare at the thing. It's there if I need or want it but I never do. The oral fixation was harder than the nicotine. Gums don't do a good job and you can't taper off. Try a vaporizer. Switching changed my life.
What makes you think it is not safe in the long term? For a long time, even the academia has misattributed the harmful effects of tobacco smoking to nicotine only.
There are no studies that find pure nicotine harmful in the long term.
Back when I was drinking caffeine, I would have around 4-5 liters (really) of Diet Dr. Pepper per day.
I decided to quit caffeine on my honeymoon 8 years ago, because we went spent a week in a remote cabin with no soft drinks available.
I stayed off of it completely for 2 years, but then I had my first kid. I found that caffeine really helped with alertness during the day. So for the last 6 years I’ve been having exactly 10 oz of cold brew coffee each morning. That seems to work perfectly for me - no headaches, and it’s enough to keep me alert during the day. I still tend to drink around 4-5L of water most days, just due to thirst (replacing the soda).
Before I stuck with it, I had quit a few times before. Quitting cold turkey was probably the sickest I’ve ever been, with vomiting and extreme migraines. But I found that if I just cut back to a single 20oz bottle of soda for a couple of days first instead of quitting completely, that tiny of caffeine bit was enough to keep most of the symptoms at bay. YMMV
I've never liked coffee, but I've been a diet soda addict for about 15 years, going multiple days in a row where it's the only liquid I ingest, but due to the pandemic, I don't go out for groceries much anymore, opting instead to just order from Instacart. At least in my area, soda is substantially more expensive online than picking it up in the store, and because of this, I bought a SodaStream machine, a 20lb CO2 tank from a welding supply store, a refill adapter, and low-calorie water-flavoring packs that don't have any caffeine.
The headaches stopped after a couple days, and I fortunately didn't have any other side effects (I think because the caffeine concentration in soda tends to be a lot lower than that of coffee).
The positives were almost immediate; my sleep improved after a day, and while it might be psychosomatic, I think my focus for work improved a bit.
I've started drinking this[1] and I really like it. On one hand, it's been kinda expensive because I really like it so I drink it a lot. On the other hand, I'm drinking loads of water and feel great, so I guess in a way it's an investment.
I've been pretty happy with just the SodaStream. at least after I got the adapters and attachments to refill the CO2 cartridges myself, since buying the refills from SodaStream themselves is ridiculously overpriced.
It doesn't carbonate "like a beer", but it does carbonate "like a soda", which, as I stated, is basically my vice of choice.
I'm not a doctor, but at least according to Mayo Clinic (which I think is somewhat respected?), artificial sweeteners don't affect blood sugar [0].
> Sugar substitutes don't affect your blood sugar level. In fact, most artificial sweeteners are considered "free foods" — foods containing less than 20 calories and 5 grams or less of carbohydrates — because they don't count as calories or carbohydrates on a diabetes exchange. Remember, however, that other ingredients in foods containing artificial sweeteners can still affect your blood sugar level.
That said, it's probably still not super healthy for my to be ingesting as much aspartame as I do. Eventually I need to ween myself off that, but one step at a time I suppose.
I'm not going to claim that artificial sweeteners are harmless, it would almost certainly be preferable for me to be drinking water without any flavorings.
That said, there's a lot lower-hanging-fruit for me to cut out of my diet first; potato chips, snack cakes, and Taco Bell are vices that I probably can shake a bit quicker.
IIRC artificial sweeteners do not affect blood sugar directly, but they can still cause an insulin response, lowering blood sugar and making one hungry.
according to this study [0] artificial sweeteners affect your insulin response and resistance, but some other cursory googling says that this is a contested claim without much study.
Actually, a cursory Google Scholar search pretty much confirms that these things have been widely studied and that at least sucralose DOES affect the insulin response.
I actually think coffee is good for you. In moderation of course.
My rules:
- No more than two cups of black (no sugar) coffee a day.
