In my experience, it's shockingly difficult to stop consuming caffeine.
N of 1: I had a similar experience to the author. I was fine for a few weeks, slowly weening down my caffeine intake (I did get to zero eventually w/o headaches).
But I never felt quite "right." I always felt a little slow/sluggish, and I missed the routine. Perhaps work just isn't as interesting without caffeine?
Anyway, I'm back on it now, but I limit myself to one cup per day (and perhaps a second 1-2 days a week).
Similar experience. Went cold turkey once and had quite strong headaches for 2-3 days. No trouble for the remainder of the fortnight. But I only stopped because of vacation and the resort only had terrible coffee. (Headaches were marginally preferable.)
That said, my consumption levels have been sane for a few years now. I understand the negatives of over consumption but I don't fully understand the case for elimination?
Caffeine is a vasoconstrictor. The headaches are from your brain trying to adjust to the blood vessel change. Quitting even a mild habit can shave some points off your blood pressure.
If you drink soda or add cream/sugar to your coffee or tea, you may also find yourself losing some weight from stripping out the empty calories.
I’ve managed a few times, and gotten over the hump too, but the problem is I’ll “just have one” a few months later and it feels amazing and now I drink coffee again
I'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...
> Perhaps work just isn't as interesting without caffeine?
Since I quit caffeine (or stopped habitually drinking it every day)I noticed I am so much productive when I actually do drink a cup of coffee or strong tea. I'll be focused and fast. A little worrying to me to have an addiction so I can be more productive at work. It helps with my art hobby too.
Part of me wonders if I have undiagnosed adhd or something since the caffeine is so effective and making me focus and work better?
I suspect that's part of the problem with the slow weaning process, compared to cold turkey. Similar to when people who quit smoking by cutting down
When I quit caffeine cold turkey, the side effects were immediate, but getting over the side effects only took days. Then feeling the benefit only took days after that.
So each hit was sudden and very noticeable, where as I suspect trying to slowly wean yourself off over months misses that sudden hit one day of "wow, I just feel so awake"
When you keep it to 1 cup/day, and do something like not consuming on weekends to lower the tolerance, it actually feels like a drug again. A drug you can be productive on.
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.
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.
> 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.
I agree with this this. The headaches are bad from quitting cold turkey, but it's not worth dragging it out for a year just to avoid a few days of headaches
The longer process wasn't to avoid withdrawals. I already went through the withdrawals while I had the flu.
I've quit cold turkey before, going through the withdrawals for ~1 week. Problem is, the habit didn't have enough time to change. I was back on coffee within a month.
This particular process allowed me to cement this change permanently.
I guess I could've made it clearer in the article.
I 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.
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.
Even when I go a week to a month without caffeine, I tend to stay up late, but not late enough to get things done.
However, if I drink something caffeinated, then I can turn that into staying up late enough to work while it's quiet, and I become much more productive.
There are other reasons as well, however they are more specific to my personal scenario, and not really generally applicable. If you're curious, I'd be happy to talk about them in some other way, but not in a public forum. (My email is in my bio if anyone's interested.)
What happened for me was winter. I was waking up at 7, running every day in the morning, working on a project before work. Then winter hit and seasonal depression makes it hard.
So now I'm waking up earlier, and doing more work, but I'm using coffee again....
Are you sure all of these issues are directly resulted by caffeine intake? Two years ago I had to quit caffeine for some time (medical issues) and it turned out that my sleep problems where (are) mostly related to the lack of physical activity and stress. Of course if several of those 5-6 cups were late at the day, then yeah, that might impact your quality of sleep, but regular morning cup of coffee shouldn't cause such issues considering caffeine half life is ~5 hours.
My comment was meant as a play on the old Mark Twain† bit about quitting smoking. I also now realize I misread your comment as saying quitting was "easy" when you said it's "easily one of the best quality of life decisions".
In reality I have quit caffeine and gone back to it. I didn't see the same benefits as you. After a few days of adjusting, I felt about the same as before. The only difference was I didn't get to enjoy a morning coffee anymore.
Don't forget the other effects of caffeine. It raises blood pressure. Hypertension is called the silent killer with good reason. I've quit caffeine 3 times now. This last time was at my doctors recommendation (slightly elevated BP).
It really helped along with not drinking all the gunk in soda. Since then, I've cut salt intake, sugar binging, and set aside 30 minutes most days to get the heart rate up. I'm no "health nut" but after breaking my sedentary habits, I do feel better than I have in a long time.
