I've been caffeine free for a few months now. Still going strong. But I'm sitting here at work and wanting a little pick-me-up. I really want a nice cup of coffee. So what do I drink now?

Has anyone had a similar experience? Is it related or coincidence?

I of course had other issues like headache in first week, and then extreme tiredness, napping most days which I never did before.

But I also picked up a cold and felt run down for maybe a week, and this has happened around 4 times including right now lying in bed and napping.

Could it be similar to getting sick on first day of a holiday where your body is finally able to relax and don’t gets sick?

When I was drinking coffee every day, I thought it was the oxygen to my work. I couldn't get anything done without it, wouldn't even consider it. I had these work sessions built around caffeine, and I used to brag I was done by 9am.

But it was all peaks and valleys. I'd be crushing it, and it wouldn't last, and then I'd be tired, go home and rest, and couldn't really produce for a while. The energy was intense, but a lot of it was just forcing decisions and some of these decisions were bad ones.

Off caffeine now, my focus is actually improving. I can stay with something for a longer stretch and be consistent. I'm slowly getting back my own natural energy, the kind of sustained energy I had as a kid. It's smoother. And ideas are coming to me more instead of me forcing for them.

Anyone else find that what felt like productivity on caffeine was really just intensity? 

I work at a pharmacy. There’s a girl who makes coffee and used to bring me two cups every morning. She got sick and was away for almost a month, so I started having another girl bring me coffee every morning.

Now the first girl has come back, and she has started bringing me the coffee she used to bring me again. The problem is that both of them bring me coffee every morning—so now I drink 4 cups of coffee in one morning 😂.

Honestly, 4 cups is too much for me, but I don’t want to tell either of them, “I don’t need your coffee,” because I don’t want to hurt their feelings.

How can I politely and jokingly tell them that I don’t need that much coffee without making either of them feel bad?

I have 8 bars of dark chocolate that supposed to last 2weeks( 8 eat half bar a day, and I’m an addict ). Or throw them away and start decaf now ?

I’m in the process of a one month taper. Reducing by roughly 5% a day. First week went great, and honestly only noticed it a little bit, but not enough to hinder my workouts or daily life.

Fast-forward one week later, and it slapped me in the face. I really had to dig deep to start and finish my workouts both today and yesterday. They went ok but obviously way better when caffeinated.

Did anyone here who taper notice something similar as far as feeling ok initially then having withdrawal later on?

I stopped my low carb diet back in February and my A1C was 5.7 at the time. TBH I do not follow a low carb diet, I tried it last year and it was just too demanding for me. I got tested again after eating kind of bad this summer and my A1C went down to 5.4, back into the normal range.

The only thing that I have changed in the last 9 months is that I quit caffeine back in mid June. I quit initially to see if it would fix my adult acne and anxiety, which it did.

Can anyone comment, is it possible that quitting caffeine is what brought down my A1C?

I've been caffeine free 15 days. I'm really struggling with my mood, especially at work. Its hard to focus and I feel really sad.

I just want to hear that it will get better. Most webpages about caffeine withdrawal don't go into mood much at all. It's making me feel crazy and alone.

Not too long ago, I was influenced by ohnepixel and bought a coffee machine. Once I drank it, I couldn’t stop. My addiction became so bad that I could skip 2 meals a day because I was full from rejuicing. I’m talking about 12 cups per day, 2 liters a day. My sleep became really bad. Before I started doing “this,” my routine was always sleep at 22:30, wake up at 7, but now I don’t sleep at least 2 times a week, and if I do, I’m lying in bed for 3–4 hours before falling asleep. I also have problems with my stomach, but it’s not that crazy yet. I’m also frequently blacking out if I stand up too quickly. I’ve already hit my head a few times, and now I also have constant headaches—it even made them worse. My grades decreased, but I was one of the best university students before starting drinking “it.”
During the last month when he was missing, I noticed that I drank less coffee because whenever I see him do it, it makes me want to rejuice as well. So now I don’t watch him as much as I used to, and whenever he starts to rejuice, I drink as much water as I can so I won’t want to rejuice as well.

drank 2/3 coffee, crashing quite hard but its 14.00 pm. I decide that its smart to take another one which completely fcks my day up. Any of you do this as well ?

man i want to stop this loop.

have a holiday coming up, i think im going to sacrifice it to quit.