- No coffee after 11:00 am.
- No coffee during the weekends. I see this as a way on preventing insensitivity or Detoxing.
After a bad reaction to a fluoroquinolone antibiotic, caffeine would cause a painful pins-and-needles sensation. Needless to say, I quit cold turkey.
That was over two years ago. I find that I don't miss caffeine at all. I am a slow caffeine metabolizer, so I couldn't drink too much anyway without getting jitters. I never actually felt awake or focused on caffeine.
Now that I'm on decaf coffee, I can drink as much as I want purely because I enjoy it. It was difficult to find high-quality decaf whole bean coffee, but thankfully I identified a couple. For a long time I used Slow Motion from Counter Culture. Lately I switched to Swings in the DC area because 1) they have at least three excellent decaf roasts and 2) I live a few minutes walk from them.
I have been off the substance for two months now, and I can say that the urge to have my daily cup is slowly waning. Personally, I quit cold-turkey, which has definitely been easier due to lockdown. The first two weeks were horrible for me, though. I couldn't get much done in between the headaches and lethargy.
Caffeine is one of those things that is processed quite differently from person to person. To some, both the positive and negative effects are negligible, causing no disruption in their daily life. For me, it's definitely an addictive stimulant that robs me of energy with long-term consumption.
I did it at the beginning of the lockdown as well. The lockdown did help. After 2 or 3 days, I begin needing naps mid day. I was sleeping more than 12 hours each day. Then at 2 weeks things went back to normal.
However, after about 6-8 weeks of success I woke up feeling like crap and figured one coffee wouldn't hurt. It did. The next day I felt like I was pre-quitting.
I have quit and relapsed caffeine a few times in the past.
Now I quit about a year ago and did not relapse. This time I did so by reducing the quantity progressively over a week, and I did not experience any headache at all.
I don't feel especially better, but now I don't have to drink coffee everyday. Before, I got headaches every weekend because I only drank it at the office, unless I also forced myself to have coffee on the weekend.
I still get one sometimes, but I make sure to not do it everyday so I don't relapse.
I've quit caffeine several times on and off, but overall I think that a small amount of caffeine does more for mental acuity than none at all, even considering sleep quality.
But it's really easy to overdo. And really easy to keep ramping up your dose as your body adjusts.
If you just want to _reduce_ your caffeine intake, I found that the easiest way is to pre-mix different ratios of regular and decaf in a container and use that. You can make 50:50 or 25:75 regular:decaf and easily taper off your intake (especially towards the afternoon/evening) while still enjoying a nice cup of coffee :)
Kicking Horse coffee makes a half-caf blend if you can get your hands on it, I'm sure there are others. You can mix that 1:1 with full caf to make a half-half-caf-half-caf coff
I’ve had to largely quit caffeine as it makes me extremely anxious, even a strong cup of tea can set me off. I bought a grinder and decaf beans from Union Coffee [1] and Decadent Decaf [2] amongst others and it’s been amazing the improvement compared with pre ground. Grinder is the Wilfa Uniform without the scales it’s excellent!
Let me describe my experience as a person who gets addicted easily.
Caffeine had many detrimental effects in my body, especially with sleep. I also had extreme physical anxiety after consuming coffee. I used to have 1-2 cups a day for around 5-6 years.
Quitting for me was very simple. I just quit cold turkey one day and dealt with some head aches and flu like symptoms (not too bad) for around 3-4 days. I was totally fine after a week and I can not write enough about the advantages of quitting caffeine.
Porn addiction on the other hand is something I think I will never get over.
People who quit or want to quit, what is the main reason? That it gives highs/lows that would be better as a more even alertness? Or is it mostly due to sleeping issues? Or something else?
Question for everyone on this thread who went from being (1) a regular caffeine user to (2) completely or mostly abstinent: did you find that you were as or even more mentally productive after you had transitioned off of it?
Similarly, is there anyone who has gone from not using caffeine much (or at all), to using it all the time, and found it to be a positive and sustainable improvement on productivity?
