My therapist has suggested that I decrease my caffeine intake by about half and drink more water instead. I have seen that the link between excessive caffeine consumption and depression is tenuous at best, but as the Mayo clinic’s website says, caffeine affects people differently so I might as well give it a shot. Plus, I know that my depression first kicked in about the same time I started drinking caffeine like a fiend- namely, high school, when I had to be up and out the door before 6 AM and couldn’t wake up without it. So I figure I’ll try it.
Now, I don’t drink as much soda as I used to, because it’s expensive. So most of my caffeine comes from making my own sweet tea (or hot tea, now that it’s cooler). I know that I can get decaf tea or coffee, so I should do that next time I go to the store. (I love green tea. Any chance that decaf green tea is readily available in tea bags at most stores? I haven’t seen it at the one I go to, but it’s a smaller store.)
My problem is with water. I don’t like it, I think it tastes bad. Tap water here is not as bad as at my parents’ house, but still not palatable (to me). I also don’t like (nor can I afford) bottled water (Aqua Fina tastes like ass anyway). The only drinks I like that aren’t sweet are coffee and beer… so putting a slice of lemon in my water doesn’t work.
Crystal Light makes some pretty good tasting beverages- unfortunately the ones I like are their tea beverages, and one or two others, that all have at least a little caffeine (not as much as, say, a cup of coffee, but still.) Could I drink CL instead of water?
My last problem is this- I am having some fairly annoying withdrawals. I’ve been trying to cut down on caffeine for less than a week, but the day that I did manage to drink almost no caffeine I slept for about 12 hours and took a 3 hour nap. Pretty bad.
Any advice would be appreciated. I’m sure that amount of caffeine I drink isn’t good for me anyway, depression notwithstanding. Help!
If you’re having trouble with cutting down too fast and having withdrawals, you could try what my sister-in-law did years ago to completely quit caffeine. She mixed her coffee in the morning to specific proportions, starting with 7:1 caffeinated to decaf. She’d drink that for a week or two, then do 3:1 for a while, then 5:3 and so on. She still got to drink what she liked, but she was weaning her body off the juice slowly. (She suffered severe headaches if she went any faster; apparently her body does not let go of caffeine willingly.)
It sounds like tea is your choice, so you might try doing something similar with tea until you’ve got yourself down to an acceptable level of caffeine intake. If you’re using individual teabags, just keep track of how many caffeinated vs. decaf you use and adjust the proportions accordingly.
I drink a lot of Crystal Light myself, all decaf, but I like their lemonade, which you may not enjoy. I also buy the store brand flavored sparkling water in 1 liter bottles as a treat, every once in a while. It’s not as expensive as soda, and it’s tasty!
One way that I’ve tried and worked was to wein (sp?) myself off. Since counting the number of caffinated drinks to do it was a pain in the ass, I instead got those 200mg Vivarin tablets. The day I wanted to quit, I took just one. The next day, I cut it and took half of one. The next day, I took half of one again. The next two days, I took a quarter of one. While the whole time not drinking caffinated beverages. After that I felt pretty good without the side effects of stopping cold turkey. Tossed the Vivarins in the trash after that. I’ve found this to be the closest thing to a “caffeine patch”. I would get the effects caffeine, while getting used to drinking non-caffeine products while I weined off.
The problem for me though is that after I stopped, a couple weeks later I crave the flavor of the caffinated drinks I enjoy (dr pepper, coffee, etc…) The shit tastes so damn good that I get hooked again. Lifetime of drinking water and milk? I just can’t do that. And the non-caffinated and sugarless stuff I can only do for so long. So for me, the method I used of stopping works fairly well, but the urge to resist starting up again is fairly tough.
I buy decaf green tea bags all the time, for my husband. Celestial Seasonings makes them, as does his favorite, Salada (at least I think that’s how it’s spelled).
I’m also trying to cut way back on the caffiene- it gives me anxiety, and some days it’s very easy and some days it’s hard. I’m used to my coffee and my Cokes. As far as drinking more water, bottled water by the gallon in the store brand is not that expensive. I usually find it about 2 for a dollar. Every night I have two glasses of water, for two reasons. For hydration and a motive to get up in the morning when my alarm goes off. A squeeze of lemon or lime helps with the boringness of water.