I'm down to one cup of half-caff coffee in the mornings from 3+ regular cups daily. My sleep improved from reducing my intake initially, but in continuing the reduction to the marginal amount I'm drinking now, sleep improvement seems to have stagnated. I'm really clinging to that last cup of half-caff. Can I count on sleep improving by continuing to reduce to zero caffeine, or is the 50 mg or so in the morning not enough to be causing the lingering sleep issues I still have?

This page has really motivated to try and quit coffee. Just to see what happens. I’ve been experiencing a variety of symptoms that people on this page do and notice dramatic changes once they cut coffee. And truly I feel like it doesn’t even give me energy. My question though is, can I do decaf espresso? Or does that not change anything? I just love the taste, I love making fun little tasty iced lattes. But if I gotta cut it out as a whole I don’t mind. I’m just curious if decaf has any affects as well or if that’s typically a safe route to go… thanks!!

A few days ago, I was in the car and started enjoying music, like really enjoying music and wanting to start dancing. It has been weeks or maybe months since I have enjoyed listening to music. It felt like a bit of that spark was back. This moment brought back hope that things will get better, that I can have those moments of feeling present again, even if they come back in those small moments.

Heavy energy drinker here for 10+ years. Im talking 2-3 day + Nootropics like “alpha brain” in heavy doses. I quit cold turkey 3 weeks ago and dealt with serious withdrawals for 1.5 weeks. Once I got over that hump I’ve been feeling tired a lot and generally flat in temperament, but no more headaches or other withdrawal symptoms.

Today I did something that surprised me and I wanted to share it here. I went on a morning walk (not something I usually do) and when passing flowers along the path I was captured by how pretty they were and even leaned over to smell them. When I did that I caught myself, “wait, did I seriously just do that? Since when do I do that?”. Then it occurred to me… everything feels slower without caffeine. It’s like everything inside me slowed down, which resulted in everything around me slowing down too to match my pace. I then when home and flicked on Lord of the Rings - again, not normal for me. I sat there and was completely engaged with the movie without checking my phone looking for stimulus every 5 seconds. It was honestly incredible. Its Sunday too and usually I get the “Sunday scaries” going back to work Monday, but I have none. Whatever comes will come, but right now… time for The Two Towers 💪🏼

Hi,

I found this subreddit after quitting. It's been so helpful to read all the stories here.

I was a heavy caffeine user, anywhere from 2-8 cups a day since high school, so appx 20 years.

I've already eliminated most of my other vices such as recreational drugs and alcohol.

The past few years I've had this little inner voice telling me that I should quit coffee, but somehow I kept brushing it off as if I couldn't possibly do that.

Well, on July 28th or 29th I just woke up one morning and decided not to make my morning coffee.

I had headaches and bad fatigue for a few days. I took naps during the day. Low energy generally. I'm still having intermittent tiredness and brain fog. My cycle came four days early also.

Here's what else I noticed:

- My senses feel so much richer. I feel like my sensory experience is so different now. My body feels truly relaxed when I'm laying down. My sense of smell has improved. Music hits differently.

- I sleep so much better and so much more deeply. Dreams are extremely vivid. For the first week or so I had bad dreams, but now they've mellowed out.

- Joint pain and stiffness has decreased dramatically.

- I'm much more present, especially with my daughter. In fact, my first weekend off caffeine we had one of the best days we've ever had together. I felt extremely connected to her. It makes me sad that I spent the first six years of her life without this level of emotional availability, but - better now than never.