Currently I drink green tea 3-4 days a week and find that its a good balance between getting the benefits while also not building up a huge tolerance.
I spent a few years completely avoiding caffeine and the last few years consuming a lot of caffeine (via coffee). For me, in terms of alertness or productivity, there is a difference only in the "transition" period when the body is readjusting to the (lack of) caffeine. Otherwise the only difference is that by being used to caffeine, I can enjoy making and drinking good coffee (one of the simple pleasures of life).
This is what it is for me. I've quit coffee and caffeine multiple times, sometimes for a year usually just for a month or two. Just to see if I enjoy life more without it. But I just simply love the routine of coffee in the morning. Also I've found nothing that compares to the flavor of black coffee. I only drink coffee in the morning, but several cups (french press). One of the simple pleasures in life for me as well.
for reference: I regularly took 200mg or more a day through diet coke. Quit a little over a year ago with 20mg caffeine pills for about a week or two. Had headaches the entire two weeks. I had a total tolerance to caffeine at this point. I could drink an entire can right before bed and sleep absolutely fine.
I think my productivity increased, but really it was just removing the "brain fog" of feeling like I had to ingest more caffeine that boosted my productivity.
Things that changed for me:
* no more "I forgot to drink caffeine/didn't have access, now I have withdrawl".
* my hangovers after drinking alcohol are more tolerable or gone.
* no more compulsive soda drinking when bored
Things that didn't change for me:
* sleep
* energy
* overall mood
* weight
* caffeine still has no (or imperceptible) impact on me when I drink small amounts from tea. Most months I go with 0mg.
I think many people ascribe quitting coffee, soda, or caffeine to many of the things that didn't impact me, but those same people also note other life changes they did at the same time and I suspect that had a greater impact for them.
That said, I replaced my caffine habit with seltzer/sparkling water (which helps trick me into thinking it is a soda). I now drink large amounts of seltzer instead.
Every time I see a diet coke? Anxiety spikes, I have to strongly resist the urge to drink it. Caffeine addiction was pretty terrible for me.
I found switching to sparkling water (we bought a Soda Stream) helped me here. Now I get a real soda maybe once every week or two as a "treat" (basically the now rare occasion we order takeout) and can resist them when in an office (rarely these days) with a vending machine.
> did you find that you were as or even more mentally productive after you had transitioned off of it?
Being perfectly honest, this is _very_ hard to judge. I would say it's about the same, but it somehow feels a bit more... honest, shall I say? The feedback loop for being extremely tired and course correcting is much shorter. As opposed to just varying your caffeine dose for a week or so, and then realising you're super tired, now you will find out about it within a day or so. One big upside for me has been that if I now have a cup of coffee, it actually works like it was meant to, and I'm far more energetic for a short while. This can be used strategically for rare, but important events. In the past, this would have required large amounts of caffeine over an already high baseline.
Caffeine just made me act like a coke-head. Remember, cocaine's effects are very similar to caffeine.
I also used to get bad insomnia from caffeine.
That's why I switched to decaf in the morning.
As far as a productivity shift... That's hard to quantify. It's easy to get under the influence of a dopamine boost and fool yourself into thinking you're more productive; when you're really making more mistakes and driving your colleagues nuts.
I definitely did. I was almost embarrassed by how alert I felt during the day after I quit, because I felt like I'd wasted so many years feeling drowsy and brain foggy.
If it had mostly been down to the caffeine I bet I'd wasted literally years of scratching my head and staring blankly at the screen.
I drink a lot of coffee and believed I was addicted. If I didn't have 2 to 3 cups in the morning, I would feel tired and irritable and suffer (mild) headaches. Once, I bought a jar of instant coffee of a different brand and drank my usual 2 to 3 cups every morning. After 2 weeks of this my gf pointed out to me that the coffee we'd been drinking was decaf. I'd had zero "symptoms of withdrawal".
