The case against caffeine

&gt; At this point, many of you might be thinking: Zan, you sneaky weasel. Haven&#x27;t you just cherry-picked your redditors and scientific publications to fit your narrative?<p>Adressing it is good, but ultimately it does not really act as a rebuttal, this is a biased collection of anecdotes from a subreddit of people drinking decaf.<p>That being said, if you do feel like your anxiety is always high and that you have a trouble sleeping, it&#x27;s probably worth stopping and assessing, a bit like how people with IBS will just periodically remove things from their diet to see its impact.

What we really know for sure is this – sleep is good, anxiety is bad. So, if you aren&#x27;t getting good sleep, find ways to fix it. And if you are anxious all the time, find ways to fix it.<p>By one tradition that&#x27;s thousands of years old – Yoga+Pranayama+Meditation (linking physical&#x2F;mental_movement+breadth) and fasting + eating moderately (eat only if you are hungry and eat enough to quench hunger, and eat &#x27;satvik&#x27; food) and cultivating positive thought patterns (practicing gratitude, humility, curiosity) is also known to solve for sleep and anxiety.<p>Coming to coffee, all coffee is not made the same way and everyone don&#x27;t drink the same quantity per day either. And it doesn&#x27;t have the same impact on everyone&#x27;s body. So, it is best to avoid jumping to broad generalized conclusions based on a few anecdotal stories.<p>But, it is good for people to share their experiences and for others to consider them.

I tried this! I went completely caffeine free for over a year and was... fine? But way more tired all the time, and generally having trouble focusing on tasks. In my particular case, I suspect caffeine is a self administered coping mechanism for mild ADHD tendencies, and without that I became much more sensitive to the food I was eating and my changing energy levels throughout the day.<p>Eventually I realized I had stopped coping with caffeine and, instead, started coping with *sugar*, and gained 20 lbs in the process.<p>I&#x27;m back on caffeine again, but the rules are: one (1) cup in the morning, however I like it. Then water for every other beverage all day long. That seems to have done the trick, and now I again sleep through the night and can more easily remain focused throughout the day.<p>The point is, experiment, yes! But it&#x27;s your body and your mind. Take notes and figure out what works best in your case. Everyone is a little different.

To add another anecdote: I drink minimum one small pot of coffee a day (a pour-over I make with my wife, 30g&#x2F;450g beans&#x2F;water), plus a moka pot or two in the afternoon, or a 15g pour-over. And 1-3 espresso shots if I go into the office. I consider the coffee experience positively euphoric. Almost spiritual. Certainly ritual. I would never give up the time of sitting with my wife for half an hour to an hour each morning (especially in this season by the fire).<p>I have never had anything like anxiety, before nor after coffee. I suspect that for many people&#x27;s cases with such things, other dietary changes (including unnoticed enormous amounts of sugar with the coffee) may be the real culprit. But it&#x27;s so hard to say with individuals.

As a person with willpower&#x2F;focus issues, I&#x27;ve found caffeine to be a godsend in college. I&#x27;ve started using so much I&#x27;ve switched to caffeine pills to save money. At first I was taking 200mg in the morning to wake up, 100mg every couple of hours to get me through the lectures, and another 200mg at home to study.<p>It went well, and I became one of the best students in my class, but my anxiety went over the roof. I became irritable, angry, unpleasant, started shouting at my girlfriend over small meaningless issues, and eventally alienated my whole friend circle. My tolerance also went up - at some point I was taking 1000-1500mg of caffeine a day.<p>I remember one morning I couldn&#x27;t get up, so I took 200mg pill and lied back to bed, then woke up again and couldn&#x27;t get up, so I took 200mg more, and then 200mg more, and so on... I finally woke up after 1000mg. In public transit, I felt sick and my heart was pounding so much I thought I would get a heart attack. I couldn&#x27;t eat the whole day and I felt sick like never before in my life.<p>After that I never went back on the caffeine pills again. I still drink coffee because I find it hard to function without it, and I&#x27;m trying to quit. But for some tasks, caffeine is simply too powerful to go without. Working out without caffeine feels just lame.<p>Anyways, thanks for reading my blogpost in the HN comments. Hopefully someone finds this anegdote entertaining.