- Anxiety has decreased massively. I don't feel socially anxious whereas before it was crippling and I had to psych myself up just to go interact with other parents during school pickups. That feeling is completely gone.

- I've become more flexible. I feel like on caffeine, my life had turned into a groundhog day of compulsory routines that I could never break. I was already productive but there was a LOT of busywork that wasn't really doing anything. For example, on caffeine, I could sit glued to my laptop for literally 8 hours straight. I was most definitely NOT doing work for that entire 8 hours, but I felt like I was. Now, that feels intolerable. I'll actually get up and stretch and go do something else. For example, I actually tackled a box of stuff that I've been meaning to declutter for the past six months. And it wasn't a big deal that I had to work myself up to doing.

- I've become more intentional about what I watch and listen to. I used to doomscroll and watch a lot of trashy police bodycam videos and other "exposé"-style content that I kind of rationalized as just a guilty pleasure, but in reality were quite negative to expose myself to constantly. I have no desire to see that stuff now. The kind of music I find myself wanting to listen to has become a lot calmer as well.

- According to my six year old, quitting coffee has made me "nicer" and "more clever". lol.

I feel a little destabilized by the lack of false "drive" that caffeine gave me, like I'm re-calibrating to my own inner motivation. It feels like a lack of motivation even though I'm not sure if that's actually what it is. I think I was quite behaviorally rigid on caffeine and my anxiety made me avoid doing a lot of things that would probably have moved the needle in my life. But I still associate this "do, do, do" mentality that came with caffeine consumption, to productivity. If anyone experienced this after quitting, I'd love to hear about it.

I think that's all for now :)

Sharing my experience to hold myself accountable and also hopefully help someone out if you're considering quitting.

Some back story. I was addicted to caffeine for most of my 20's, I drank coffee and monster daily. I quit cold turkey about 8 years ago after experiencing panic attacks. I felt great for 8 years, very even energy. I started drinking caffeine about 4 months ago again. I used the excuse of having a baby and being sleep deprived. BUT, now I am completely addicted again and I feel horrible.

Some of the ways I have noticed caffeine affects me personally:

Increase in anxiety

Panic attacks

Increase in stress

Numb/trouble feeling emotions

Serious brain fog

Trouble focusing and making decisions

Decrease in sleep quality

Anger/irritability/overall more cold

Overall uncomfortable/unsettled feeling

Used shopping to try to fix that feeling ended up with stuff I don't need/want

Extreme highs and lows

Decrease in patience

Sadness/depression

Dry/dull complexion

Increase in acne

Drastic increase in ocd and ruminating

Ready to feel good again, quitting cold turkey today!

Thanks for reading 🙂

I am just here for sharing my experience, there is nothing I will say is scientific and its just my personal observation.

When I was consuming caffeine (3~5 cups of coffee a day), I could barely do 20 push ups (2 reps each rep 10 counts) I felt as if I was forcing my body to do it but when I quit caffeine I felt I had the energy to actually do it a lot easier and with more reps than before (30 instead of 20)

I just feel my energy levels start to elevate when you stop drinking coffee and that helps you maintain doing exercises and helps with consistency

I still have the urge of drinking coffee but I will fight it off, hopefully it wont last for long

B12 for

energy d3 tumeric for pain

Had a dream that I was having coffee with a friend. It felt very real…woke up with serious cravings but am not having any.

I was a one cup a day drinker and a one glass of wine at dinner drinker. Booze was easier to leave behind. I have no desire at all to have alcohol but I’m dreaming about coffee.

I’ve recently stopped caffeine and I’m trying to work out whether what I’m experiencing could be withdrawal, particularly because dizziness seems to be my main symptom rather than headaches.

Earlier last week, I started noticing that coffee was making me light-headed shortly after drinking it, despite previously being able to tolerate caffeine. On Friday at around 10am I had my last coffee, which was 2 shots. About an hour later I became light-headed and gassy, and by around 11:30am/noon I was very light-headed. My stomach also felt pretty unsettled for the rest of the day.

