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I almost quit caffeine in one year

• AlexDReeve 6y ago
  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).
  • mrslave 6y ago
    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?
    • hajile 6y ago
      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.
  • peteretep 6y ago
    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
    • nip180 6y ago
      The only thing easier than quitting is relapse.
  • rhino369 6y ago
    I felt mostly the same on nights where I got a decent night sleep. But I'd fall asleep at like 9-10pm on coach. And on nights I got less than 8 hours, wow, I couldn't do it without caffeine.
  • ImprovedSilence 6y ago
    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...
    • eurasiantiger 6y ago
      Sounds like you like the MAOIs in coffee more than the caffeine.
  • tayo42 6y ago
    > 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?
    • the_other 6y ago
      That's just caffeine "working", surely?
  • ChrisRR 6y ago
    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"
  • Dirlewanger 6y ago
    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.
• arvindamirtaa 6y ago
  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. Source: ~1 year caffeine free.
  • peteretep 6y ago
    > Cut it out cold turkey 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.
    • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
      Some people quit for lifestyle reasons. Some of us have health pushing us to quit. Unfortunately for me, the latter was the case. And what I described is just something that worked for me.
  • unemphysbro 6y ago
    The first week was rough for me too. I was a 3-4 (8 oz) cup per day drinker. I quit cold turkey in 2013. Not for health reasons, I was trying to save money. I had about a 2-3 week period of migraines and sluggishness. Now, I usually drink a cup of tea to stay regular and decaf throughout the day.
  • tayo42 6y ago
    > 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.
• sacks2k 6y ago
  I quit about 5 years ago. It took a couple of months to get 'clean'. I sleep much better and can now wake up without an alarm. I also have lots of energy the entire day.
• person_of_color 6y ago
  Dude, just embrace a fine cup of joe.
• gabb 6y ago
  why drink 5 cups / day ? what's wrong with one ?
  • redisman 6y ago
    Tolerance
  • bmn__ 6y ago
    > > For the last 10+ years, I’ve consumed 2-5 cups of coffee every day. > why drink 5 cups / day ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22978219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22978219 still applies.
• tptacek 6y ago
  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.
  • whytaka 6y ago
    I quit all caffeine this year myself but I do miss the rich taste of coffee. Which brand did you go with for your decaf?
    • tptacek 6y ago
      My brother roasts professionally and I just get his mailed to me, but I really like Intelligentsia's decaf.
      • whytaka 6y ago
        I may give it a shot. Cheers!
  • onionisafruit 6y ago
    You’re right. Quitting caffeine is easy. I did it at least twenty times in 2020 alone.
    • tptacek 6y ago
      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.
• dbroockman 6y ago
  I was similarly addicted and quit for similar reasons. https://www.weancaffeine.com 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.
• ir123 6y ago
  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.
• sergiotapia 6y ago
  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.
  • redisman 6y ago
    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.
• deleted 6y ago
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• 29athrowaway 6y ago
  I prefer green tea over coffee. Green tea not only has caffeine, but also has L-theanine which helps control anxiety and stress, helps you sleep and helps you focus. It's a good balance for productivity. Plus it's easier on the stomach than coffee and less diuretic.
• ageofwant 6y ago
  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.
  • tgv 6y ago
    It's also supposed to benefit your intestinal function. But I'm sure that in the past it has been labeled carcinogenic, so moderation is the key.
• yojo 6y ago
  I’ve quit coffee twice now. The first time I went cold turkey and had terrible headaches for about a week. I don’t recommend that route. Last year I used a digital scale and stepped down my intake by 5g every 3 days (starting at 40g/day). Completely painless. Can’t say it’s been a panacea - the only noticeable difference for me is I spend less money on coffee.
  • winrid 6y ago
    How did you measure it?
• senectus1 6y ago
  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.
  • ejolto 6y ago
    Try Rooibos as an alternative to black tea. It tastes closer to black tea than mint and it's got no caffeine.
• gbronner 6y ago
  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.
  • rmason 6y ago
    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.
    • eurasiantiger 6y ago
      I’m gonna go out on a limb and say he was probably a workaholic and an alcoholic too?
  • burnett2k 6y ago
    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
    • justinko 6y ago
      Yep. 23andMe states I am “less likely to consume caffeine”, which correlates with my caffeine sensitivity. I still consume it though.
• tombert 6y ago
  I quit caffeine recently, sort of accidentally. 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.
  • m463 6y ago
    I think sugar is worse. Someone here also mentioned that even artificial sweeteners affect your blood sugar.
    • tombert 6y ago
      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. [0] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetes/expert-answers/artificial-sweeteners/faq-20058038 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetes/expe...
      • m463 6y ago
        ok, now i'm going to have to find it. EDIT: can't find it. It was just someone pointing out that artificial sweeteners don't cause blood sugar to spike, but they might cause a crash.
• robocat 6y ago
  Pain-free quit: * buy a pack of pure caffeine tablets (various brands, including generic) * quit * take a whole tablet in morning (or equivalent to your coffee intake with some time spread if necessary). * every day over two weeks reduce caffeine intake to zero e.g. shaving or breaking pills
  • bserge 6y ago
    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.