At least personally, I&#x27;ve found that starting to drink coffee has had a pretty dramatic positive impact on my depression.<p>I wonder if the difference in experience could come down to the specific circumstances and nature of the issues that someone faces?

I had a very similar experience as this author. All throughout high school and college, I was prescribed Adderall. After graduation, I got a job, and realized Adderall wasn&#x27;t good for me long term, so I switched to coffee. This alone helped with my anxiety, ability to sleep, and social interactions.<p>After a while, I started to wonder if coffee is good for me also. So I quit cold turkey for a few weeks as an experiment. I couldn&#x27;t believe the effect it had. I am angry at myself that I didn&#x27;t just do this earlier. I sleep fine all night now, I don&#x27;t have to pee as often, my anxiety is basically gone, I feel better about life in general, my brain fog disappeared, and I no longer have &quot;good days and bad days&quot; mentally, just good days.<p>There is no more powerful drug or therapy in the world than:<p>1) Exercising regularly.<p>2) Eating healthy.<p>3) Quitting the stimulants.

I quit Coffee one month each year (Ramadan while fasting). It has the effect of resetting my tolerance to caffeine. The first coffee after Ramandan feels more like Cocaine than Caffeine, almost like a superpower. However, I have to say, I don&#x27;t see any difference in sleep quality with or without coffee. I just make sure only to drink coffee in the morning.

High amounts shrink the brain, increase dementia risk. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tandfonline.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;abs&#x2F;10.1080&#x2F;1028415X.2021.1945858?journalCode=ynns20" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tandfonline.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;abs&#x2F;10.1080&#x2F;1028415X.2021.19...</a><p>And very few people drink 1-2 cups. The travel mugs and typical coffee place cups are close to this danger range.

I&#x27;ve been on the decaf wagon for a good few years now, I can&#x27;t say it helped me out with anxiety or productivity but I can echo the sentiment that I can sleep within minutes. Also not relying on caffeine to keep me going pretty much forces me to sleep at a reasonable time.<p>The hardest thing about giving up caffeine has to be the immediate effects. Your body takes it as a massive shock and you&#x27;re stuck with what feels like a migraine for 2 days. Not fun.<p>I know decaf still has some caffeine in it, but it&#x27;s a compromise for something different – for a month of cold turkey I thought I had cravings for caffeine, but it turned out it was hot drinks I was after. I think it&#x27;s the one luxury I couldn&#x27;t be without.

I don’t drink coffee, and even I found this completely unconvincing. I’m glad this guy discovered he doesn’t need coffee, and that he’s sharing that experience.<p>But IMO, including the Reddit comments makes his post less convincing&#x2F;credible.

Seems like the author is a slow metabolizer like me. Interestingly enough, it seems that the caffeine half life can be shortened by eating broccoli (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;17266520&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;17266520&#x2F;</a>) - by having coffee in the mornings and broccoli with dinner I&#x27;ve been able to enjoy the mood boosting effects of caffeine during the day and still be able to sleep fine.<p>Sleep quality aside though, I thought my anxiety was due to stressful job, but maybe it&#x27;s due to all the caffeine I have in an attempt to be productive.. perhaps something to experiment with myself.

You can also just lower the dose instead of following this black and white “am I a drinker” thinking. A single (1&#x2F;2 double) espresso in the morning is not so much.

The graph titled &quot;Caffeine Accumulation With Long Half Life&quot; is weird. Isn&#x27;t that not how half-life works? A higher blood level should mean faster elimination, but here it acts like the baseline changes each day. No matter how slow the user&#x27;s clearance is, the ratio should always take the same time to get halved.<p>Edit: actually this graph implies that people like the author would end up poisoned by a lethal dose of caffeine after a few weeks to months. Maybe these people exist but it can&#x27;t be common.

