Have you ever given up coffee/caffeine? If so why, and how did it go?
I ask because I somewhat suddenly realised this morning that I have been a daily consumer of fairly large amounts of caffiene (a mix of tea, coffee and energy drinks) for pretty close to 20 years now. I can’t remember a day when I’ve ever gone without it (although I suppose such days must have happened occasionally).
Am I addicted? I have no idea - but logic would suggest that I probably am. I’m toying with the idea of cold-turkey quitting for a few days/weeks, just to see how things go. There are lots of blogs about this kind of thing, but I thought I would appeal to the dope community to see what’s out there.
I switched to decaf coffee and gave up all other caffeine beverages for health reasons a long time ago. I didn’t have any headaches or other withdrawal symptoms, but I usually only drank 1-2 cups of coffee in the morning, and not much else, caffeine-wise.
Caffeine is a major contributor to migraine headaches.
caffeine withdrawal can also cause Migraines…
I had a great time quitting and can second the slow method.
I did a couple years ago, but my caffeine intake was very routinized. Now, I avoid caffeine altogether except for a caffeinated soda on rare occasions.
The research seems to show that caffeine has neutral-to-positive health effects for the general population, so unless you have some specific adverse reaction there’s probably not much of a health reason to quit the stuff. I did it because I simply didn’t like the idea of being an addict, even to something so benign. I went through the usually reported withdrawal symptoms, although I tapered off in ~30-40 mg chunks. I’ve read that withdrawal symptoms are more severe for people whose intake follows a routine than those who have sporadic amounts at sporadic times, so YMMV.
I gave it up for a while, six months or so. Then I was on a road trip, and needed a little pick-me-up, so I tried to go back to the old routine, and … woooof, I’m glad the highway rest stops were spaced so close together. Now I try to find the happy medium between tolerant and dependent.
(Which limits what I can say: I’m kinda sluggish when I forego it, but that only happens when I’m also minus, y’know, food, with the protein and the sugar and et cetera.)
I’m some kinda mutant: I never could stand coffee. I did a lot of Coke classic in my twenties, but have tried to cut out the caff so’s I don’t have to #1 ten times a night (the record is twelve) when I should be sleeping. Still have iced tea at restaurants.
Do NOT go cold turkey, I can tell you it’s like having a migraine and flu at the same time. Taper off! I have tried to wean myself off several times, but heck, now I have my one mug of coffee. Why not? But I’m as dependent on that one mug as I would be on two whole pots of coffee a day, if I missed that one mug, I fear I would be back to square one with withdrawal symptoms.
I had been consuming large amounts of strong coffee daily, until this past May.
Then, I suddenly acquired “hip-spine syndrome,” resulting in excruciating pain in my hip and back. It became too painful to stand in the kitchen and do anything, like prepare coffee. So I went without that and much of the food I ate (I lost 40 lbs.). If I suffered any withdrawal effects, I didn’t notice, since they were masked by my hip/back pain. I was feeling generally really shitty anyway, aside from the caffeine issue. So my method would be to go cold turkey, and acquire another pain that would supersede any withdrawal effects.
A few weeks ago, I did get a coffee at Starbucks. I didn’t get any “high” whatsoever from it. But it did keep me awake that night. Now that my hip is a little better, I’ve considered going back to coffee, but decided “Who needs it?”
It took me until 2-3 AM to get to sleep, so I gave up regular for decaf. Then I fell asleep around midnight, and tried going without decaf. After giving up decaf, I could fall asleep by 10-11 PM. I’ll drink coffee every now and then for a treat, but probably will never go back to being a regular coffee drinker.
This. I had to give up caffeine cold turkey a few years ago. Doctor was trying to isolate the cause of some gastrointestinal issues I was having and she said to cut out anything caffeinated or carbonated. I was probably drinking a half a pot of coffee a day at that time. I was absolutely miserable with the migraines and the flu-like symptoms, and I was still having the issues that led me to go to the doctor to begin with!
When the doctor cleared me to go back to caffeine she did tell me that I might want to consider cutting back on it. So now I have my one cup of coffee in the morning and that’s it. But you do not want to deprive me of that one cup.
I cut myself off short, and had a ghastly headache for an entire week. After that, never a problem. Tapering off is wiser, but, hey, what’s a week of headaches?
I figured out that caffeine was really messing with my sleep. I had to go cold turkey because tapering just dragged it out, and I’d give in because I couldn’t take it anymore. I never had blinding headaches, though. I had a minor to mid-grade headache, was really sleepy (but I couldn’t sleep!) and moody. That lasted 3.5 days then I was fine.
I don’t think it’s so benign. Like I said, it messed with my sleep and I had more energy throughout the day. No crashes in the afternoon.
Having read the above, my thoughts are that while I am not aware of caffeine causing me any ill-effects, I will only know for sure if it does by cutting it out for a while. So, if after a week of no caffeine I feel in some way ‘better’, then I’ll know that it’ll be worth limiting my intake in the future. If I feel worse then that may be due to withdrawal, and if I feel the same then I can conclude that it doesn’t really have any effect on me (and I can go back to morning espressos!).
FWIW, today is the start of day 2 of no caffeine; I slept well last night, and no head-aches to speak of…
I gave up all caffeinated drinks about ten years ago on Doctor’s orders. I’ve got a heart arythmia that was being made worse by stimulants like coffee and cola.
I was drinking a pot a day, usually in the mornings. I gave it up cold turkey and didn’t suffer any adverse side effects, aside from really missing a nice cup of Tim Horton’s coffee.
Giving up smoking, on the other hand, was just a miserable experience…