• pruthvishetty 6y ago
  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.
• JCharante 6y ago
  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.
• jonmc12 6y ago
  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.
  • Raphmedia 6y ago
    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/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18681988/
• mellosouls 6y ago
  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. FWIW
• astine 6y ago
  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.
  • boringg 6y ago
    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.
• Daegalus 6y ago
  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.
• D13Fd 6y ago
  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
• syntaxing 6y ago
  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?
  • justinko 6y ago
    It is not. It is absolutely not neurotoxic nor have any other measurable physical detriments.
• moltar 6y ago
  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.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • mike_h 6y ago
    Sub in good decaf for the eliminated amount each day and you can still have a full cup!
• AnonC 6y ago
  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.
• reportgunner 6y ago
  A better title would have been I quit caffeine for (almost) a year
• sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  This morning I made myself a sugar free bananasplit whipped cream latte. For lunch I shall have sugar free iced tea or diet pop. Both have lots of caffeine. But I have a rule, no caffeine after lunch. Prevents any trouble with sleeping, not that it matters at all.
• andy_ppp 6y ago
  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! [1] https://unionroasted.com/ https://unionroasted.com/ [2] https://www.decadentdecaf.com/ https://www.decadentdecaf.com/
• ChrisRR 6y ago
  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
  • mchanson 6y ago
    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.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      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.
      • ChrisRR 6y ago
        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.
  • danielbarla 6y ago
    > 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.
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• jordanmarshall 6y ago
  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.
  • bloodorange 6y ago
    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).
    • radec 6y ago
      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.
      • eurasiantiger 6y ago
        What you have actually found is that coffee radically changes the way your brain works. It is easy to misappropriate this to the taste.
  • graeme 6y ago
    I felt less productive but it’s very hard to disentangle from other issues. Went to decaf coffee for a while and felt more productive. But recently stopped that, had no withdrawal and feel extremely productive so....who knows.
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• dave0585 6y ago
  I have a similar problem but with nicotine 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)
  • igetspam 6y ago
    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.
  • eurasiantiger 6y ago
    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.
• darepublic 6y ago
  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
  • danaliv 6y ago
    I’m not surprised. My head is exquisitely sensitive to (lack of) caffeine.
  • wtetzner 6y ago
    Yeah, I wonder if they're getting those symptoms from something else.
    • eurasiantiger 6y ago
      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.
• deleted 6y ago
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• _qulr 6y ago
  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.
  • rocgf 6y ago
    > I don't understand the idea that a week of headaches is somehow worth it in return for quitting caffeine. > I just take a minimum regular dosage to avoid withdrawal symptoms. So you take caffeine just because you're addicted to it, but see no upside to getting rid of the addiction? This is a really weird take for me.
    • rwmj 6y ago
      > So you take caffeine just because you're addicted to it, but see no upside to getting rid of the addiction? This is a really weird take for me. You didn't say what the upside is.
      • NoOneNew 6y ago
• peter_d_sherman 6y ago
  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! ...But thank God that's not the case! <g>)
  • ketanmaheshwari 6y ago
    For my understanding, what does the <g> in your comment mean?
    • bserge 6y ago
      I believe he's alluding to the situation with other drugs.
    • boogies 6y ago
      Seconded, it’s not https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/Element/g https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/Element/g is it?
    • jsight 6y ago
      I believe it is <grin>. It isn't common now, but I used to see it on BBSes.
• peanut_worm 6y ago
  Is caffeine really this addictive for some people?
  • Double_a_92 6y ago
    You just dont notice the addiction because it's easy to satisfy it whenever you need, and there are no significant side effects.
    • scaladev 6y ago
      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.
      • Double_a_92 6y ago
        I agree though. All I've experienced is just feeling tired in the morning.
  • dahart 6y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_dependence
• Tycho 6y ago
  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.
  • Tarsul 6y ago
    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.
• x87678r 6y ago
  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.
• dahart 6y ago
  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. https://www.healthline.com/health/how-long-does-caffeine-withdrawal-last https://www.healthline.com/health/how-long-does-caffeine-wit... https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/15496-caffeine-how-to-hack-it-and-how-to-quit-it https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/15496-caffein...
  • hackerfromthefu 6y ago
    Try some high quality magnesium powder supplementation, it often resolves muscle spasms.
    • dahart 6y ago
      Oh yeah? I will try it, I hadn’t heard that. Thanks!
      • yetihehe 6y ago
        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.
• karmakaze 6y ago
  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.
  • misja111 6y ago
    > 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.
    • hesdeadjim 6y ago
      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.
      • ianai 6y ago
• jy14898 6y ago
  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
• xyst 6y ago
  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)
  • rwmj 6y ago
    A bag of coffee beans, grinder and a stove-top espresso maker is the solution to this, not giving up.
  • cableshaft 6y ago
    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.
    • ascagnel_ 6y ago
      > 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.
• corpMaverick 6y ago
  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.
• vpmpaul 6y ago
  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.
• nr2x 6y ago
  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.