I have been drinking <i>a lot</i> of coffe my entire adult life. Many cups of really dark coffee. But a cup is <i>small</i>. And dark coffee doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean loaded with caffeine. Nothing prepares you for the kind of watery-yet-caffeine-loaded juice you get at a US coffee shop. It&#x27;s like they think someone would enjoy drinking a half liter hot beverage, and get half a lethal dose of caffeine. Even though I drink 5-10 cups a day, my body does <i>not</i> approve of even a medium (or whatever they call it - it&#x27;s an insult to coffee sizes in any case) Starbucks coffee. I think if people just drink reasonable coffee cup sizes of reasonably coffeeine-loaded coffee, they don&#x27;t need to have a rushing heart or any other bad side effects. If you have trouble sleeping then stop drinking after noon. I don&#x27;t think many are reporting bad effects on sleep from drinking coffee only in the morning.

Tangental but as someone who used to have sleep issues but has no intention of ditching coffee, taking Magnesium L-Threonate has utterly transformed the quality of my sleep. Used to wake up a ton in the night, take forever to get to sleep, etc. and now I sleep extremely well and if I&#x27;m up in the night it doesn&#x27;t take me long to get back to sleep.

It&#x27;s the most widely-abused performance enhancing drug, but each person will need to assess the tradeoffs, long-term implications, and unknowns:<p>+ Productivity<p>+ Focus<p>+ Clarity<p>+ Symptomatic cure for migraines<p>~+ Probable neuroprotectiveness<p>~ Mild anorectic<p>~- Unclear GERD risks<p>~- Weak anticholinergic - probably not tardive dyskinesia or dementia, but the long-term effects are unclear<p>- Increased heart rate and blood pressure<p>- Diuretic<p>- Higher cortisol levels<p>- Dependency<p>- Tolerance<p>- Caffeine withdrawal headaches<p>- Slow caffeine metabolization (CYP1A2 rs762551 CC&#x2F;CA) vs. fast (AA)

I think this is a good context to remind people that there isn&#x27;t One True Way™ when it comes to our bodies, metabolisms, brains, etc.<p>I quite believe that for many people using a lot of caffeine increases their anxiety and reduces their ability to function. I&#x27;m not one of those people. I use quite a lot of caffeine and have very little anxiety and no trouble sleeping. I am, if anything, anti-anxious. I suspect my personality type would make a great fighter pilot or air-traffic controller. (I myself would probably be bad at both those jobs, but not because of the anxiety.)<p>So I&#x27;d say IF you have chronic anxiety problems or you are having sleep problems, and you use a lot of caffeine, it&#x27;s probably worth quitting or cutting down the caffeine to see if that helps.

Like the author, habitual coffee drinking gives me significant anxiety. I didn&#x27;t call it that, when I figured it out in my early twenties - I said &quot;jittery&quot; - but it&#x27;s elevated heart-rate, so same diff (that&#x27;s something else we said back in the nineties).<p>What the author doesn&#x27;t mention (and maybe didn&#x27;t experience, but you might) is that quitting can cause <i>splitting</i> headaches. The two or three times I&#x27;ve gotten off caffeine have been miserable. I&#x27;ve felt worse, for longer, than the two or three times I&#x27;ve gone off nicotine.<p>A bonus effect, however, is that when I do take caffeine - usually when I need to stay alert driving at night or early morning - it&#x27;s <i>far</i> more effective.

I think it&#x27;s good to examine all habits that we have, and if this article gets you to consider the (potentially unknown) trade offs you&#x27;re making, great!<p>but to really <i>know</i> what they are, RCT self-experiments are the best way to work out what&#x27;s really going on.<p>gwern has a bunch of examples (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gwern.net&#x2F;zeo&#x2F;caffeine" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gwern.net&#x2F;zeo&#x2F;caffeine</a>) but you should tailor yours to the effects you&#x27;re most interested in.<p>incidentally, does anyone here have a go-to tutorial for how to set one up, how to do power analysis, etc? i&#x27;m persuaded by <i>why</i> we should do RCTs, but I don&#x27;t have the background in statistics to confidently run them myself.

