8 ms·

After habitually consuming caffeine (not in coffee form) daily, usually multiple times a day, for more than a decade, a horrible mental health incident happened

After habitually consuming caffeine (not in coffee form) daily, usually multiple times a day, for more than a decade, a horrible mental health incident happened to me that forced me to stop it for a while. Afterwards I didn't resume the habit, and so I no longer have a tolerance. This has let me evaluate what caffeine does with fresh eyes, so to say, because I can now consume it occasionally while having many non-caffeinated days to compare to. It's a profoundly psychoactive substance and does a lot of things to cognition. I guess I have decided I don't enjoy how it feels, having previously been dependent on it.

readthenotes1 6mo ago
Notably, the article is looking at coffee, both caffeinated and decaffeinated. There is a lot more to coffee than just caffeine...
- mixedCase 6mo ago
  The overwhelming majority of the enjoyable coffee experiences are caffeinated. While there is good decaf out there it's not the norm, specially in smaller markets.
  - tsimionescu 6mo ago
    I think they meant that coffee contains a lot of other compounds than just caffeine, which something like energy drinks or teas will not include. So you can't necessarily extend conclusions from a study on consumption of coffee to effects that other drinks that happen to include caffeine might have. Edit: this is especially relevant here, as the study found similar effects in decaffeinated coffee drinkers. So the effects they observed, if real, are not related to caffeine.
rimliu 6mo ago
How do you know that caffeine was the cause?
- ivan_gammel 6mo ago
  This of course cannot be generalized, but withdrawal is quite noticeable for personal well-being in a positive way.
- TazeTSchnitzel 6mo ago
  I didn't say it was the cause of the mental health incident! And I don't believe it to have been "the cause", either. It just happens to have been the thing that caused me to abruptly stop. It likely was a contributor, insofar as the incident had poor sleep as a contributing factor, and I do know with some certainty the caffeine habit had been causing some (likely not all) of my sleep problems. I can also tell you the very worst day of that incident was when I mistakenly consumed caffeine again prior to being recovered enough for that to be safe; that was a horrible glimpse at what that drug can do to you when you're in an already very unstable state. Caffeine definitely can aggravate all kinds of symptoms, even when you're in a relatively stable state. It's a stimulant, after all. But I think caffeine consumption is… only one factor of many in causes of that incident, and doesn't deserve any special blame. The relevance of the mental health incident here is really that it gave me a chance and a good reason to abruptly stop, and therefore also the opportunity to see what getting the brain back into the caffeination ritual again feels like. (I've tried taking it for a few consecutive days more than once since then, and not particularly enjoyed it. I've also tried it on single isolated days.)
barrenko 6mo ago
Coffee is a plant demon that created the western civilization as we know it today...
- fermiNitambh 6mo ago
  I like this worldview. Prior to coffee, Europe was in the grip of the beer dwarves. Coffee demons took over and invented nationalism, capitalism and Keynesian economics.
  - anonym29 6mo ago
    At least the coffee demons aren't quite as bad as the amphetamine demons that produced Nazi Germany.
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    - barrenko 6mo ago
      We could view as amphetamine vs. coffee / black tea.
  - nervousvarun 6mo ago
    Obligatory recommendation for: Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed our World by Mark Pendergrast Fantastic book. I first encountered it...in a coffee shop :) Read a chapter and immediately bought the book for myself.
  - malicka 6mo ago
    Putting Keynesian economics next to nationalism on the evil list was so funny, I almost spit out my coffee.
    - sph 6mo ago
      Is it? Keynesian economics created the economic framework to finance World Wars.
BatteryMountain 6mo ago
I've had the same experience. Caffeine is super addicting, the ritual & habits surrounding it is a potent pull. For myself, it makes me erratic, impulsive, more reactive and agitated. One cup a day puts me on edge, makes me sweat more, makes me more intolerant, makes everything feel too slow. It such a sneaky drug and it can really get under your skin without you realizing how much it changes you.
- orphea 6mo ago
  I don't have the same experience, and I drink one cup of coffee (270 ml) almost every day. No agitation, no impulsiveness. I can drink coffee in late evening (let's say 8 pm) and sleep well. I guess I'm trying to say that we should not project our own experience on others, everyone is different.
  - Sammi 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - aswegs8 6mo ago
      My prior would rather be that people have wildly varying sensitivity to caffeine genetically. Some get panic attacks, some don't feel much.
    - IAmBroom 6mo ago
      Only true if they drank a cup of coffee since their earliest memories began.
      - Sammi 5mo ago
        That's not how memory works. You mutate a memory on every recall. Your old memories are all completely changed from what they actually were.
    - nsagent 6mo ago