• asdev 6y ago
  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
• keiferski 6y ago
  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.
• jasonhanley 6y ago
  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 :)
  • srveale 6y ago
    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
• alkonaut 6y ago
  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?
• ryeguy_24 6y ago
  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.
• Taylor_OD 6y ago
  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.
• tvanantwerp 6y ago
  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.
• korse 6y ago
  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.
  • Foivos 6y ago
    Could you quantify the "too much time" and also give the current (theoretical) optimal?
    • sjm 6y ago
      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.
    • korse 6y ago
      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.
      • CleanCoder 6y ago
        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.
• ptaffs 6y ago
  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.
  • slumdev 6y ago
    I smile and explain that I like the flavor. It turns the conversation upside down and makes the other person sound like a junkie.
    • gwbas1c 6y ago
      Same thing applies to when I drink non-alcoholic beer. Sometimes I just want another beer without getting drunk.
      • eurasiantiger 6y ago
        Beer contains dozens of flavonoids (from hops) which act as reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Alcohol is thus not essential for the feeling from drinking a good beer: MAO-B inhibition alone tends to produce euphoria. Isn’t it interesting that all our legal drugs contain MAOIs? Coffee, tobacco, tea, beer, wine, even energy drinks...
    • eurasiantiger 6y ago
      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.
  • hairofadog 6y ago
    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.
• e40 6y ago
  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.
• NoOneNew 6y ago
  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.
• deleted 6y ago
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• llbeansandrice 6y ago
  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.
• I_am_tiberius 6y ago
  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_am_tiberius 6y ago
    If you want to find more stories: https://www.reddit.com/r/decaf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/decaf/
• jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  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.
  • 01100011 6y ago
    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.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    Same. I've cut back but I'll never stop. There are health benefits anyway.
• apricot13 6y ago
  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!
• makach 6y ago
  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.
• mcculley 6y ago
  I used caffeinated workout supplement powder to gently titrate down when I quit: https://enki.org/2017/08/13/quitting-caffeine/ https://enki.org/2017/08/13/quitting-caffeine/
• franee 6y ago
  The one event that finally got me off coffee (10+ years drinking, 5+ years trying to quit) was funnily a wisdom tooth extraction. I was on pain relievers for 1 week. Never drank coffee after. So long coffee migraines :D I always got migraine + sinusitis when I don't drink my coffee at the same period of the day everyday and at the same strength. Tried the approach of getting lower and lower caffeine strength => daily migraines.
• honkycat 6y ago
  I don't understand. What is the point of quitting caffeine? Isn't it a great nootropic? Everything I've read is that coffee is good for you and has a ton of benefits.
  • 0xffff2 6y ago
    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.
  • Rury 6y ago
    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.
• ferlp 6y ago
  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.
• paulie_a 6y ago
  The thing with caffeine is that you quickly adapt to it. So you don't get the benefits It's really not that hard to be caffeine free
• deleted 6y ago
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• anonymousiam 6y ago
  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.
  • adamhearn 6y ago
    I would be very interested to take a look at your DNA and see what SNPs you have that might cause this. Very interesting.
    • anonymousiam 6y ago
      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.
• 5tefan 6y ago
  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.
• klausbreyer 6y ago
  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.
• seanvk 6y ago
  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.
• mcoppieters 6y ago
  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.
  • cuddlybacon 6y ago
    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.
• jdeibele 6y ago
  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. One thing I regret is drinking a lot of soda, which is a lot harder on your teeth than coffee. The pH level of coffee is closer to neutral than soda and even some herbal teas. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/is-coffee-acidic#acidity https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/is-coffee-acidic#acidit... https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/is-tea-acidic#ph-of-tea https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/is-tea-acid...
• deeviant 6y ago
  If caffeine is bad for you, why does nearly every study that looks in to tea or coffee drinking find that it reduces all-cause mortality?
  • eurasiantiger 6y ago
    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.
    • deeviant 6y ago
      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.
      • eurasiantiger 6y ago
        The research is probably not looking for adverse effects on mental health.
• marmot777 6y ago
  The title was enough to get me to upvote this. Oh man, I tried to quit caffeine and had the worst headache I can even imagine at this point.
• backing 6y ago
  2 shots of coffee per day is better for your liver. Study says.
  • calmworm 6y ago
    Interesting. Better than what, though? No caffeine or coffee? 3 shots? Also, mind linking the study?
    • backing 6y ago
      Yes. Better than no coffee for those who stress their liver at least or get cancer. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140402095656.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140402095656.h... https://www.coffeeandhealth.org/2013/01/coffee-consumption-and-liver-function/ https://www.coffeeandhealth.org/2013/01/coffee-consumption-a... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coffee-liver-cirrhosis-idUSKCN0VR2JN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coffee-liver-cirrh...
• quacker 6y ago
  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.
• a0-prw 6y ago
  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".
• xpil 6y ago
  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.
• Seb-C 6y ago
  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.
• bribri 6y ago
  I'm trying this myself and i'm already feeling much better, less stressed, sleeping better, and have more a natural feeling energy.