&gt; If coffee decreases the possibility of myocardial infarction and it is no longer harmful from a carcinogenicity point of view, it is the time to acknowledge Gustav III (1746-1792 CE) (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016 ▶), the adventures king of Sweden’s, pioneer experiment on coffee safety as the first documented “randomized clinical trial” in medical history.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC5355814&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC5355814&#x2F;</a>

I spontaneously quit caffeine in December when my local coffee roaster produced a decaf single origin that tasted identical to the caffeinated thing. (8oz of decaf coffee contains 7mg of caffeine vs 140mg in caffeinated coffee).<p>I didn&#x27;t feel the transformative effects that many blog about, but I definitely felt how tired I _really_ was.<p>I started napping way more during the day than before, and I&#x27;d fall asleep within ten minutes or so on most nights once I hit the bed. (I had been doing CBTi for a week or two up to the time that I quit. I don&#x27;t have sleep apnea.)<p>When I drink caffeinated coffee now (extremely rarely), I definitely feel it and definitely crash later in the day as a result. (Caffeine lasts about six hours in your system before its metabolized away.)<p>What I realized pretty quickly into doing this is that (a) caffeinated coffee is probably the only drug that is nearly universally socially acceptable because (b) nearly everyone is terribly sleep deprived.<p>It&#x27;s a real shame that modern (Western) society is designed from the top-down to sweep mental and physical health under the rug in the name of &quot;efficiency&quot;. Coffee&#x27;s just one unfortunate side effect of that.<p>Also, it is really hard to get good decaf drip coffee but, surprisingly, much easier to get decaf espresso. I&#x27;m guessing this is because decaf versions of coffee-based drinks (lattes, flat whites, fraps) is more popular.

I only use Caffeine now when I&#x27;m really low on sleep and stop all intake after that. In high school, I would drink tons of caffeine every day.<p>I didn&#x27;t realize until later in life that it contributes to my anxiety. I sleep much better without it and can actually get more work done. My anxiety is also reduced to almost nothing.<p>I think I got into a habit of just drinking coffee every day, that I didn&#x27;t really think about it.

Some comments about dietary science are true. It is extremely impossible to isolate the effect of a single substance (ethically).<p>This person greatly benefited from stopping caffeine intake which is great. It is part of the journey to understand ourselves and what makes us work&#x2F;improve&#x2F;feel better.<p>If you have a anxiety-o-meter that looks like this: [-----------------------------------]<p>and your baseline is here: [-------------------------X---------] - you just need a little push to go into anxiety&#x2F;can&#x27;t sleep mode which can come from caffeine.<p>But if your baseline is around here: [--x--------------------------------] -maybe some coffee in the morning, right after lunch will greatly increase your clarity&#x2F;make you able to fulfill your duties. People who drink caffeine for pleasure (I love the taste of coffee and sometimes I get beans so good that I just want to drink several cups) will notice the negative effect in their sleep&#x2F;anxiety levels. We must go back to Paracelsus &#x27;dosis sola facit venenum&#x27;. The dose makes the poison.

A lot of dietary science is shaky, and I think we should accept that different people respond to various psychoactive substances differently. I don&#x27;t have any reason to question the author&#x27;s conclusions, nor doubt that others might have the same experience - even if it doesn&#x27;t quite jibe with mine (I&#x27;m in this camp: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;danielcrosby&#x2F;status&#x2F;1534584565431296001" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;danielcrosby&#x2F;status&#x2F;1534584565431296001</a>).<p>What doesn&#x27;t sit with me is that the article makes a lot of hyperbolic claims (&quot;Caffeine is literally killing your dreams&quot;, etc) and says a lot of sciencey-sounding stuff, but then wraps it up with &quot;no, you can&#x27;t cricitize that&quot;:<p>&gt; Q: Don&#x27;t you care? Don&#x27;t you think it&#x27;s misleading?<p>&gt; A: Nah. I&#x27;m not writing a philosophical treatise here. I&#x27;m not writing a lawsuit to take all coffee lovers to court. And I&#x27;m definitely not writing a scientific review.<p>I mean, OK, it&#x27;s your blog - but you&#x27;re trying to have it both ways. If you wanted to write about your subjective experience, fine. But you&#x27;re making it seem as if you&#x27;re presenting settled science.