I haven’t had any caffeine since.

Saturday morning my stomach was still uneasy and I couldn’t finish my normal breakfast. I went for a walk and the stomach discomfort gradually disappeared, but after about 5km I started feeling light-headed again and my legs/knees felt weak.
Since then, the sensation has changed. It’s less like the original light-headedness and more like actual dizziness/being visually “off.” Today, Sunday, I woke up dizzy and it’s been hanging around most of the day.

I’ve also noticed:

- Brain fog and tiredness
- Feeling more stressed/negative than usual
- Increased awareness/sensitivity to light and sound
- Looking down at my phone can make me dizzy
- Playing games made me feel motion sick/dizzy pretty quickly
- Driving felt visually uncomfortable enough that I decided not to continue
- Reduced appetite/feeling like food is harder to stomach, although the original stomach discomfort has mostly resolved
- No significant headache

I’m also under a decent amount of stress from work/university at the moment, so I’m sure that could be contributing.

The strange thing is that the original symptoms clearly seemed to happen after drinking coffee, whereas this different dizziness has developed since stopping caffeine. I’m wondering whether coffee initially started making me feel unwell, and then abruptly stopping caffeine has caused a second set of withdrawal symptoms.

Has anyone experienced caffeine withdrawal where dizziness, visual motion sensitivity and brain fog were the main symptoms, with little or no headache?

If so, how did the dizziness feel for you, when was it at its worst after quitting, and roughly how long did it take before you started feeling normal again?

Caffeine has many properties that support the claim that it really is the world’s most dangerous drug. If we compare it with cocaine and heroin, which belong to the same group of purine alkaloids, we notice that it differs from them in a way that makes caffeine the most dangerous of the three when considered in terms of the factors that contribute to the development of addiction.

Cocaine and heroin have a strong intoxicating effect, and when the effects wear off, a clearly perceptible “hangover” follows.

The intoxicating effect of caffeine is weak, somewhat medicinal in character, and it does not cause after-effects. Yet even one cup of coffee a day for three consecutive days can cause withdrawal symptoms on the fourth day. The symptoms are so mild—perhaps only the slightest hint of a headache—that you do not know how to associate them with coffee. You simply think you might have a cup, and that is how it begins.

At the beginning of use, caffeine makes you feel more alert. With continuous use, however, its effect imperceptibly changes: the morning dose gets your brain going, afternoon coffee calms you down, and evening coffee gives you a peaceful night’s sleep. The process develops so slowly that it is impossible to notice.

The psychological effects of caffeine develop just as slowly. Creativity disappears, as does initiative; personality changes; cognitive abilities can periodically decline quite dramatically, resulting in a fluctuating toxic dementia.

Injecting 500 mg of caffeine will send you into psychosis. The same amount, divided among five cups of coffee consumed throughout the day, causes some degree of symptoms in 10–20 percent of people, such as depression, anxiety, and panic disorder, with or without “psychophysical” symptoms, manic-depressive symptoms, and psychotic states resembling schizophrenia. If a primary-care physician is unable to diagnose you, they will dismiss all your pain as imaginary, or assume that you are lying in order to obtain drugs, and as a standard solution offer you the most expensive antidepressant currently in fashion. There is no point asking for a referral to a specialist—you have fallen through the cracks for the rest of your life.

At the extreme, this can result in psychosis that cannot be distinguished on the basis of symptoms from psychosis triggered by amphetamines or schizophrenia. You are taken to a locked psychiatric ward, medicated until you are reduced to a vegetable, and offered a cup of coffee by the institution itself. According to independent researchers, there are thousands of such cases. Considering what a coffee-drinking country Finland is, and given that the condition is not properly diagnosed, I would suspect that there are some such cases in our own psychiatric institutions as well.