I quite several times over the years, one time as long as 6 months. I go back, ultimately, because I love the flavor.
That said, I would never work as early as 9am if I didn't have to. Caffeine allows me to jumpstart my brain for programming. I need coffee in particular: tea sustains but doesn't jumpstart.
Exercise first thing in the morning can act as a substitute for coffee in getting my brain jumpstarted. While I find it easy to exercise at 6:30-7am in the Summer and Fall, Winter and Spring in southern New England suck. At 6:30am, it's often dark, 10-20F, windy, and damp. It's an area made for depressions. I can't see ever giving up coffee while I live here.
It's important to point out that about every decade you're going to have to adapt your diet and exercise to meet changes in your body. I'm 53 now. When I don't exercise at least 5x/week I start to have sleeping issues. Alcohol affects me more, especially my sleep. Carb bombing happens with a portion of half the amount I could eat 10 years ago. Back to coffee, I have 2 espressos in the morning and, occasionally, one after lunch but never after 2pm. Breaking any of those coffee "rules" causes me hypertension, sleep loss, and/or a sour stomach.
Sorry for the tome. Hopefully some of it is useful.
IIRC academic studies have shown that people don’t ”love the flavor”; rather, they misattribute to flavor the craving they have for the neuropsychological effects of their preferred substances.
I tried black coffee for short durations and hated it. So, I'm willing to say my experience follows the conclusion of the study.
However, people have wide variations in what they taste (and smell) as pleasurable. Without reading the study, I have a hard time being as binary as "nobody likes the taste of coffee".
> That said, I think quitting sugar is harder than quitting caffeine.
It is, your intestinal bacteria take that sugar and secrete opioid receptor chemicals - i may be off, but between wheat, sugar, and i think corn your gut bacteria basically control your life.
This is why people crave cake and sweets when they go on a low carb / low calorie diet, it's not because they're hungry, it's because they're changing the other half of their brain chemistry through the destruction of their gut bacteria.
It's not a bad thing to destroy the gut bacteria you don't really want to have so much of.
Been on keto for the last 3 months. Can confirm. However once I got over the carb cravings I have a markedly lower appetite. I eat 1-2 meals per day now where on no restrictions I was hungry every 4 hours like clockwork
Alton Brown suggested adding a tiny pinch of salt to coffee instead of sugar. I like it, it takes the edge off the bitterness without an explicit "salty" flavor.
Have you tried a swiss water decaf from a serious third+ wave coffee place? Are you grinding? I hear decaf described as "weak" or "brothy", but not as "chemical" or "solvent-y". I pollute coffee with some cream (but no sugar) and I don't know that I could triangle-test-detect a good decaf.
This. If you’re in the US, Blue Bottle is easy to get in the mail if not in most cities. Vertigo is another brand making my current favorite, it’s more complex than 80% of even caffeinated 3+ wave coffees. Those are if you drink black / medium roast. If you use cream, any Starbucks or Philz decaf is pretty good these days too.
My guess is you're going to be fine and that you're through whatever withdrawal you're going to deal with. I go through stretches where I have some decaf every day, and I never even have to think about stopping; there is zero withdrawal from it.
I started with going from coffee to black tea, which is supposedly about half the caffeine... now I just skip tea sometimes. maybe i’ll stop it completely
Green tea would be a good next step - a bit less caffeine (although I'm sure this could vary between brands) but still satisfies the need for a nice warm drink. I've been having green tea for many months now (after quitting coffee) and I'm not even sure it's worth stopping - I don't get any of the anxiety that I'd get with coffee, for example.
Green tea can totally have more caffeine than coffee, especially if you re-brew like many people do. But the theanine in tea takes the anxious edge off.
> † Not health! My alcohol and nicotine affinities will attest to how little health has to do with any of this! I literally just mean life is more pleasant without the caffeine.
That's intriguing, could you expand on that? What about life is different, nevermind more pleasant, with or without caffeine?
For me I felt more rested and alert upon opening my eyes in the morning, since that was no longer the peak withdrawal time. And not riding a rollercoaster of cortisol all day made it easier to choose my own mind state, e.g. meditation or reflection vs. action and anxiety.
I was similarly addicted and quit for similar reasons. https://www.weancaffeine.com worked really well for me - I bought 3 packs and was off caffeine in a few weeks. I was slightly slower those weeks but it wasn't so painful.
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.