After a decade of a cup or two a day, I switched to decaf, and then stopped that too.<p>I had no idea, but it wasn’t until I stopped that I realized I had been living life through a fog… kind of dulled down senses and reactions.<p>I love coffee, but I feel so much better without it I’ll never go back. I highly recommend everyone quit just to see how they feel. You might be surprised

This isn&#x27;t really against caffeine, it&#x27;s against drinking multiple cups of coffee throughout the day. Tea is less anxiety-inducing that coffee (and lower in caffeine). Even if you stick with coffee, a cup in the morning won&#x27;t mess with your sleep unless you are unusually sensitive.

Counterpoint: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psychologytoday.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;blog&#x2F;your-brain-on-food&#x2F;202402&#x2F;can-drinking-more-coffee-help-you-live-longer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psychologytoday.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;blog&#x2F;your-brain-on-food&#x2F;2...</a>

I drink coffee all day most days starting from 6 or 7 AM until 6 or 7 PM depending on the day. I am able to fall asleep within a few minutes every night without issue and typically have deep vivid dreams. Waking up is a bit tough though. I tend to semi-snooze as I sip my first cup or two over a 30 minute period. That is, unless I have a hard time commitment, in which case I can force myself to move faster.<p>Rather than dismiss the article, it makes me wonder how much better my life would be without caffeine. I think I will try it out and see.<p>Interestingly, my reaction to alcohol is similar to the one described in the article. Any amount is likely to result in a bad night&#x27;s sleep and mild to extreme anxiety the next day depending on what and how much I had.

As someone who works out regularly and tries my best to have healthy meals, one underrated benefit from caffiene (especially coffee) is that it helps me suppress my diet and fast for much longer! I have a couple of coffees in the morning and it helps me fast till 1pm!

This reminds me of spiders on drugs[1]. Caffeine absolutely wrecks them.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rarehistoricalphotos.com&#x2F;nasa-spiders-drugs-experiment&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rarehistoricalphotos.com&#x2F;nasa-spiders-drugs-experime...</a>

I never used to drink coffee, just now I&#x27;m thinking it might just have been that it becqme easier to get decent coffee at some point, when I was younger, coffee granules were standard and I never really liked it. I think someone got me a drip coffee machine and I quite liked it.<p>I quickly picked up on too much of it affecting my sleep though, I guess i had a decent baseline to compare to. so I quickly limited it to just having one in the morning workdays, and occasionally one on weekends. I still have days where I don&#x27;t drink any, and I don&#x27;t notice any difference in sleep.

Most people are discussing coffee, but green tea isn&#x27;t really mentioned. I started limiting my coffee intake maybe 7 years ago and switched to mostly green tea, except for certain occasions.<p>Green tea doesn&#x27;t nearly impact my sleep as much, I find it easier to stay hydrated, it doesn&#x27;t give me jitters but a more calming focus, and it&#x27;s a lot easier to take the caffeine in slowly, because each cup of genmaicha is maybe 20-30mg of caffeine. A pot is maybe equal to one or two cups of coffee, but with a lot more water, and a steadier slower onset.

I started drinking coffee as a freshman in college back in 2006. I forget exactly what the impetus to start was but I&#x27;m sure it had something to do with feeling generally tired and unmotivated, something I&#x27;ve struggled with my entire life.<p>At that time brewing a pot of coffee and drinking 2-3 cups was an incredible buzz. I&#x27;m not sure if my actual productivity was much higher (I think it was) but I certainly FELT a lot better.<p>Unfortunately around that time I developed a panic attack disorder. Ludicrous as it might sound to you now, I did not realize in the moment that it could have been related to coffee. I was 19 and barely in touch with my feelings and sense of self. I was essentially just bumping through life.<p>Fast forward 17 years later and I&#x27;m still drinking coffee. Over those 17 years I have waxed and waned in my quantities and when I would drink it. But suffice it to say that on average, I&#x27;ve probably consumed a Venti coffee every day for 17 years.<p>I did stop ONCE for 35 days about 7 years ago and didn&#x27;t feel like I noticed any difference. Again though, I wasn&#x27;t as aware of my mental state as I am now and it would have been easy for benefits to go unnoticed as I lost the buzz and energy that coffee brings.<p>I&#x27;m now interested in trying going coffee&#x2F;caffeine free for a few reasons:<p>• Dreams. I almost never dream, and when I do, they&#x27;re usually bad&#x2F;anxious<p>• Sleep quality. I wake up and usually don&#x27;t feel pumped or excited for the day. To be fair, I never have even as a kid. But I&#x27;d like to wake up feeling more &quot;awake&quot; and excited.<p>• Teeth. Noticed over the years my teeth have been slowly yellowing. If there&#x27;s a time to intervene, it was probably 5 years ago but why not now?<p>• General mood &#x2F; anxiety. I have a generally high anxiety state but &quot;negative affect&quot; mood disorder. Being anxious AND depressed is kind of a terrible world to live in. Basically don&#x27;t have the motivation and energy to do much, and when I do anything tend to have a sort of frenetic energy that isn&#x27;t very productive. This might just be my genetics but I have a theory that at the very least, coffee might be making some of the symptoms worse.

