Still, if I’m stopping, I have to stop cold turkey (to answer cleops question, my mind doesn’t deal well with the words “in moderation” it can deal with “all I want” and kind of deal with “none at all” but moderation has this nasty way of morphing into “more than I ever used to want” which is bad) every time I do, about a week of headaches once my body has realized that it doesn’t seem to be getting any caffeine… followed by no headaches (I don’t think I’ve ever felt better after stopping…just the headaches stopped.)
I have never noticed ANY caffeine withdrawal symptoms.
When I graduated from Uni and started work, my coffee consumption went steadily up from 2 cups a day to a peak of around 20 a day.
Thinking that this was far from healthy, I decided to quit and went down to zero without noticing any symptoms. After a while (a couple of months) I started again at my current level of a few cups a day.
In fact, i once made it through a half-kilo bag of Java in an afternoon and noticed no ill-effects other than a slightly fuzzy head and some difficulty getting to sleep that night.
I guess that troub quote is a rejoinder to my post, amarinth? As I said, I am not talking about a gallon of crap, but a couple of gd cups of coffee a day.
Seems like most of the caffeine addicts here are hooked on colas. With me, it’s a black coffee habit. No sugar. I’ve tried to make the best of it by drinking only Fair Trade organically grown coffee (and getting everyone else at work to drink it too).
The times I’ve quit cold turkey, damn but I’ve been sorry for it. The meanest monster headaches of my life for five days on end, combined with mental disorientation. And after a few days the pain migrates to my lumbar spine, almost crippling me. I’ve learned the hard way that if I’m going to quit, I’d better taper off gradually, over a period of a month. I get down to the last day with only a teaspoon of coffee, then I’m done. Right now my habit is 2 or 3 mugs of strong black coffee a day.
After quitting, I remained sleepy for 8 months until I started again. I couldn’t shake the chronic sleepiness after quitting, even after the pain ceased. My brain felt not up to snuff, and after a few trips to Starbucks, the lure of The Bean became too strong to resist, and I just said ah what the hell.
Since the black coffee by itself doesn’t pose any obvious health risk (and may even help to prevent Parkinson’s disease), I don’t have a strong incentive to quit as is.
But, in answer to cleops’s question, I have a good reason to quit if I’m going to be in a situation where I can’t get a daily dose — like when I was staying in India and had a tea jones, then went on a long train trip without access to caffeine. Evil headache resulted. If I know I’m going to be cut off from access to caffeine at all, for even a day, I’d better try to banish the monkey first.
I had a two-liter-a-day Mountain Dew habit for nearly 20 years. Eight months ago I gave it up cold turkey. I went through about 10 days of killer headaches, slept 12-15 hours a day, and was a total bear to live with. And since then, although I have scrupulously avoided caffeine, I still find myself longing for a cup of coffee, a taste of tea, a siphon of soda …
My SIL has been living with us the past three months. She recently gave up cigarettes more easily than I gave up caffeine. Of course, she has developed a liking for coffee since then … :eek:
I have read, no cites handy, that caffeine is chemically very similar to both nicotine and opium, and that its addictive qualities are in the same class as nicotine and opium.
I quit (sort of) about 2 weeks ago. I was at around 2 2litre bottles worth of Mt. Dew a day, on average.
I quit on a friday, had my last one at aroun 11pm. By 2pm Saturday, the headache had kicked in and boy was it a doozy. Not fun at all. The headache kept up for about 2 days, and I’ve been fine since.
However, to test mysefl, I have had a few caf. beverages. I get that wiry feeling that I used to get when I first started, but have managed to resist the urge to binge. I think the most caffeine I’ve had in a 24 hour period was a cup of coffee at midnite and then a bottle of Chocolate milk around 7am.
Um… I think caffeine binds to certain neuroreceptors that normally pick up a certain naturally produced neurotransmitter that keeps you feeling good. And once you’ve established a daily caffeine habit, your body stops producing that neurotransmitter because you’re already plugging the neuroreceptors with caffeine. So that after you stop the caffeine intake, it takes your body a while to resume producing the feelgood neurotransmitter. (What is it called again?)
I have been drinking caffeinated beverages for a very long time. I started drinking coffee at a young age (around 10 or so) and had a daily habit by the time I was 14.
I tried to quit cold turkey about 5 years ago or so. I had the worst headache ever. It felt like what people describe as migraines. My head hurt so bad that when I was lying in bed I could not sleep, roll over or even blink without experiencing crippling waves of pain. I then began to have periods of sweating and severe nausea. I finally had to run to the bathroom (an excruciating experience due to the headache) and throw up. I then had a cup of coffee (at about 2:00 AM) and slept like a baby.
I have switched to drinking tea but I have promised the caffeine god never to forsake him again. EVER.
Yes, Jomo Mojo, I guess I did. You mean the dependency on the feelgood neurotransmitter is to be avoided? I suppose so, but if a good french roast is only as far as your kitchen, is there reason to be concerned?
I think I need a cup of coffee. This is tiring me out.
I am a recreational coffee addict. I enjoy having and satisfying a craving for something that I like the taste of, doesn’t cause me MUCH harm, and is easy for me to kick. If I stop cold-turkey, I have a couple days of mildly irritating headaches and a bit of irritability. That’s it. I’ve gone a month just to prove I could.
I tend to only drink good coffee, fair trade, independant store-bought, or Starbucks in a pinch. This keeps my consumption down to a reasonable level. My real drug of choice is Turkish Coffee, compared to which, standard infused coffee is only so much pathetic, inadequate brown water.
Martin
Grand Sheikh of the Order of The Twitching Dervishes.
My wife the doctor tells me that most people who wake up after an operation with a headache are actually suffering from caffeine withdawal (they probably weren’t allowed to drink for 12 h before the operation).
Note about the cola/kidney stones. The cite said phosphate containing caffeinated drinks - according to http://www.doctoryourself.com/kidney.html
it is the phosphate causing the problem - though I cannot any supporting sites
*What ARE the health benefits of NOT drinking coffee, other than the virtuous feeling one might get from not being “addicted”? *
Cleops: There are problems that can arise from drinking caffeine too frequently… I have relatives and friends who have developed heart problems due to a multi-cup-a-day habit. These problems were in the form of stuff like racing heartbeats and blood pressure disorders.
I’ve heard that caffeine, in the form of one cup of coffee a day, is one of the least harmful things to be addicted to in terms of side effects. When it’s in your system it doesn’t impair or harm you (unlike alcohol) and frequent partaking of it in moderation doesn’t put you at highly increased risk for disease (unlike cigarettes). I don’t know how many cups a day are required for it to be a problem.
When I’m drinking coffee it’s usually one cup a day, and rarely more than two cups a day during exams. If I get to that point, I can go cold turkey to get off it afterwards, which means I’ll have a headache for a couple of days, but then I’ll feel quite normal without drinking coffee at all. Once I’ve done that, I try to stay off coffee for as long as possible afterwards (I usually start drinking tea instead).
Oh, and can Krispy Kremes really be called an addiction? There’s a difference between really liking something and eating it every day, and actually becoming chemically dependent. Caffeine is addictive because it’s a stimulant, so if you use it often you’ll feel sluggish when you’re not on it.
