5 ms·

I quit coffee 6 weeks ago. The first two working days were hilarious, as I actually had trouble maintaining the focus to procrastinate. The headaches lasted fo

by mtrimpe 14y ago

I quit coffee 6 weeks ago. The first two working days were hilarious, as I actually had trouble maintaining the focus to procrastinate. The headaches lasted for a bit more than a week. I tried all household remedies and only peppermint tea seemed to help although it might also be the excess fluids. I tried to avoid taking painkillers (Ibuprofen worked like a charm) but in retrospect I would probably accept a week or so of Ibuprofen/Aspirin usage. All in all it took about two week for my body to feel balanced again. After that a few really interesting things happened though, namely: * I could no longer get away with no breakfast or morning routine, whereas before I would just drink a coffee and be ready to walk out the door. * It seemed that I used caffeine as an external motivator which kept me 'just doing stuff' and actually had to relearn how to choose goals and focus on them. * I had to accept that my mental acuity was just a bit lower; even though it's now constant throughout the day. * It now feels like my mental acuity is now linked to how physically healthy I am (as I've heard said many times), whereas that didn't seem to be the case all that much before. All in all I realized that caffeine is very much like a self-inflicted Ballmer Peak [1] and if you really try to keep your blood-caffeine percentage optimal like me and the OP did, you'll destroy yourself in the long term. [1] http://xkcd.com/323/ http://xkcd.com/323/

tibbon 14y ago
Humans are pretty good at attempting to keep an even level of some substances (especially fast acting ones, like nicotine) in their blood stream.
- mtrimpe 14y ago
  Very true. I only noticed all this after I quit smoking and subconsciously replaced a few smoke breaks with coffee breaks, causing me to massively overshoot my caffeine levels on a daily basis. Whether it's good to keep an even level of caffeine in your bloodstream is another question of course.
refurb 14y ago
As a tip, I was doing some international travel and knew I had to reduce my caffeine intake or else be forced into caffeine withdrawal. I was drinking 10-12 cups of tea per day. If I stopped, the headaches would be incredible. So three months before the trip, I just reduced my caffeine intake by 1 cup per week. The day I left for the trip, I could easily manage on 1 cup per day and the days I never had a cup of tea were fine. Quitting anything cold turkey is tough, it's easy to reduce the dose at a rate that it's practically unnoticeable. Easier to stay abstinent if you don't have withdrawal symptoms pushing you back to your old habits.
- pc86 14y ago
  This is the only way I was able to quit smoking. At its height it was about a pack a day (18-20). Every few days I'd reduce that daily number by one. Eventually it got to the point where a pack would last long enough that the last few cigarettes were stale and I'd have to throw the pack out. It doesn't take too long at that pace to just quit altogether.
  - refurb 14y ago
    Glad to hear it worked for you as well. I think the reason why this works is: (1) you still get to partake in your favorite habit (2) the habit changes so slowly you don't really perceive it changing (3) you aren't reducing the dosage so quickly that you lose any effect [i.e. when I went from 10 cups to 9 cups, I still got a boost from the caffeine] (4) by the time you get down to a reasonable dose [i.e. 1 or 2 cups] it feels like something you could carry on forever (5) you can further reduce doses by inserting holidays in between [i.e. one cup/cig every other day]. The nice part about this is that you can go as slow as you want. If you're smoking 1 pack a day (25 cigs), you can drop 1 cig each week [hardly noticeable] and it will take you almost a full year, but you'll get there eventually.

by mtrimpe 14y ago

tibbon 14y ago

Humans are pretty good at attempting to keep an even level of some substances (especially fast acting ones, like nicotine) in their blood stream.

mtrimpe 14y ago
Very true. I only noticed all this after I quit smoking and subconsciously replaced a few smoke breaks with coffee breaks, causing me to massively overshoot my caffeine levels on a daily basis. Whether it's good to keep an even level of caffeine in your bloodstream is another question of course.

refurb 14y ago

As a tip, I was doing some international travel and knew I had to reduce my caffeine intake or else be forced into caffeine withdrawal. I was drinking 10-12 cups of tea per day. If I stopped, the headaches would be incredible. So three months before the trip, I just reduced my caffeine intake by 1 cup per week. The day I left for the trip, I could easily manage on 1 cup per day and the days I never had a cup of tea were fine. Quitting anything cold turkey is tough, it's easy to reduce the dose at a rate that it's practically unnoticeable. Easier to stay abstinent if you don't have withdrawal symptoms pushing you back to your old habits.

pc86 14y ago
This is the only way I was able to quit smoking. At its height it was about a pack a day (18-20). Every few days I'd reduce that daily number by one. Eventually it got to the point where a pack would last long enough that the last few cigarettes were stale and I'd have to throw the pack out. It doesn't take too long at that pace to just quit altogether.
- refurb 14y ago
  Glad to hear it worked for you as well. I think the reason why this works is: (1) you still get to partake in your favorite habit (2) the habit changes so slowly you don't really perceive it changing (3) you aren't reducing the dosage so quickly that you lose any effect [i.e. when I went from 10 cups to 9 cups, I still got a boost from the caffeine] (4) by the time you get down to a reasonable dose [i.e. 1 or 2 cups] it feels like something you could carry on forever (5) you can further reduce doses by inserting holidays in between [i.e. one cup/cig every other day]. The nice part about this is that you can go as slow as you want. If you're smoking 1 pack a day (25 cigs), you can drop 1 cig each week [hardly noticeable] and it will take you almost a full year, but you'll get there eventually.