      I really only started drinking coffee at my first real job after grad school. They had free coffee in the kitchen, so I'd occassionally have one. Maybe once or twice a week. I was like that for several years, and would occassionally go weeks without a coffee. During that time, I was very productive and went from being a new grad to leading the entire team of veterans in less than five years. After leaving that job, I now consume fairly regularly (for the past decade at least). I can still easily skip days without coffee, though I do prefer having it daily. I literally see no difference in my day to day between having coffee and not throughout my two decades of experience with coffee. I can just as easily fall asleep after a coffee and I rarely feel amped up from a coffee (if I do, then I just stop drinking it). I've certainly never felt anhedonia like many others have mentioned in the comments when I've taken breaks from coffee. I think it's clear that people have different experiences with substances. Whether mine is a common one or not, I cannot say. But I do have a baseline to compare to and I can legitimately say the only thing that has ever caused me anhedonia was burning out from too much work (during burn out I was still consuming coffee and it didn't improve my mental state at all).
apples_oranges 6mo ago
Agree, I drink it a lot and then stop drinking it at least once a year for a few weeks, and for sure it's a different mode of mind, but can't really qualify it besides that I remember my thinking being softer, calmer and perhaps even "more correct" without coffee. (But I never had any mental-health incidents, and I drink a lot of it, more than all people that I personally know.)
- yetihehe 6mo ago
  For many years I go to the same vacation spot (kayaking in the most beautiful nature place I have seen) and go cold-turkey. I didn't notice any side effects of lack of coffee besides slower muddier thinking. After I go back and start drinking coffee, feel back to normal. I also had a very big life altering mental health incident very recently, drank A LOT of coffee during and I feel it helped, now I am much more calm, "more correct" despite drinking coffee like before. Based on this I posit that coffee is used by humans to offset unwanted mentality changes, not a cause of unwanted mentality changes.
  - nervousvarun 6mo ago
    Consider yourself lucky...You are one of these mythical creatures who don't get migraines from caffeine withdrawal. My wife is the same. When I quit I get splitting headaches that are way more severe than a typical tension headache. Completely debilitating without medication. Get them for a week or so (also get the muddier thinking but I could live with that).
bayarearefugee 6mo ago
Quitting caffeine after decades of use was a bit of a mixed bag for me in the short term, but positive in the long term. Going caffeine-free made it much easier to lose weight as I have far less cravings for high carbs and sugar now, presumably this is related to the impulsivity impact talked about in the paper. Going caffeine-free also made me very depressed for a while with severe anhedonia, this lasted way longer (like 3-4 months) than one would generally expect for caffeine withdrawal symptoms. I had seemingly become so used to the increased dopamine signaling while buzzed on caffeine that my brain was a mess for a rather extended period of time as it got used to not having it. Overall I view quitting as a positive for me, but I'd warn anyone thinking about doing it to do it carefully and closely monitor their mental health. AFAIK the impacts of quitting can be quite different for different people, so my experience may differ than that of others, but I had no idea how much of a (temporary) mental health crash quitting caffeine could cause until I experienced it.
- gabriel-uribe 6mo ago
  I'm almost exactly 1 year coffee-free (not caffeine free, but significantly less because tea is much less addictive for me). Also positive in the long-term for me. Fewer digestive issues, less spiky dopamine sensitive or impulsiveness and performance during the day, better memory. I wish it weren't so. But damn was the 3-6 months of anhedonia awful. I still feel pangs of it.
  - PsylentKnight 6mo ago
    How much coffee were you drinking before quitting? 3-6 months seems like a very long time. As far as I know, most withdrawal symptoms should end within 2 weeks, with the most intense symptoms ending within a few days
    - gabriel-uribe 6mo ago
      3-4 cups a day. Was deeply stressed building products with <$100/mo in rev. Couldn't sleep at night from all the caffeine and cortisol spikes. The ensuing several months were some of the worst in my life (many confounding variables) missing coffee, feeling anhedonic, and inadequately caffeinated/lucid to tackle my problems.
kakacik 6mo ago
I do believe a lot of it boils down to tolerance. I for example feel basically 0 effects, and drink it just because I like the taste (of a good one with milk, or exceptionally some good espresso / ristretto after big dinner). I recently traveled and didn't have coffee for more than a week. No change I could feel, no craving, nothing. But one of my ex-gf was quite sensitive on many things, had frequent headaches, low blood pressure and coffee was helping with those visibly. So YMMV.
yetihehe 6mo ago
After habitually consuming coffee daily in large quantities for two decades, I had mental health incident, during which I drank twice the amount of coffee and it felt like water. After that incident I still drink previous amount of coffee, but feel much better, much more rested, on an upward trajectory and like I have finally managed to escape the swamp I dragged myself into over many years. After reevaluating your comment and my experience I declare that coffee is not always a cause of mental health incidents, sometimes it might help people.
