[flipp3r]

Wow, this is actually a thing! I thought it was just me.

As someone who used to drink a LOT of cola-cola during their teens, caffeine really fucked me up good. I only noticed I was dependant (addicted) on caffeine after a friend pointed out I only felt good again on certain days after coming back from a client where there was no cola available. I took a little bottle with me to the client and felt "normal" that day. Didn't even know it had caffeine. Had fairly bad anxiety and panic attacks at the time.

I then quit caffeine cold turkey. Couldn't even sit upright when I woke up after 2 days of not taking any.

I've now tried it on and off and noticed my anxiety / panic attacks happened out of nowhere, somewhat related to consuming caffeine. I think it happens a couple hours, sometimes a day after consumptions. Really took a couple years link it to caffeine. I've been to doctors, hospitals, psychiatrists, physical therapists, blah blah blah. It was just fucking caffeine.

If you read this and think consuming coffee or cola all day is fine see what happens when you stop taking it for just a couple days. Yeah I get it, you just use it to "boost" your energy during the day right, you're definitely not addicted, right? Yeah, headaches in the weekend are normal - everyone has them..

[newfoundglory]

I regularly stop drinking caffeine for days at a time and have been unable to notice a difference. It's a shame because I was really hoping to find that my headaches had an easy solution like not drinking caffeine, but they don't appear to be correlated.

[taneq]

How many days at a time? I used to drink a lot of coffee on weekdays but none on weekends and didn't notice it making any difference. Stopped drinking coffee altogether and after a few days I was really noticing the difference, and it took about two weeks for the withdrawals to wear off.

[newfoundglory]

Six weeks, once (mostly to prove it for conversations like this), more often something like 2-6 days. I can really take it or leave it as caffeine, but keep drinking stuff for flavor and enjoyment - if they made decaf red bull I could give up caffeine tomorrow :)

[taneq]

Fair enough, it does seem like different people react to it in sometimes markedly different ways so I don't disbelieve you.

(As an aside, it's an interesting problem how long is 'long enough' when proving you can go without something.)

[tcoff91]

I find it necessary to stop caffeine for 14+ days before I get to experience improved energy levels. For about 1-2 days i feel really tired after discontinuing coffee, then for the next couple weeks I feel OK but not as good as when I was drinking coffee. After a couple weeks I start feeling like I have more energy than when I’m drinking coffee daily.

I still choose to drink coffee just because I love the taste and the ritual so much. I limit myself to 1 cup in the morning daily.

[aantix]

The drinking of soda also strips the body of magnesium. If you're a heavy soda drinker (or coffee), try supplementing with Magnesium Glycinate and you will feel a world a difference in your calmness. https://www.iherb.com/pr/KAL-Magnesium-Glycinate-400-400-mg-...

(try to get 1000mg a day)

[kleim]

Could you elaborate about the headaches in the weekend? I also noticed I can not do much during the day without coffee but I never linked my headaches to caffeine.

[adenverd]

The suspected mechanism for caffeine withdrawal headaches is that more blood is flowing to your brain than it's accustomed to [1]. Caffeine works as a vasoconstrictor, reducing cerebral blood flow (CBF) by an average of 27% across users with varying levels of dependency. [2] When you reduce or eliminate caffeine, CBF spikes, causing "weekend" headaches and migraines.

In my personal experience, weaning yourself off caffeine over the course of a couple of weeks is drastically easier than attempting to quit cold turkey. My preferred method of reducing or eliminating caffeine dependence is to reduce intake by 25% every 3-4 days. Once you're down below 50mg per day, you can switch to tea or quit without any physical side effects.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9170342 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19219847