Next you&#x27;re going to say I need to lay off the crystal meth too.

Important to note: Not everyone has the same reaction to caffeine. And not all caffeine hits the same. What it’s mixed with matters.<p>The caffeine in tea, for example, doesn’t have as many anxiety inducing effects because you also get a bunch of L-theanine, which has a calming effect. To the point that many modern energy drinks have started adding it to their formula.<p>Personally I sleep fine with or without caffeine. Timing matters little. What really absolutely truly impacts my quality if sleep – physical activity.

I have a strong belief that the vast majority of writings like this could be replaced with the sentence: “If doing something makes you feel worse, you should stop doing it.”

Facts. I avoid caffeine as much as possible. I still only sleep 5-6hrs&#x2F;night (circumstance) but I have way more energy throughout the day than caffeine ever gave me. Now adays I&#x27;m so sensitive to it that a Strawberry Dragonfruit Refresher from Dunkin will leave me feeling a body anxiety without the brain anxiety. I sit there after drinking one feeling just uncomfortable and cold. Sometimes my palms sweat.<p>It&#x27;s just not fun. I&#x27;m glad I quit caffeine!

The user found out that he&#x27;s overdosing on caffeine and cutting it late in the day.<p>Caffeine takes 10 hours to clear from your system. I only drink a single cup of coffee every day, at 1 PM, to clear my afternoon better.<p>It&#x27;s not a substitute for sleep, lack of attention and your body has an upper limit. Don&#x27;t abuse that limit, and you&#x27;ll have none of the problems author described.<p>I&#x27;m telling you as a person who drank 2 liters of coffee flat, every day.

Another reason to not regularly use caffeine is that it can be an effective medication, especially in combination with other medications. Caffeine increases blood flow in the brain, so it can be effective for headaches, and it increases the absorption of other drugs like ibuprofen and acetaminophen.<p>If caffeinated is your normal state, then it becomes much less effective at treating migraines, hangovers and other headaches.

I recently started tracking my caffeine intake after discovering this small app called HiCoffee on someone’s blog. It has a neat curve of how much caffeine is left in your body as the day progresses and how much will be left at bedtime. It made me more aware of how much caffeine is in different drinks. Philz has a lot! But now I can work around that with timing and limiting drinking other things.

I drank coffee from age 20 to age 37. I&#x27;ve been coffee free for 2 years now.<p>I had anxiety from age 20 to age 37. I&#x27;ve just realised I don&#x27;t remember when my anxiety stopped, but it&#x27;s been gone for a while now.<p>Learning to breathe deep down into my lower back has also helped a weird amount. Yes this is a thing. Youtube is full of physio therapists teaching people to breathe deep into your lower back.

I don’t drink coffee as it doesn’t sit well in my stomach, but the thing is, I’ve never felt like coffee does anything for me. I can drink a cup of really caffeinated coffee and drink without any issue and even sometimes the warm beverage actually helps me fall sleep.<p>But you know what triggers tachycardia and rushing feeling? Corn based food like tortilla, which is really ironic as I’m mexican.

I quit booze a few years ago. It&#x27;s a 10x improvement on my life. Quitting caffeine is probably not a 10x&#x27;er, but seems worth a go.