I quit coffee the last time I got sick with the flu. I figured If I'm going to feel crap I might as well commit to it.
after that I only drink Tea (black no sugar) and only about 3-4 a day.
I can go a full day without any tea much easier than i could with no coffee... but I might just quit all caffeine completely anyway. we'll see, I need to find decent "hot drinks" that are low acidity and no milk. Mint Tea (no black tea in it) will only go so far.
I drank tea (all sorts: japanese/chinese greens, oolongs, pu-erh etc.) for the past 10 years. Considering the amounts I drank, I assume the caffeine content was not much different to the one of an average coffee person.
On 1st September 2020 I stopped entirely. The only issue I still face is that my focus is not where it should be. I hope that still changes but it may also be related to the fact that I haven't socialized for almost a year.
I have quit coffee/caffeine a few times. The only way I've been able to do it without feeling like shit for a week or two is slowly ramping down from x cups to x-1 cups until I hit 1 cup then going to two cups of decaf and slowly moving to zero.
Unfortunately I like the taste and "thickness" of coffee much more than tea in the morning so I'm not completely off it anymore but I wish I was.
I started getting headaches on Saturday evenings and could not figure out why. I realized I don't drink coffee on weekends, as the work provided a very reasonable espresso machine. I now make sure I drink at least a cup of tea over weekend days :-)
Caffeine is indicated as a protector against Alzheimers. The disease is prevalent in my family, so I have good reason to make sure I'm Joe'd up.
I quit caffeine about 10 years ago took about a week but I've not looked back since. (The secret for me was replacing the exact number of teas/coffees I drank with green tea and reducing the number) now I just drink decaf or herbal teas.
The unfortunate side effect is I sort of view caffeine now how it would be classed on paper - as a drug!
I "quit" caffeine probably 15 years ago. Had high blood pressure, just decided to be clear of it for my health. Havent needed it since. I am hyper sensitive to it now though, so even the littlist bit gets my blood pressure up.
Im happy for it, just sucks there is so little decaf tea, coffee, cola, etc drinks. We need more decaf options.
I drink lots of tea. The few times I stopped for a few days I remember feeling a bit off, but could be a coincidence. However I rarely drink coffee and when I do, I notice it's much more powerful and makes me a bit jumpy. So I'm wondering to what extent tea drinkers have the same problem as coffee drinkers.
I drink black tea in the morning and coffee at noon to afternoon. When I started drinking my tea out of a can, so round about 3 cups instead of 1-2, i noticed that my heart rate would sometimes mess up somehow (happens with too much coffee too). The caffeine (or teeine..) amounts in tea are comparable to coffee (~between 1/4 and 1:1), so in the end it stands to reason that tea (black, green, white, yellow) can have a very similar effect as coffee.
I mostly agree with the process the article goes through on curbing caffeine addiction. The withdrawal process is crazy painful and there are better, though longer term processes, to get over caffeine in a manageable way. When I first started freelance/contract dev, I was drinking 2-3 pots of coffee a day. That's 12 cup pots. Burnout and heart issues after around a year and a half forced my change. However, I love the taste of strong, good coffee. Decaf doesn't cut it. I'm not quite a coffee snob, but I sure can appreciate a good cup of quality coffee. I don't drink soda or anything else with caffeine, which arguably helps.
Cold turkey for coffee isn't worth it. I've gone through 5 caffeine purges that lasted for 3-6 months of no coffee (the taste... the glorious taste is what pulls me back). If your coffee abuse has been long term, don't bother with cold turkey. The withdrawals make you out like a heroin addict.
I also don't recommend going straight to tea. You'll end up drinking a whole lot of tea to equalize the caffeine amount compared to coffee. Start cutting your daily intake in half. Stick to that for 2 weeks. Then cut down again by half for 2 week periods. This helps curb those withdrawals or make them non-existent. Once you're at a cup of coffee a day, stick to that for at least 2 weeks, but I found dragging it out to a month had better long term results on my first successful purge.
