[mmsc]

Feeling miserable for three days seems ... unlikely after 800mg/day of caffeine. I say that to mean, it should be much longer (been there, done that, took many months) Caffeine use especially at that level massively grows the amount adenosine receptors your brain has, and they don't just disappear overnight.

A 500ml Diet Coke (assuming you don't mean the caffeine free version) also contains about 65 mg of caffeine, which is the same as an espresso. I'm not sure if you really quit. Caffeine is also in a surprisingly large amount of soft drinks you wouldn't expect.

[jodacola]

Everybody's physiology is different, but I drank a full pot of coffee every day, for about 15 years.

After Getting Older™, I was noticing more and more effects that I didn't like, so I made the decision to (mostly) detox off caffeine using decaf beans. Cold turkey would have destroyed me. I went with the following schedule:

* Week 1: 75% caffeinated/25% decaf beans

* Week 2: 50% caf/50% decaf

* Week 3: 25% caf/75% decaf

* Week 4: 100% decaf

At week 4, I entered a full failure mode I hadn't yet experienced, namely migraines that were untouchable by OTC medications. Only caffeine helped. I tried to get through the week to "be done" with the weening but couldn't. So...

* Week 5: back up to 25% caf/75% decaf!

* Weeks 6-12: decreasing caffeine by half each week (to the point I was measuring beans using my home scale).

After week 12, I was able to go without caffeine, and now I drink 1 cup of coffee and, if I'm feeling wild, I'll occasionally get an espresso.

My physiological dependence on caffeine was no joke, but I feel a heck of a lot less anxious and jittery after cutting it down to where I'm now at.

[Obscurity4340]

Seems like this would have been much easier if you used plain old caffeine pills at the denominations you wanted to work thru, easier to measure (split the tablets) and also removes the other pleasurable aspects like flavor of the coffee and pleasing aromas—those kind of subjective cues that compound the preference and addiction

Isnt what you're doing now basically—what it would be called for almost any other drug—"kindling" or something?

[robocat]

Tapering down using Caffeine pills (nodōz) has been really effective for me multiple times in the past.

I have found it tricky to find a good starting dose, and it gets a bit difficult to break tablets into very small amounts (1/10th pill) tapering down near the end. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46417034

I would never try cold turkey again due to nasty headaches.

I've done it linearly over some weeks, but if anyone has tried non-linear tapering I would be interested to know what worked for you.

[vidarh]

You can get powder and a digital scale, and there are relatively low caffeine pills. Alternatively, things like dark chocolate might be easier to cut to small doses.

[robocat]

Good idea. I didn't know about caffeine powder suppliments (for sports). Scales and gel-caps are something else I wouldn't think of without context.

[jodacola]

Possible, yeah. I still wanted to drink coffee, though - decaf. I enjoy it. So, went the long route.

[randallsquared]

Hopefully you were using very specific decaf for which you knew the values. Decaf coffee beans in the US vary from nearly zero to 30 or 40% of regular. Various sites and articles claim that there's a legal requirement for 97% removal in the US, but others call that out as coffee myth.

[drcongo]

For about 8 years now I've been down to one caffeinated coffee per day, first thing in the morning. If I miss it, I have the start of a migraine by about 1pm. It's mad.

[vinc]

Yes completely!

I started drinking one small but dense cup of coffee every work day just after lunch to avoid being sleepy after the meal two years ago, and this year I noticed that I wasn't feeling good during the weekend, then I noticed that if I drank a coffee after lunch I'd be normal. Skip forward a few months, I notice now that if for some reason I forget to drink my coffee after lunch I wake up the next day with a migraine, each time.

I like the ritual of grinding my fresh grains and brewing my cup, but I think I'll move to decaf and a quick nap like I was doing before. The migraine is the proof of an addiction.

[Insanity]

I had to avoid caffeine for some time due to medical issues. I really missed the morning ritual of waking up slowly with a cup of coffee, so I replaced it with decaf coffee which satisfies the ritual part of my morning at least. Definitely a 'YMMV' thing and it wouldn't solve the headaches of course, but it at least makes the morning a bit nicer.

[lo_zamoyski]

> now I drink 1 cup of coffee and, if I'm feeling wild, I'll occasionally get an espresso.

FYI, unless we're talking double espresso, a typical shot of espresso contains less caffeine (up to half) than a typical cup of drip coffee.

[jodacola]

Yeah, double (and I realize now my original statement wasn’t clear: that’s an occasional espresso in addition to my daily single cup of coffee in the morning).

[neutronicus]

Did you try Excedrin? It has some caffeine in it.