I get exactly the same energy boost from drinking any sugary drink in the morning, be it coffee, tea, juice, chocomilk, whatever. I have a theory it&#x27;s the same for most people, but when they were children, adults drank coffee and they were only allowed to drink chocomilk, that&#x27;s why they grew up to love coffee :)

As my bipolar disorder got worse, caffeine became a non-starter. It&#x27;s a real bummer. I still try to sneak in a diet coke or a green tea or two on a day when I&#x27;m very tired, but the result is inevitably a hypomanic episode right at bedtime. It sucks because I love the taste of good coffee, and decaf just doesn&#x27;t cut it.

I removed caffeine from my diet during covid. I found a 2% increase in sleep quality using rudimentary software (Sleep cycle) over a period of a year. What I did find was a reduction in anxiety as well.<p>That said someone close to me was doing the opposite during the pandemic and saw markedly better concentration thanks to caffeine.<p>I think it depends on people.

One data point:<p>A couple of years ago, I went coffee-free for one month, just to see what it would do to me.<p>Sucked. I like coffee for the sake of coffee. But was happy to see &quot;I could do it&quot;.<p>Could not observe any significant change in my life. Maybe felt a little less &quot;up&quot;. I ended the experiment after one month.<p>I don&#x27;t drink&#x2F;do drugs (besides coffee).

I wish this was initially disclosed as an opinion piece rather than reading through it and finding it out in the end.

I&#x27;ve found this out the hard way. I don&#x27;t drink caffeine on days with meetings or drink it after the meetings end and it really helps with anxiety.<p>I&#x27;ve also started drinking decaf on some days and there&#x27;s at least 1 day a week I don&#x27;t drink any coffee at all. This gives my body a chance to reset.

I recommend trying Yerba Mate as an alternative to coffee. At least for me it gives a way more balanced, long-lasting energy, rather than coffee which gives me a huge spike and then goes down fast &amp; makes me anxious. Online I&#x27;ve seen lots of people have very similar experiences with it.

I am in day 4 of tapering off, so this is only anecdotal but as each person is different anecdotal is ok. Try it and see. At the moment, with tiny amounts of caffeine my pm is better ie more even energy. I recognize addiction in some of the most virulent anti poster pro caffeine comments.

I find things like this very tempting. I&#x27;ve tinkered for years with caffeine intake. (I love the effect on my brain, but the half life is looong for me). However, after a while you start to notice the pattern that you&#x27;d rather tinker with caffeine than face your real problems.

Zan also recently wrote about how to break habits (like caffeine): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zantafakari.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;how-to-tame-your-impulsive-behaviour" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zantafakari.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;how-to-tame-your-impulsiv...</a>

Reminds me of this very useful graphic. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.tumblr.com&#x2F;tumblr_lbdgbfiz4g1qb25dg.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.tumblr.com&#x2F;tumblr_lbdgbfiz4g1qb25dg.jpg</a>

Never heard tell of using caffeine to help them keep their bowels regular. If you&#x27;re in that situation, might be worth just drinking more water - it has a significant effect on constipation.

If you&#x27;re going to drink decaf, be sure to drink decaf prepared via the Swiss water method. It has the least additives, healthiest option and tastes pretty good.

I get a huge difference when I switch to tea. It&#x27;s like a different drug altogether. The effect stays after the tolerance period of about a week.

If you have anxiety and cannot sleep, of course caffeine is probably not going to help. Unless I missed it, he never addresses his bowel issue.

Unless you have ADHD physiology, in which case caffeine in small amounts can be almost like a narcotic. Everybody is different; ask your doctor.

If you&#x27;re drinking coffee as a laxative -- it&#x27;s not the caffeine, it&#x27;s the coffee. You can drink decaf for the same effect.

Good for the author, but there are plenty of people who don&#x27;t drink caffeine and still have a hard time sleeping well.

