I am trying to wean myself off of caffeine. I drink about 4-5 cups a day ( usually all by noon.) and I am in my Mother Earth Feel Good Natural Phase of life. ( Don’t worry, this will end soon.)
What have you tried? What have you heard? etc…
Thank you.
I went cold turkey 6-7 years ago, got sick of drinking all the soda, usually a 2l a day. Switched to drinking just water and never had any problems since. I don’t need it to get up in the morning or anything. Now I can’t stand soda at all, and tea is the only thing I drink with caffeine in it, and that’s rare too.
I go cold turkey every few months just to clean the junk out of my system. I just switch to drinking water for a few weeks each time. No biggy.
How to decaf yourself? Well, soaking in a solution of methylene chloride for a week works for coffee beans, but it might stain your porcelain tub. Speaking as an ex-addict myself, and mindful of the fact that caffeine’s effects, absent the fat (cream) and processed sugar that we suck down with it, are really not all that terrible, I’d suggest eliminating those additions first: you may find that you don’t want the caffeine without them. If you already drink your coffee black, or learn to enjoy it that way, you’ll probably want to gradually substitute another hot drink with less, little or no caffeine, and there are lots of choices out there. Find something benign that you like and use it liberally as a reward. Beware of one thing: a common effect of caffeine withdrawal is a mild headache, and many OTC pain relievers contain guess what? Finally, the best hope for maintaining a coffee-free life is to ban it from your house. Coffee is fragrant – you don’t want to be smelling someone else’s in the morning. At work, do what you have to. A dab of Vick’s Vap-O-Rub under your nose masks pretty much anything. It’ll also ruin your lunch, so you’ll have to force yourself to eat or decide to embark upon a diet too. Good luck.
Get pregnant.
I am a caffeine addict since I was a child (blame my blissfully ignorant grandma), within a week of getting pregnant I started finding coffee repulsive. Let’s see how long it lasts.
My problem was soda, not coffee. But still, I was addicted to the stuff. If I didn’t have a soda in the morning, I felt like I was going to die.
I went cold turkey about 3 or 4 months ago. The first week sucked and I felt super tired, but after that everything was fine…
I feel so much better in the mornings now… I honestly don’t need the stuff.
I go through phases too. I am in a caffeine drinking phase right now (thanks to an 8AM class), but I expect that will change one day when I am out of coffee and am too lazy to buy more. I have always quit cold turkey. I feel slow in the mornings for awhile, and get headaches, but once I get up and about the slowness goes away. I take Advil for the headaches when needed.
I didn’t start drinking coffee until my now nearly 5 year old daughter was born.
Before that it was tea, maybe one cup a day.
I have a headache right now…wah.
If you’d prefer to wean yourself off rather than go cold turkey, why don’t you try just putting less coffee in each cup you get? For example, if you usually get 4-5 cups, fill each cup 1/2 or 3/4 full instead of all the way. Try that for a week or so to see if it has any negative effects (headache, edginess, irritability), wait out those negative effects, then take away one of the cups so you’re drinking just 3-4 cups, each 1/2 to 3/4 full, and so on.
I guess it all depends on your personality. If you’re like me and really need your caffeine fix in the morning just to be conscious, if you wean yourself more slowly, at least you’ll be getting some caffeine, so you’ll still be running. If you don’t need it to wake you up, I’d say try going cold turkey. I’ve heard that’s what works best, though the weaning method worked pretty well for me, too.
I had to wean myself off caffeine slowly, or else I got killer headaches. I did this by making a smaller daily amount of coffee each week. If I had coffee when I went out to eat, I made sure it was decaf. I’ve heard that some people mix decaf with regular coffee in stages…for instance, 3-1 regular to decaf in the first week, then 2-1, then 1-1, then straight decaf.
I can now tolerate a little bit of caffeine. The reason I weaned myself off of it is because it gives me horrid heartburn. I don’t take painrelievers with caffeine in them, but I do have a glass of regular iced tea every now and then. I’ve switched my hot beverage preference to herbal teas…I’m a big fan of Celestial Seasonings.
Count me in as one who stopped cold turkey. I’ve never been a coffee drinker, but I had to have a pop at lunch, one when I got home from work, and one in the evening. When I stopped, it never really affected me in the short term. I made the switch from pop to water and just never looked back. I am now down to only 1 pop per week… and that is my upper limit. There are some times where I go an entire month without drinking pop.
The change from doing this was amazing. I started sleeping better at night and lost 10 lbs over the course of a couple months. One other thing I noticed was that I am now much more sensitive to caffine. I had a pop at about 9PM, went to bed at 11:30 and couldn’t get to sleep until 3:30 AM! :eek: I’m more careful now.
To answer the OP, I think ** Lynn Bodoni** has the right idea for weaning yourself off of it. Slowly start modifying your caffine intake. If it were me, I would make a change by lowering it every week. Eventually you will be at a level where you can just stop alltogether.
This is just an idea. I don’t drink caffeine at all except for the occasional Coke in restaurants and I’ll buy Coke with caffeine when I’m desperate and can’t find Caffeine Free Coke (like today). I am addicted to Coke, I need the sugar, but could care less about the caffeine.
IANAD but, if I was to quit, I would use the Migrane medicine at the drug store. They have caffeine in them. Cold turkey quit the coffee and try taking one caffeine pill if you feel like you’re losing it (jittery or headachy). This medicine has been an Og? send to me when I do get headaches. Not a bad thing to keep in the medicine cabinet.
That way you quit the physical habit of coffee and you can regulate your tapering off of the caffeine. I hate taking pills, so the desire to not take many pills would help me kick the habit faster. I don’t see you popping massive amounts of these pills to feel human, just one or two here and there. Within a week or two I bet you’ll be fine.
Switch to alcohol 