Noaidi 6mo ago
Yes, same here. I have schizoaffective disorder and realizing that caffeine affected my mental health so drastically was the beginning of my recovery journey 30 years ago. I can use caffeine now as a drug when I need it. Same with alcohol.
amelius 6mo ago
This happened to me with Pepsi cola. But then I found out I can drink coffee just fine, even 5 cups per day. Now I'm thinking it was the artificial sweetener.
testing22321 6mo ago
Same. I didn’t realize I’d been living life through a fog until fully 12 months with zero caffeine
blopp99 6mo ago
I had a similiar case with influeza the past december. I didn't eat for 4 days, fever for a long time, and low energy during the whole 4 weeks it took me to get back to normal. I couldn't drink coffee or alcohol during those 4 weeks, and notice that I didn't get any migraines after those 4 weeks even when I, for the past 12 years, knew exactly how I got them reliably. I didn't make sense to me to keep drinking coffee because the benefits of coffee which for me was mostly ritual and taste, didn't outweight the weight of having a migraine for sure if I slept a minute less than 8hrs. Mind you, I'm talking about a cup almost everyday with milk, ice coffee in the mornings.
- bichiliad 6mo ago
  I had wild food poisoning and had a similar experience (took me out for weeks, didn’t drink coffee). I assume the body must have some sort of gating mechanism for pain; I have absolutely had caffeine withdrawal before, but not that time. I’ve since cut back and switched to tea, which I believe has helped with my anxiety.
  - addaon 6mo ago
    I’m in the same spot after 4-5 weeks of norovirus. Couldn’t touch the stuff. Before, was at probably three to five cups a day. Biggest difference was waking up and feeling awake instead of in need of coffee… but I do miss it, too. Trying to decide what the new steady state is going to be. I’ve been doing one cup a day then switching to decaf while traveling, but that’s harder at home.
    - bichiliad 5mo ago
      I was genuinely really surprised at how easy it was to fit tea in instead. I have a cup of decaf once in a while, or a cup of normal coffee once in a while, but I kinda just wake up now. I think it's also helped not drinking caffeine as soon as I get up, to be honest.
grvdrm 6mo ago
Can you speak more to the psychoactive and cognition impacts to you in specifics? Very interested. I am a regular coffee drinker, mostly limited to very early morning (e.g. 5-7 am). Also consume celsius here and there when I want to minimize stomach disruption in the morning (e.g. I am about to run). But have also used THC in the past (no longer, major anxiety inducer for me). Alcohol like so many people. And more recently went on an assisted MDMA/ketamine therapy journey that continues to amaze me in its impact (in all good ways). Asking as I am reducing caffeine slowly right now and curious what folks are seeing as differences on/off in real terms.
- wafflemaker 6mo ago
  I had heart/chest pains from Lisdextroamphetamine (ADHD meds) that went away when I stopped drinking coffee. And I drunk very little, just one half cup in the morning. Much less anxious now too, but that's more likely due to ADHD meds.
  - scns 6mo ago
    Even on the "milder" Methylphenidate you can experince clenching jaw, grinding teeth and a chafed tongue when consuming coffee, tea and even dark chocolate.
    - wafflemaker 5mo ago
      While methylphenidate is considered milder, I always experienced come up as much more aggressive. And coffee interaction was just crazy. Once drank alcohol free champagne, while adjusting meds. I was on 27mg Concerta - long release methylphenidate. It turned out to be too much for me. But, oh boy, when i realized that the champagne was alcohol free, but white tea based - had to leave the birthday party I was at and just walk off the coming panic attack. Compared to that - coffee on lisdex will either just feel a little speedy and then give slight tiredness, or (and I don't understand why and when) give an effect comparable to high dose of methylphenidate - wired and cut of my feelings. This "cut off feelings" state was why I chose lisdex instead. Not because I was cut off after coffee, but because being cut off of feelings was a regular side effect of methylphenidate for me. But it's all super personal and case by case. Especially people that also have autism spectrum traits, should be aware that stimulants can work strong on them. So don't suggest yourself with my body's reaction and patiently and compassionately go through the meds adjustment process yourself.
jayd16 6mo ago
The occasional cup where you can actively feel you don't like it, doesn't sound like a solid analogue to the steady state of daily consumption. I jog every day and enjoy vs I don't exercise but I occasionally sprint and I feel awful after.
- IAmBroom 6mo ago
  GP said they previously had daily consumption.
  - jayd16 6mo ago
    And they didn't come to the same conclusion then. They changed their behavior, don't like the new behavior and are extrapolating that beyond the new behavior.
m463 6mo ago
true coffee lovers drink decaf. (they can drink coffee often without or with fewer side effects)
iberator 6mo ago
caffeine is not the same as coffee. coffee is caffeine plus THOUSANDS of compounds interacting with each other and your body: some of them are protective for the heart for example. That's why synthetic caffeine is bad, while coffee is overall good in moderation. That's why more people die from energy drinks than from coffe in coffeeshop hehe