It does seem to be especially helpful relative to just Tylenol for me as a migraine sufferer. Specifically for helping to disperse the aura.

[jodacola]

That was the only OTC I avoided, specifically because I was trying to tightly control and titrate down the caffeine dose (granted, measuring beans isn't precise dosing, but I didn't want to blow my work out of the water by throwing some Excedrin into the mix).

[DANmode]

> disperse the aura.

What’s this mean?

[jodacola]

Migraine auras - the additional disturbances that can accompany the pain (or, in some cases be present without the pain) [0].

[0] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22131-migrain...

[DANmode]

Thank you!

[antod]

I don't get migraines very often (once a year maybe), but the first aura was very strange not knowing what it was.

For me they start out as a bright point of light then spreads out into an expanding shimmering arc of rainbow colors. Sometimes the vision inside the arc is ok, other times it is kinda missing. The headache usually comes on as the aura is fading out. Sometimes I get an aura without the migraine.

[neutronicus]

Visual disturbance.

I get a blind spot near the center of my vision that looks a bit like what you see when you rub your closed eyes. It gets large enough to mostly obscure faces and prevent reading

[ulrikrasmussen]

I quit cold turkey and consumed around 1200mg/day, not by drinking energy drinks but coffee, 6 strong cups of filter or more. I made sure to also quit caffeinated sort drinks and switched to herbal tea.

The immediate withdrawal symptoms started after around 24h and consisted of headache, cold sweats and brain fog that lasted around three days and seriously impeded my ability to work. However, the psychological craving just... never really got better once it plateaued. I always felt a bit more understimulated than before I stopped, and a bit less motivated.

I kept it up for about 1.5 years or so before I decided it wasn't worth it. The first cup of coffee seriously gave me euphoria comparable to a low dose of amphetamine. That was so pleasurable that I tried to keep my consumption to one cup per week, but even with that spacing I felt the tolerance build up again.

[hombre_fatal]

I limited to 1-2 servings of coffee by switching to an aeropress and a hand cranked grinder.

When I brew one big carafe, then I have this compulsion to drink it, like every new task needs a prelude where I get up to refill my mug.

But now there’s too much friction to brew the 2nd or 3rd cup since I know I won’t even feel it.

[ulrikrasmussen]

I ended up brewing just one cup of filter in the morning, then drinking one more cup when I arrive at the office. I have a rule to stop before 9am which I found is the latest I can do caffeine without disrupting my sleep. I think I am one of the slow metabolizers.

[tombert]

My goal wasn't to completely quit. The goal was to keep my caffeine intake less than or equal to 400mg (the FDA's recommended max) and to cut it off at 2pm. I didn't cold-turkey cut off caffeine.

I stopped getting acute headaches after about three days; other prolonged side effects are harder to quantify.

I should also clarify, it wasn't 800mg every day (which I realize I didn't make clear), it was just one thing where I saw that at least a few days of the last week I had consumed 800mg.

[deinonychus]

>A 500ml Diet Coke (assuming you don't mean the caffeine free version) also contains about 65 mg of caffeine, which is the same as an espresso.

that's for one shot of espresso, and most standard regularly-sized espresso drinks are served with two shots, so that's closer to 100-130 mg of caffeine

i've experimented with reducing caffeine and it's overall been a great experiment. but also i take a stimulant for adhd so you could imagine it's easy for me to overdose on caffeine while i already have other uppers in my system. when medicated, a coke zero is basically the perfect amount of caffeine for me if i need a pep without becoming a nervous wreck

[randallsquared]

I dunno. Caffeine doesn't affect me very much (I mean to say, I can drink regular coffee and go to sleep an hour later without difficulty), though it is somewhat pleasant. I used to regularly detox from caffeine to get that initial rush again, and that would mean 3-4 days of mild headache, and another few days of fuzzy-headedness, and then things were normal again. I'm aware, though, that some people can't have coffee or cola after early afternoon if they want to sleep well, so. Various people have quite different responsiveness to caffeine.

[isoprophlex]

Right now I think 800 mg/d of caffeine would send me to the ER lol. Discontinuing 800mg/d steady state, cold turkey... that would mean 3 weeks of migraine-like headaches

I couldn't even get away from 2 cups/day until i started hyperbolic tapering by slowly mixing decaf into my regular beans.

[elmer2]

If I consume 1-2 canned coffees a day (which is around 300mg at most), it takes me around 7 days after I quit to stop getting headaches, body aches, or mood issues.

[andai]

I think the actual threshold is when the withdrawal misery falls below the noise floor of the ambient misery.