I might be able to add several points to this discussion: - For me, caffeine has really bad impact on my sleep quality, and it is an accumulative effect: After being abstinent for 1-2 weeks, I can drink 2 cups of coffee in the morning, and I will have good sleep. After 1-3 days of daily 2 cups of coffee, my sleep quality goes down - Most research about safety of coffee is done with young, healthy adults w&#x2F;o any medical preconditions. Which translates to, everything found in the research is objectively true, still it totally cannot apply to your, your health and life circumstances - Finally, I observe people around me which can tolerate higher amounts of caffeine w&#x2F;o any side effects. To the best of my knowledge there are very individual tolerance levels for caffeine and also very individual metabolization speeds<p>tldr: - caffeine is known to increase anxiety, heart rate and disturb sleep - YMMV and it even might vary depending on your age, phase of life, other activities - if you observe feeling stressed, problems with sleeping or winding down, try to avoid caffeine&#x2F;alcohol&#x2F;etc. for a few weeks and observe if you feel better

I had a hard time reading this article as the author kept coming back to all these &quot;day 1&quot; anecdotes. Quitting caffeine cold turkey, I go through about 2-3 <i>weeks</i> of withdrawal. The first few days really aren&#x27;t bad, just a bit groggy and my executive function is a lot less imperative. It&#x27;s after that the real symptoms set in - extreme lethargy, nausea, and <i>suicidal thoughts</i> (things like &quot;I could avoid having to get up off the couch if I were dead&quot;. Otherwise completely out of character for me, so it&#x27;s very clearly the withdrawal speaking).<p>I think the second week is generally the worst, but I always forget until I&#x27;m there. After I&#x27;m through the withdrawal I do feel that I&#x27;m better balanced. Of course then eventually there&#x27;s something in my life I just need to push through, so I start down the path of doing a little caffeine, then a little more the next day to make up for that, etc. I liken it to a high interest loan, and the only way I&#x27;ve found to pay off being the aforementioned cold turkey.<p>What really weirds me out is people who talk as if caffeine is not a psychoactive drug. You mention to a doctor that you&#x27;re currently on 300mg&#x2F;day of caffeine and they look at you like you have three heads for bringing this up. I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s people&#x27;s own cognitive dissonance from enjoying &quot;coffee&quot; but programmed with &quot;drugs are bad&quot;, or if caffeine really just affects me more than the average person, or what.

These articles always tell me I’m doing too much or not enough.

After many years of drinking coffee (1-2 mugs a day), I had to quit because of high blood pressure. I switched to decaf and I found one I even liked. I was served full coffee at Starbucks instead of decaf couple times, so I figured ok, no more drinking coffee I don’t make myself. The one day I got a new batch delivered from Peet’s and… it wasn’t decaf either. This was the breaking point for me and I quit coffee of any kind.<p>It took me nearly a year before I started waking up feeling ok and not foggy.<p>I had never had issues sleeping before. Anxiety hasn’t changed either. But when I read about people writing that they felt great first or second day after quitting, I know it’s a total horse shit. First week or two were absolutely awful.<p>I have not noticed anything really positive or negative after quitting. Except of the blood pressure that is easier to manage. I still hope I get to go back to coffee one day again lol.

Stronger By Science[0] recently did a longer piece on caffeine, trying to argue against it (from the perspective of lifters who actually enjoy caffeine as a performance enhancer). You know, scientifically trying to disprove your believes.<p>TL;DR: Probably mostly harmless in medium quantities, but no real proven long-term benefits. So if you enjoy coffee, just drink in moderation.<p>[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strongerbyscience.com&#x2F;pros-cons-caffeine&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strongerbyscience.com&#x2F;pros-cons-caffeine&#x2F;</a>

&gt; I&#x27;m not writing a philosophical treatise here. I&#x27;m not writing a lawsuit to take all coffee lovers to court. And I&#x27;m definitely not writing a scientific review... What I&#x27;m sharing is the minority perspective.<p>If you&#x27;re not mounting an honest case against caffeine, don&#x27;t call your article <i>The Case Against Caffeine</i>. If your evidence is cherry-picked, as you admit it is, it&#x27;s disingenuous to have a section called <i>The Science Of Caffeine-Induced Anxiety</i>.

popular strain of Neo-puritanism trying to dig under consumption habits long attested to be perfectly safe and not harmful to your health, if not good for you<p>yes, not drinking coffee makes you a super special person. good job you!