readthenotes1 6mo ago

Notably, the article is looking at coffee, both caffeinated and decaffeinated. There is a lot more to coffee than just caffeine...

mixedCase 6mo ago
The overwhelming majority of the enjoyable coffee experiences are caffeinated. While there is good decaf out there it's not the norm, specially in smaller markets.
- tsimionescu 6mo ago
  I think they meant that coffee contains a lot of other compounds than just caffeine, which something like energy drinks or teas will not include. So you can't necessarily extend conclusions from a study on consumption of coffee to effects that other drinks that happen to include caffeine might have. Edit: this is especially relevant here, as the study found similar effects in decaffeinated coffee drinkers. So the effects they observed, if real, are not related to caffeine.

rimliu 6mo ago

How do you know that caffeine was the cause?

ivan_gammel 6mo ago
This of course cannot be generalized, but withdrawal is quite noticeable for personal well-being in a positive way.
TazeTSchnitzel 6mo ago
I didn't say it was the cause of the mental health incident! And I don't believe it to have been "the cause", either. It just happens to have been the thing that caused me to abruptly stop. It likely was a contributor, insofar as the incident had poor sleep as a contributing factor, and I do know with some certainty the caffeine habit had been causing some (likely not all) of my sleep problems. I can also tell you the very worst day of that incident was when I mistakenly consumed caffeine again prior to being recovered enough for that to be safe; that was a horrible glimpse at what that drug can do to you when you're in an already very unstable state. Caffeine definitely can aggravate all kinds of symptoms, even when you're in a relatively stable state. It's a stimulant, after all. But I think caffeine consumption is… only one factor of many in causes of that incident, and doesn't deserve any special blame. The relevance of the mental health incident here is really that it gave me a chance and a good reason to abruptly stop, and therefore also the opportunity to see what getting the brain back into the caffeination ritual again feels like. (I've tried taking it for a few consecutive days more than once since then, and not particularly enjoyed it. I've also tried it on single isolated days.)