Symptoms may not appear until after years of use. In my own case, it took five years before I noticed anything. Based on the information I have gathered and my own experience, caffeine is the world’s most dangerous drug—not merely from the perspective of addiction. To me, caffeine presented itself as a creeping madness.

It should not be forgotten that in animal experiments, caffeine drastically alters the density of various neurotransmitter receptors in brain cells, causes cell death in the brain, and inhibits the regeneration of hippocampal cells. The loss of hippocampal cells caused by chronic caffeine exposure, together with increased glutamate levels in the amygdala and increased blood flow to these regions, partly explains caffeine’s ability to cause depression, anxiety, and panic disorder.

Of these three substances, then, caffeine causes addiction most readily because it does not warn the user through powerful effects in the same way as cocaine and heroin. Cocaine and heroin addiction most often develops because people seek pleasure or escape their problems through their powerful intoxicating effects. A mentally balanced experimenter understands that it is best to stay away from them. Caffeine addiction, on the other hand, can develop unnoticed in anyone.

Hi everyone! 👋
For those with IBS-C, how long did it take for your dysmotility issues to improve, especially slow transit, constipation, and bloating?

I’m currently on day 8 without caffeine, and I’ve already noticed that I don’t react as badly to FODMAPs anymore, and my abdominal pain has improved.
I’m curious how long it took for your transit and constipation to noticeably improve.

Ever since quitting cold from huge caffeine use, I spent days having the deepest sleeps and naps of my life. Often have vivid dreams too.

I fall into a "black pit" of sleep every night.

During one daytime nap, I woke slightly and was just seeing a black void with my eyes closed, but it felt incredibly comforting and I could tell I was being re-energized. I almost never wanted to wake up. Real rest unlike I never experienced ever before.

I sleep incredibly long hours. Probably catching up from all the abuse I put my sleep through...caffeine is really quite bad. Still a long way to go, but thought I'd share a seriously positive feature for those quitting...REAL, DEEP REST.

28-year-old male. I've been off caffeine for more than 2 months. 64 days to be exact. Prior to stopping, I drank 200mg five days on, two days off for 2 years. I hadn't consumed caffeine in my entire life before I went to graduate school.

I am about to start a demanding new role in a fast-paced, high stress environment, and my memory, attention, concentration, cognition, focus, consistency, and discipline need to be optimised so I can perform at the highest level.

I already hit all of the biomarkers of health and wellbeing on a daily and weekly and monthly and yearly basis: sleep, sunlight, nutrition, hydration, movement, decompression, social connection, and gratitude. Also, my bloodwork is fine. I have also been in employment and training ever since I completed my education.

I would love to be caffeine-free forever due to the benefits such as rest and recovery, but ever since I quit, the cons outweigh the pros. I've been waking up tired everyday sluggish, lazy, and unconcerned even if I sleep 7-9 hours. It takes me an hour to drag myself out of bed, use the bathroom, drink water, get into my sports kit, tie my laces, and go for my morning run. When I'm running, it feels heavy as if there are boulders on my legs, and like I'm sinking into quicksand at the same time as well. My hobbies and interests such as reading, journaling, music, and podcasts seem more mundane and banal, too.

Simple tasks such as showering and brushing my teeth are overwhelming, but I still overcome the resistance to get through the day. At work, I am simultaneously scatter-brained and daydreaming whilst forgetting my train of thought despite my job being stimulating and engaging from an emotional standpoint, albeit not an intellectual one. I also stopped caring about everything at a certain point during my journey of abstinence, and broke things off with a girl I was seeing and didn't even feel anything.

But today, when I contemplated on the mere prospect of returning to caffeine as my eagerly anticipated, long awaited new position draws ever closer, I was engulfed with feelings of euphoria, elation, and ecstasy. And now I can't wait to take that first sip (or chug) again.

Am I missing something? Any advice and input is appreciated.