Nah, that's a pass for me! Life's too short to not have one vice. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't drink soda - but I do enjoy my 4 cups of coffee a day. I drink it black, zero sugar or milk/cream.
If you're drinking so much that you get migraines, you should cut down. I don't get that though, ever.
I love the taste of coffee so it would be very hard to quit. If you like black coffee look into a decent espresso machine. I do 4 cups with that and it’s incredible. I believe in the Dale Cooper (Twin Peaks) school of thought.
I started getting headaches on Saturday evenings and could not figure out why. I realized I don't drink coffee on weekends, as the work provided a very reasonable espresso machine. I now make sure I drink at least a cup of tea over weekend days :-)
Caffeine is indicated as a protector against Alzheimers. The disease is prevalent in my family, so I have good reason to make sure I'm Joe'd up.
I quit 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.
It seems to affect different people differently. I grew up in a house where coffee consumption was measured in pots, not cups, and consequently, I like to drink 5+ cups / day.
I usually give up caffeine completely for a month each year just to see if I'm actually addicted; I've not had the experience of the author.
Worked with a laborer who would drink an entire pot of coffee before 10 am. I have no idea what his total consumption was but it was extremely high. Myself, I can't stand the taste of coffee so I've never tried it.
He got a job at a pawnshop years after I left that particular job. He was at work talking to a customer one day, had a massive heart attack and died at age 39.
Genetics are a significant factor in how you metabolize caffeine. Some people can have a cup right before bed and be find. Others, won't be able to sleep the entire night. Maybe you metabolize caffeine quicker or something
I've never liked coffee, but I've been a diet soda addict for about 15 years, going multiple days in a row where it's the only liquid I ingest, but due to the pandemic, I don't go out for groceries much anymore, opting instead to just order from Instacart. At least in my area, soda is substantially more expensive online than picking it up in the store, and because of this, I bought a SodaStream machine, a 20lb CO2 tank from a welding supply store, a refill adapter, and low-calorie water-flavoring packs that don't have any caffeine.
The headaches stopped after a couple days, and I fortunately didn't have any other side effects (I think because the caffeine concentration in soda tends to be a lot lower than that of coffee).
The positives were almost immediate; my sleep improved after a day, and while it might be psychosomatic, I think my focus for work improved a bit.
I'm not a doctor, but at least according to Mayo Clinic (which I think is somewhat respected?), artificial sweeteners don't affect blood sugar [0].
> Sugar substitutes don't affect your blood sugar level. In fact, most artificial sweeteners are considered "free foods" — foods containing less than 20 calories and 5 grams or less of carbohydrates — because they don't count as calories or carbohydrates on a diabetes exchange. Remember, however, that other ingredients in foods containing artificial sweeteners can still affect your blood sugar level.
That said, it's probably still not super healthy for my to be ingesting as much aspartame as I do. Eventually I need to ween myself off that, but one step at a time I suppose.
I'm not going to claim that artificial sweeteners are harmless, it would almost certainly be preferable for me to be drinking water without any flavorings.
That said, there's a lot lower-hanging-fruit for me to cut out of my diet first; potato chips, snack cakes, and Taco Bell are vices that I probably can shake a bit quicker.
IIRC artificial sweeteners do not affect blood sugar directly, but they can still cause an insulin response, lowering blood sugar and making one hungry.
according to this study [0] artificial sweeteners affect your insulin response and resistance, but some other cursory googling says that this is a contested claim without much study.
Actually, a cursory Google Scholar search pretty much confirms that these things have been widely studied and that at least sucralose DOES affect the insulin response.
I've started drinking this[1] and I really like it. On one hand, it's been kinda expensive because I really like it so I drink it a lot. On the other hand, I'm drinking loads of water and feel great, so I guess in a way it's an investment.
I've been pretty happy with just the SodaStream. at least after I got the adapters and attachments to refill the CO2 cartridges myself, since buying the refills from SodaStream themselves is ridiculously overpriced.
It doesn't carbonate "like a beer", but it does carbonate "like a soda", which, as I stated, is basically my vice of choice.
Pure caffeine is quite different - it removes many of the (negative) effects, notably stomach upset, bloating, frequent urination.
For me, powder in capsules works best, pressed tablets are slower to take effect, and the brand also matters, although there's so many of them you'd have to try and see for yourself - either part of the extraction process or the source of caffeine is different, but some brands are noticeably and consistently different in effects.
Some have that brain fog and jitteriness that is common with coffee, some are just a clean alertness with clean withdrawal.