barrenko 6mo ago

Coffee is a plant demon that created the western civilization as we know it today...

fermiNitambh 6mo ago
I like this worldview. Prior to coffee, Europe was in the grip of the beer dwarves. Coffee demons took over and invented nationalism, capitalism and Keynesian economics.
- anonym29 6mo ago
  At least the coffee demons aren't quite as bad as the amphetamine demons that produced Nazi Germany.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - barrenko 6mo ago
    We could view as amphetamine vs. coffee / black tea.
- nervousvarun 6mo ago
  Obligatory recommendation for: Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed our World by Mark Pendergrast Fantastic book. I first encountered it...in a coffee shop :) Read a chapter and immediately bought the book for myself.
- malicka 6mo ago
  Putting Keynesian economics next to nationalism on the evil list was so funny, I almost spit out my coffee.
  - sph 6mo ago
    Is it? Keynesian economics created the economic framework to finance World Wars.

BatteryMountain 6mo ago

I've had the same experience. Caffeine is super addicting, the ritual & habits surrounding it is a potent pull. For myself, it makes me erratic, impulsive, more reactive and agitated. One cup a day puts me on edge, makes me sweat more, makes me more intolerant, makes everything feel too slow. It such a sneaky drug and it can really get under your skin without you realizing how much it changes you.

orphea 6mo ago
I don't have the same experience, and I drink one cup of coffee (270 ml) almost every day. No agitation, no impulsiveness. I can drink coffee in late evening (let's say 8 pm) and sleep well. I guess I'm trying to say that we should not project our own experience on others, everyone is different.
- Sammi 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - aswegs8 6mo ago
    My prior would rather be that people have wildly varying sensitivity to caffeine genetically. Some get panic attacks, some don't feel much.
  - IAmBroom 6mo ago
    Only true if they drank a cup of coffee since their earliest memories began.
    - Sammi 5mo ago
      That's not how memory works. You mutate a memory on every recall. Your old memories are all completely changed from what they actually were.
  - nsagent 6mo ago
    I really only started drinking coffee at my first real job after grad school. They had free coffee in the kitchen, so I'd occassionally have one. Maybe once or twice a week. I was like that for several years, and would occassionally go weeks without a coffee. During that time, I was very productive and went from being a new grad to leading the entire team of veterans in less than five years. After leaving that job, I now consume fairly regularly (for the past decade at least). I can still easily skip days without coffee, though I do prefer having it daily. I literally see no difference in my day to day between having coffee and not throughout my two decades of experience with coffee. I can just as easily fall asleep after a coffee and I rarely feel amped up from a coffee (if I do, then I just stop drinking it). I've certainly never felt anhedonia like many others have mentioned in the comments when I've taken breaks from coffee. I think it's clear that people have different experiences with substances. Whether mine is a common one or not, I cannot say. But I do have a baseline to compare to and I can legitimately say the only thing that has ever caused me anhedonia was burning out from too much work (during burn out I was still consuming coffee and it didn't improve my mental state at all).

apples_oranges 6mo ago

Agree, I drink it a lot and then stop drinking it at least once a year for a few weeks, and for sure it's a different mode of mind, but can't really qualify it besides that I remember my thinking being softer, calmer and perhaps even "more correct" without coffee. (But I never had any mental-health incidents, and I drink a lot of it, more than all people that I personally know.)

