[joslin01]

I just quit coffee last week. Crazy that it's been a week now. I had gotten sick and didn't have any coffee for 2 days. This prompted me to just go all the way and stop it altogether.

One big thing I saw drop was my anxiety. Anxiety has been passed down by my father, and while it's somewhat mild in me, my dad & sister would be having panic attacks at my age. For me, I never went into a straight panic but it can be hard for me to feel safe. I'm a very hard worker with a lot of responsibility, so of course the anxiety has plenty to feed upon ("This isn't done, gotta do this, gotta do that."). Coffee would fuel that kind of behavior as if it were some kind of battle and take it all on. Then when the inevitable crash came, I would have to be looking to supplement it.

Like I said, I'm only a week in but what the OP says about waking up is very true and probably my favorite aspect of quitting coffee. I'll wake up at 6:30 and wanna just get up. When 11 or 12 rolls around, I fall asleep very naturally and wouldn't be able to stay awake even if I wanted to. It's worth a shot for everyone. Unlike the OP, I went completely cold turkey on the caffeine I should mention.

[cjoelrun]

I've had the same experience. I had coffee all through my college years. Had a few scattered experiences with anxiety attacks, but I always attributed them to test stress.

After I started working and the responsibility and the need for creativity grew, I found the anxious episodes start to grow and become quite debilitating. I started to experiment with different parts of my lifestyle: sleep, caffeine, exercise, relaxation.

In the end I narrowed it down to caffeine. The anxiety went away. I felt more awake throughout the day and sleep cycles easier to maintain.

I don't want to claim too much on creativity, but I do feel the ability to relax and let my mind wander has eased the creative process. Instead of the laser focus I'd get when on caffeine my mind could calmly move to less pressing tasks and make those subliminal connections I would have missed if I was too set on an issue.

That said I do miss the taste of coffee. I'll occasionally sip a decaf or latte and feel some of those symptoms return slightly, but knowing its cause has helped a lot.

[falcolas]

My wife suffers from anxiety, and yeah, coffee/caffeine is a huge trigger for bouts of anxiety. When she got all of this figured out, her morning coffee was the first thing to go.

We still do the coffee routine in the morning, but for her it's Chai or, in rare cases, decaffinated coffee.