Quitting coffee using pure caffeine might work for some, and not for others.
I 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.
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.
Coffee w/ L-theanine is a whole different thing, worth trying. I quit caffeine for most of 2020, then had a Taika (taika.co) out of curiosity.. now I drink it regularly. For me, it removes most of the downside of caffeine, including withdrawal headaches.
I came here to say this. Coffee makes me very anxious and makes it hard for me to focus on tasks. I throw in some L-theanine and suddenly everything is ok. Using drugstore capsules makes it really cheap too.
"These results replicate previous evidence which suggests that L-theanine and caffeine in combination are beneficial for improving performance on cognitively demanding tasks." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18681988/
An option for quitting/cutting down that I don't see mentioned often is using low-caf coffee rather than having to go for cold turkey or "quantum leap" full-caff to decaf cups in the same day.
Perhaps it's so obvious that people don't think of it, but you can just mix your normal coffee and decaf in the same drink to get the dilution you require.
I have decaf and normal coffee beans, grind them and store them in separate bags and just gradually decrease the caffeine dosage through the day, and the daily dosage through a longer period if I'm trying to cut down.
I quit caffiene about a decade ago before taking it up again six or seven years later. Quiting wasn't really that great a decision. A lot of the problems that I had attributed to caffiene or caffiene withdrawl such as migraines and periodic brain fog didn't go away without caffiene. Some of the more accute issues did, but I used to get regular insomnia (and still do) and I'd have no crutch to get me through those days after a sleepless night had thown me off balance.
What's worse is that I couldn't really get away from caffiene altogether, things like chocolate contain caffiene as well as a surprising number of drinks which aren't required to advertise their caffine quantity. So I'd occasionally end up getting some caffiene by accident and because I had been avoiding it, I wouldn't have enough of a tolerance to deal with it. I'd have a drink that I didn't know contained caffiene and would suddenly find myself wired with my hands shaking uncontrollably. That hasn't happened since I starting drinking coffee on weekdays again. Having more caffiene than I meant to is still a problem, but not nearly as big a problem as it used to be.
Thanks for sharing your experience. This is the kind of thing that makes me question if removing coffee from my routine is really worth it in the long run. I have two young kids so a bad nights sleep (not from insomnia but from kids) is going to make my next day super unproductive.
I definitely drink large cups in the morning but don't feel like it's causing my problems except if I don't drink coffee and the afternoon lull. If I was being honest the hope would be that going cold turkey would have a completely level, focused energy all day long but that isn't a realistic outcome and I trade out an enjoyable morning routine (coffee w/bagels, coffee w/biscotti).
The outcomes everyone talks about don't quite resonate with me - though I don't love the idea of being beholden to coffee/caffeine. Not being dismissive of everyones benefits I find myself questioning the long term benefit. I feel like I'm missing something.
I "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.
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
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?
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 248 ms ] threadN 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).
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?
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.
And on nights I got less than 8 hours, wow, I couldn't do it without caffeine.
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...
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?
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"
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.
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.
Unfortunately for me, the latter was the case. And what I described is just something that worked for me.
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.
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.
The longer process wasn't to avoid withdrawals. I already went through the withdrawals while I had the flu.
I've quit cold turkey before, going through the withdrawals for ~1 week. Problem is, the habit didn't have enough time to change. I was back on coffee within a month.
This particular process allowed me to cement this change permanently.
I guess I could've made it clearer in the article.
I sleep much better and can now wake up without an alarm. I also have lots of energy the entire day.
> why drink 5 cups / day ?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22978219 still applies.
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.
Unfortunately for me, this is a feature.
Even when I go a week to a month without caffeine, I tend to stay up late, but not late enough to get things done.
However, if I drink something caffeinated, then I can turn that into staying up late enough to work while it's quiet, and I become much more productive.
There are other reasons as well, however they are more specific to my personal scenario, and not really generally applicable. If you're curious, I'd be happy to talk about them in some other way, but not in a public forum. (My email is in my bio if anyone's interested.)
What happened for me was winter. I was waking up at 7, running every day in the morning, working on a project before work. Then winter hit and seasonal depression makes it hard.
So now I'm waking up earlier, and doing more work, but I'm using coffee again....
The body is too effective at regulating anything that feels good.
We'll see if the trick is to eat healthy and exercise instead of doing neither and then acting like it's the coffee that's going to kill you.
In reality I have quit caffeine and gone back to it. I didn't see the same benefits as you. After a few days of adjusting, I felt about the same as before. The only difference was I didn't get to enjoy a morning coffee anymore.