yetihehe 6mo ago
For many years I go to the same vacation spot (kayaking in the most beautiful nature place I have seen) and go cold-turkey. I didn't notice any side effects of lack of coffee besides slower muddier thinking. After I go back and start drinking coffee, feel back to normal. I also had a very big life altering mental health incident very recently, drank A LOT of coffee during and I feel it helped, now I am much more calm, "more correct" despite drinking coffee like before. Based on this I posit that coffee is used by humans to offset unwanted mentality changes, not a cause of unwanted mentality changes.
- nervousvarun 6mo ago
  Consider yourself lucky...You are one of these mythical creatures who don't get migraines from caffeine withdrawal. My wife is the same. When I quit I get splitting headaches that are way more severe than a typical tension headache. Completely debilitating without medication. Get them for a week or so (also get the muddier thinking but I could live with that).

bayarearefugee 6mo ago

Quitting caffeine after decades of use was a bit of a mixed bag for me in the short term, but positive in the long term. Going caffeine-free made it much easier to lose weight as I have far less cravings for high carbs and sugar now, presumably this is related to the impulsivity impact talked about in the paper. Going caffeine-free also made me very depressed for a while with severe anhedonia, this lasted way longer (like 3-4 months) than one would generally expect for caffeine withdrawal symptoms. I had seemingly become so used to the increased dopamine signaling while buzzed on caffeine that my brain was a mess for a rather extended period of time as it got used to not having it. Overall I view quitting as a positive for me, but I'd warn anyone thinking about doing it to do it carefully and closely monitor their mental health. AFAIK the impacts of quitting can be quite different for different people, so my experience may differ than that of others, but I had no idea how much of a (temporary) mental health crash quitting caffeine could cause until I experienced it.

gabriel-uribe 6mo ago
I'm almost exactly 1 year coffee-free (not caffeine free, but significantly less because tea is much less addictive for me). Also positive in the long-term for me. Fewer digestive issues, less spiky dopamine sensitive or impulsiveness and performance during the day, better memory. I wish it weren't so. But damn was the 3-6 months of anhedonia awful. I still feel pangs of it.
- PsylentKnight 6mo ago
  How much coffee were you drinking before quitting? 3-6 months seems like a very long time. As far as I know, most withdrawal symptoms should end within 2 weeks, with the most intense symptoms ending within a few days
  - gabriel-uribe 6mo ago
    3-4 cups a day. Was deeply stressed building products with <$100/mo in rev. Couldn't sleep at night from all the caffeine and cortisol spikes. The ensuing several months were some of the worst in my life (many confounding variables) missing coffee, feeling anhedonic, and inadequately caffeinated/lucid to tackle my problems.

kakacik 6mo ago

I do believe a lot of it boils down to tolerance. I for example feel basically 0 effects, and drink it just because I like the taste (of a good one with milk, or exceptionally some good espresso / ristretto after big dinner). I recently traveled and didn't have coffee for more than a week. No change I could feel, no craving, nothing. But one of my ex-gf was quite sensitive on many things, had frequent headaches, low blood pressure and coffee was helping with those visibly. So YMMV.

yetihehe 6mo ago

After habitually consuming coffee daily in large quantities for two decades, I had mental health incident, during which I drank twice the amount of coffee and it felt like water. After that incident I still drink previous amount of coffee, but feel much better, much more rested, on an upward trajectory and like I have finally managed to escape the swamp I dragged myself into over many years. After reevaluating your comment and my experience I declare that coffee is not always a cause of mental health incidents, sometimes it might help people.

Noaidi 6mo ago

Yes, same here. I have schizoaffective disorder and realizing that caffeine affected my mental health so drastically was the beginning of my recovery journey 30 years ago. I can use caffeine now as a drug when I need it. Same with alcohol.

amelius 6mo ago

This happened to me with Pepsi cola. But then I found out I can drink coffee just fine, even 5 cups per day. Now I'm thinking it was the artificial sweetener.

testing22321 6mo ago

Same. I didn’t realize I’d been living life through a fog until fully 12 months with zero caffeine

blopp99 6mo ago

I had a similiar case with influeza the past december. I didn't eat for 4 days, fever for a long time, and low energy during the whole 4 weeks it took me to get back to normal. I couldn't drink coffee or alcohol during those 4 weeks, and notice that I didn't get any migraines after those 4 weeks even when I, for the past 12 years, knew exactly how I got them reliably. I didn't make sense to me to keep drinking coffee because the benefits of coffee which for me was mostly ritual and taste, didn't outweight the weight of having a migraine for sure if I slept a minute less than 8hrs. Mind you, I'm talking about a cup almost everyday with milk, ice coffee in the mornings.