Now is a good time to switch to tea, but again, discipline to 1 cup a day. Never more. A cup of Earl Grey has roughly half the caffeine of a cup of coffee (depends on brands and how you brew). So, you're still sticking to the halving pattern. Another 2-4 weeks.
At this point, you have the habit under control and can maintain this with little discipline (but you still need the discipline 1 cup of coffee or tea daily and no more). If you want to quit, now you're going to go with no caffeine days. 1 day on, 1 day off for 2 weeks. Then 1 day on, 2 days off. Then 1 on, 3 off. At that point, I then can quit. With the 2 week intervals, I run into nearly no withdrawals, just mild cravings. Cravings are way easier to deal with than the withdrawals.
I do Lent, so this is why I now have a process to effectively deal with caffeine when the time comes. My caffeine purging experience is a rough 6 year exploratory process, change as needed for your life. I'm at the point where it takes a month and half to kick it and have no withdrawals. The withdrawals are such murder, way worse than fasting.
I was similarly addicted and quit for similar reasons. https://www.weancaffeine.com worked really well for me - I bought 3 packs and was off caffeine in a few weeks. I was slightly slower those weeks but it wasn't so painful.
After starting to drink coffee 2 years ago, about a year ago I developed palpitations. I suggested to my Dr. that caffeine might be the cause and he disagreed. Finally, I just did the experiment and it was the caffeine.
I loved drinking coffee. Just understand there are potential very negative side effects.
oh, exactly my topic! the last 15 years since my adolescence i have been in countless spirals of more and more coffee, withdrawal, more and more tea (black, green,white, oolong, etc.) , withdrawal, more and more coffee, etc.
1. caffeine works differently for everyone. Each type of coffee (Robusta has 2x that of Arabica coffee) and each type of tea has its own amount. You can't even say that black or green tea has more. There are such and such.
2. understand the effect of caffeine: caffeine does not make you awake, but caffeine prevents you from getting tired. (to a certain extent). so you have to take it at the right times.
3. understand what you actually need: you don't always need the caffeine effect. you also have to distinguish between being awake and being able to concentrate. sometimes you just want to concentrate, then maybe b12 or sugar will do.
A word about sugar: sugar is dangerous. by the way, problems with energy during the day come almost more often from sugar, not only from caffeine.
(when i have to drive a car for a long time at night, i need sugar rather than caffeine. caffeine only gives me a headache. but a pack of wine gums gives me energy.
If you want to level your caffeine, you first have to give up sugar completely for 1-2 weeks.It's mentally hard, but most of the energy waste actually comes from it.
so, and how am i doing today?
lately i had it well leveled. You can escape the above-mentioned spiral of increasing consumption and withdrawal if you always drink the same amount of coffee (and ideally the same brand) at the same time.
- i had e.g. 2 x double espresso in the morning, 1 x double espresso at noon.
- I wasn't satisfied with my sleep-through behavior for 2-3 months, and then just slowly dosed down to
- 1x double espresso in the morning, 1 espresso in the afternoon. in each case before the creative sessions.
dosing down works well during the vacations, for example, when you don't have the same daily routine, expecting the same creative burst.
and remember that sleep always takes a few weeks to settle down.
Coffee w/ L-theanine is a whole different thing, worth trying. I quit caffeine for most of 2020, then had a Taika (taika.co) out of curiosity.. now I drink it regularly. For me, it removes most of the downside of caffeine, including withdrawal headaches.
I came here to say this. Coffee makes me very anxious and makes it hard for me to focus on tasks. I throw in some L-theanine and suddenly everything is ok. Using drugstore capsules makes it really cheap too.
"These results replicate previous evidence which suggests that L-theanine and caffeine in combination are beneficial for improving performance on cognitively demanding tasks." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18681988/
I quit coffee about 3 years ago. I still drink coffee (< 10 times a year) when it's really cold outside or when we're traveling, but it's no longer compulsive. I can have coffee when I want, and choose to avoid it when I don't.