† It probably wasn't really by Mark Twain.
It really helped along with not drinking all the gunk in soda. Since then, I've cut salt intake, sugar binging, and set aside 30 minutes most days to get the heart rate up. I'm no "health nut" but after breaking my sedentary habits, I do feel better than I have in a long time.
That said, I would never work as early as 9am if I didn't have to. Caffeine allows me to jumpstart my brain for programming. I need coffee in particular: tea sustains but doesn't jumpstart.
Exercise first thing in the morning can act as a substitute for coffee in getting my brain jumpstarted. While I find it easy to exercise at 6:30-7am in the Summer and Fall, Winter and Spring in southern New England suck. At 6:30am, it's often dark, 10-20F, windy, and damp. It's an area made for depressions. I can't see ever giving up coffee while I live here.
It's important to point out that about every decade you're going to have to adapt your diet and exercise to meet changes in your body. I'm 53 now. When I don't exercise at least 5x/week I start to have sleeping issues. Alcohol affects me more, especially my sleep. Carb bombing happens with a portion of half the amount I could eat 10 years ago. Back to coffee, I have 2 espressos in the morning and, occasionally, one after lunch but never after 2pm. Breaking any of those coffee "rules" causes me hypertension, sleep loss, and/or a sour stomach.
Sorry for the tome. Hopefully some of it is useful.
However, people have wide variations in what they taste (and smell) as pleasurable. Without reading the study, I have a hard time being as binary as "nobody likes the taste of coffee".
So I drink coffee, black.
Coffee has become a really different experience without anything added (sugar or creamer).
All of a sudden the roast really matters (I like medium). and the brand really matters.
As for caffeine, this is how I do it: 1 "normal" coffee in the morning, then decaf from then on.
The normal coffee usually tastes better than decaf. (and a bad decaf tastes like bottled cancer - I swear I'm drinking turpentine)
I treat decaf like it's benign but my friends remind me - "decaf does not mean caffeine free".
That said, I think quitting sugar is harder than quitting caffeine.
It is, your intestinal bacteria take that sugar and secrete opioid receptor chemicals - i may be off, but between wheat, sugar, and i think corn your gut bacteria basically control your life.
This is why people crave cake and sweets when they go on a low carb / low calorie diet, it's not because they're hungry, it's because they're changing the other half of their brain chemistry through the destruction of their gut bacteria.
It's not a bad thing to destroy the gut bacteria you don't really want to have so much of.
Is there such thing as a good decaf though? All the ones I have ever tried had an horrible chemical-like taste.
I use Campos (in Australia) decaf, though I blend that with their regular blend.
1kg of decaf to 500g of their regular blend, giving me a 1/3 strength that I grind and use in either an aeropress or v60.
I moved to this, as near the start of the lockdown / wfh here I was drinking 4-5 regular aeropresses in a day with the caffeine impacting my sleep.
This new mix is much better - I have my ritual and nice coffee, and i can go off it for days without hitting the withdrawal.
Right now, I’m limiting caffeine intake to a cup each of decaf and low caffeine tea per day.
It hasn’t been too hard to be honest, but maybe the withdrawal symptoms haven’t fully kicked in yet. We’ll see.
That's intriguing, could you expand on that? What about life is different, nevermind more pleasant, with or without caffeine?
This is quite the claim and I do not agree at all. I do not get withdrawal symptoms from caffeine. And I sleep better than basically anyone I know.
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.
If you're drinking so much that you get migraines, you should cut down. I don't get that though, ever.
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.
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.
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.
after that I only drink Tea (black no sugar) and only about 3-4 a day. I can go a full day without any tea much easier than i could with no coffee... but I might just quit all caffeine completely anyway. we'll see, I need to find decent "hot drinks" that are low acidity and no milk. Mint Tea (no black tea in it) will only go so far.
I 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.
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.
I still consume it though.
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.
> 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/expe...
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.
That said, there's a lot lower-hanging-fruit for me to cut out of my diet first; potato chips, snack cakes, and Taco Bell are vices that I probably can shake a bit quicker.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014832
[1] https://liquiddeath.ca/products/sparkling-water
It doesn't carbonate "like a beer", but it does carbonate "like a soda", which, as I stated, is basically my vice of choice.
* 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
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.
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.
"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/
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
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.
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.
Im happy for it, just sucks there is so little decaf tea, coffee, cola, etc drinks. We need more decaf options.
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