I’ve quite drinking caffeine twice before. All you need to do is set aside two days where you will be really, really sleepy. Sleep most of those days and from then on it shouldn’t be too hard to stop.
As for not liking water, try to get used to it. You’d be surprised to find the kind of things your body can get used to eating.
I’ll do another vote for weaning. My SO and I used to drink a huge amount of coffee, like a pot each, every morning. We started cutting it in half by mixing the beans half-decaf, and drank half-caff for a while. Then only making 1 pot between us (about 2 mug-fulls each, it’s not a big pot), so that was the 1/4 caffiene step. From there, just not having any in the morning wasn’t a big deal. I have a cup of half-leaded maybe twice a week, but now I can take or leave it.
Your tea strategy could involve a cuppa regular then switch to decaff if you sip it all day. Or make a teapot in the morning with steadily declining ratios of calf to decaff. Something like that. Dunno if that is practicle, I’m not a tea drinker.
I’ll be heading to the grocery store probably later today, so I’ll see if I can find some decaf green tea. I hadn’t noticed it before, but if Celestial Seasoings make it I might have an easier time finding it. Normally my trip down the tea aisle involves a very bewildered RedRoses staring at the vast assortment. I’ll have to see if I can find some decaf chai as well. Plus, I just ran out of Mandarin Spice tea, which, as I just found out, seems to be mostly chamomile so caffeine isn’t an issue there.
I’ve got plenty of caffeinated tea at the moment so I can try the gradual weaning instead of cold turkey. I had no idea my body was so dependent on caffeine, I just didn’t realize how much I drank until I tried to stop. I really hadn’t noticed how much I like tea until I reorganized my cabinets and discovered I had 6 different types.
I’ll try to make do with Crystal Light for a non-tea beverage. I hate milk, so that’s never something I’ll want to drink (although soy milk is good). Water is something I’ll have to try, maybe gradually dilute my Crystal Light. It’s not so much that it’s boring but that it very often just tastes bad. Like Aqua Fina- totally makes me want to scrub my tongue afterwards, that shit’s nasty.
But maybe this’ll help my insomnia. Wouldn’t that be nice?
For the water just tastes bad thing–get your water really cold. It helps me, anyway. (No advice on the caffeine thing). And consider getting some breath mints or something, so after you drink the water, pop something that tastes better to you in your mouth. Good luck.
Oh boy did I feel better all day, every day when I cut caffeine almost entirely out of my life. It’s so worth it.
It was easy for me to cut down, but that was because I stared death in the face (or at least thought I did) in the ER on the last night of my espresso-slugging days. Lying in a pool of your own sweat, hooked up to an oxygen tank, spacing out on IV tranquilizers and signing “what to do if I die” forms for hours on end has a way of making you reevaluate things.
Are you saying you don’t like water in general or are you saying you don’t like water that tastes funny? My tap water is pretty bad as well, but I use a Brita water filter pitcher (I’m sure any other brand would do just as well.) It gets rid of that strong chlorine “essence” and pretty much makes it tasteless. It is a bit of a pain to keep refilling it, but you get used to it and you only have to change the filter every couple of months.
I think all water tastes bad*. I’ve never found water that was palatable. Now, my water here isn’t nearly as bad as at my parents’, but it’s still kinda gross. Like Eureka said, though, really cold water is less offensive to my tastebuds.
*Most people think I’m crazy. But even fancy bottled water has a distinctive taste- usually atrocious. I’m not a supertaster (did some experiment in biology) but I guess I have some pretty crazy tastebuds.
Anything can be added to water. You can add lemon (which you said you don’t like), mint (mint extract is a little cheaper - you just want a drop), fruit (watermelon and strawberries are good - but that gets expensive). You can also wean your way to water the same way you wean yourself off caffeine - make you tea gradually weaker. And really cold is a lot better.
I’m not a fan of Crystal Light due to the expense (I can never make myself spend that much for drinking powder). Since its sounded recently like money wasn’t too plentiful, I wouldn’t hook myself to anything that just is empty calories if you can help it.