bichiliad 6mo ago
I had wild food poisoning and had a similar experience (took me out for weeks, didn’t drink coffee). I assume the body must have some sort of gating mechanism for pain; I have absolutely had caffeine withdrawal before, but not that time. I’ve since cut back and switched to tea, which I believe has helped with my anxiety.
- addaon 6mo ago
  I’m in the same spot after 4-5 weeks of norovirus. Couldn’t touch the stuff. Before, was at probably three to five cups a day. Biggest difference was waking up and feeling awake instead of in need of coffee… but I do miss it, too. Trying to decide what the new steady state is going to be. I’ve been doing one cup a day then switching to decaf while traveling, but that’s harder at home.
  - bichiliad 5mo ago
    I was genuinely really surprised at how easy it was to fit tea in instead. I have a cup of decaf once in a while, or a cup of normal coffee once in a while, but I kinda just wake up now. I think it's also helped not drinking caffeine as soon as I get up, to be honest.

grvdrm 6mo ago

Can you speak more to the psychoactive and cognition impacts to you in specifics? Very interested. I am a regular coffee drinker, mostly limited to very early morning (e.g. 5-7 am). Also consume celsius here and there when I want to minimize stomach disruption in the morning (e.g. I am about to run). But have also used THC in the past (no longer, major anxiety inducer for me). Alcohol like so many people. And more recently went on an assisted MDMA/ketamine therapy journey that continues to amaze me in its impact (in all good ways). Asking as I am reducing caffeine slowly right now and curious what folks are seeing as differences on/off in real terms.

wafflemaker 6mo ago
I had heart/chest pains from Lisdextroamphetamine (ADHD meds) that went away when I stopped drinking coffee. And I drunk very little, just one half cup in the morning. Much less anxious now too, but that's more likely due to ADHD meds.
- scns 6mo ago
  Even on the "milder" Methylphenidate you can experince clenching jaw, grinding teeth and a chafed tongue when consuming coffee, tea and even dark chocolate.
  - wafflemaker 5mo ago
    While methylphenidate is considered milder, I always experienced come up as much more aggressive. And coffee interaction was just crazy. Once drank alcohol free champagne, while adjusting meds. I was on 27mg Concerta - long release methylphenidate. It turned out to be too much for me. But, oh boy, when i realized that the champagne was alcohol free, but white tea based - had to leave the birthday party I was at and just walk off the coming panic attack. Compared to that - coffee on lisdex will either just feel a little speedy and then give slight tiredness, or (and I don't understand why and when) give an effect comparable to high dose of methylphenidate - wired and cut of my feelings. This "cut off feelings" state was why I chose lisdex instead. Not because I was cut off after coffee, but because being cut off of feelings was a regular side effect of methylphenidate for me. But it's all super personal and case by case. Especially people that also have autism spectrum traits, should be aware that stimulants can work strong on them. So don't suggest yourself with my body's reaction and patiently and compassionately go through the meds adjustment process yourself.

jayd16 6mo ago

The occasional cup where you can actively feel you don't like it, doesn't sound like a solid analogue to the steady state of daily consumption. I jog every day and enjoy vs I don't exercise but I occasionally sprint and I feel awful after.

IAmBroom 6mo ago
GP said they previously had daily consumption.
- jayd16 6mo ago
  And they didn't come to the same conclusion then. They changed their behavior, don't like the new behavior and are extrapolating that beyond the new behavior.

m463 6mo ago

true coffee lovers drink decaf. (they can drink coffee often without or with fewer side effects)

iberator 6mo ago

caffeine is not the same as coffee. coffee is caffeine plus THOUSANDS of compounds interacting with each other and your body: some of them are protective for the heart for example. That's why synthetic caffeine is bad, while coffee is overall good in moderation. That's why more people die from energy drinks than from coffe in coffeeshop hehe