Oh well...
I am on 15kg coffee beans per year right now. This is quite a lot, I guess. Prepared as filter coffee and mostly before lunch and then one cup right after lunch. Late in the afternoon it would impact my sleep. So I leave it.
I quit caffeine when I started medication for anxiety. The only side effect I noticed was having constipation for the first time in my life, which went away after a week or so. Indeed, my bowel has been happier in general since quitting
I went from 8-10 cups/day to a single cup before noon, cold turkey, with insane migraines. Having previously quit smoking it didn’t occur to me to register it as difficult until I read this. Nicotine is a hell of a drug.
I drink 4 shots of espresso in a latte each morning. It calms me and helps me focus on my coding tasks as I sip it through the morning. I’ve never had issues stopping or from prolonged use. It’s a net benefit for me.
Man, I've stopped cold turkey the ingestion of my two favourite vegetables this past year:caffeine and tobacco (after 25 and 35 years of use -and frequent abuse- respectively), because of this pandemic. Come on.
Pure caffeine is quite different - it removes many of the (negative) effects, notably stomach upset, bloating, frequent urination.
For me, powder in capsules works best, pressed tablets are slower to take effect, and the brand also matters, although there's so many of them you'd have to try and see for yourself - either part of the extraction process or the source of caffeine is different, but some brands are noticeably and consistently different in effects.
Some have that brain fog and jitteriness that is common with coffee, some are just a clean alertness with clean withdrawal.
Quitting coffee using pure caffeine might work for some, and not for others.
I also tried to stop drinking caffeine, or so I thought. I replaced it with green tea and thought that I was in the clear until my sister in law pointed out, correctly, that green tea also contains caffeine.
I quit caffeine for a year and found it not to be worth it. I'm simply not a 9-5 type person so when I have to go in an office I need caffeine to function and I function much better.
I like coffee though for the flavor, the caffeine is not the point. I'd like decaf but never found any I like and the decaf process looks pretty sketchy with lots of chemicals.
I never drink coffee in the morning and never more than 1 cup a day. Coffee is kind of a mental trigger for me to get going if I'm feeling sluggish that day
Those studies are all bunk science. It is not possible to say anything about the effects of caffeine by studying tea or coffee drinking, just as it’s not possible to say anything about the effects of nicotine by studying tobacco smoking.
Why? Because the results regarding caffeine/nicotine get conflated with all the other psychoactive compounds present in the brews/smoke.
The research overwhelming supports that those that drink coffee regularly, live longer.
The caffeine may not be the cause, but rather other parts of coffee (this is generally the accepted view), but it is also true that most people in this studies drink caffeinated coffee which means drinking large amounts of caffeine is compatible with living a longer life.
I doubt the author actually needed anything close to a year, physiologically speaking. But almost everyone has withdrawal symptoms when quitting a coffee habit. Clinically, they call it dependence rather than addiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_dependence
Or maybe they actually tried quitting and never noticed any effects? I drink _lots_ of coffee throughout the day (most of my fluid intake is coffee). I don't have any sleep problems, my blood pressure is on the lower side of normal, and I've gone completely without caffeine several times in my life due to various non-related circumstances (like business travel), from a couple of days up to about a fortnight. No withdrawal symptoms whatsoever. I always find comments in these threads a little hard to believe, honestly.
Yes, I can confirm I got headaches for that week, but after that, it was fine. I no longer found myself getting drowsy mid morning or mid afternoon when I'd normally have cups of tea
But it's not worth dragging it out when it's easy to get over a caffeine addiction in such a short timeframe
Edit: And due to the quick quitting, the benefits were much more noticeable. Within a couple of weeks it was immediately obvious to me how much more alert I was throughout the day, how much of my normal workday sluggishness and brain fog was artificially caused by caffeine, and how much less greasy my skin was