Later I discovered I was self-medicating my ADHD...
Now I am taking proper ADHD meds, and this allowed me to greatly reduce my caffeine use (that was wandering into dangerous and expensive territory, with me needing to drink litres of red-bull clones to work), still need it sometimes though, my ADHD meds dosage is still too low it seems (my medic is adjusting my meds still).
Without caffeine + meds I can't do anything properly, I lose random objects (including a cup of coffee! I made myself a coffee yesterday, moved it somewhere in the house, and could not remember where, I spent 5 minutes wandering around looking for where I put my coffee), forget to do stuff, including important stuff, forget to eat/drink water/sleep, and all other sorts of not good behaviour.
I ask because I'm not sure if I have ADHD or just regular anxiety/lack of focus that could be fixed by exercising/meditation/finding another job. And I don't want to go to the doctor to get hooked on drugs I don't need...
And I've been hearing about the ADHD overdiagnosis problem for a while, and I've been staunch that I didn't had ADHD until my life was the shithole that it is now (I am 28, unemployed, don't own any property, have negative net worth, no friends, no romantic partners...)
Then what I found was the opposite, as an adult, seeking for ADHD diagnosis (or diagnosis of whatever I had), led to most doctors spin around in circles trying to find everything that I could have that is NOT ADHD, because they assumed I was just some kind of junkie or someone wanting to cheat tests in university, because here in Brazil all ADHD meds are of highly controlled nature (ie: they are classed the same as Morphine for example).
Eventually I found my current medic... that still is going VEEEERY slow in the dosage, the highest dosage she ever gave me was 1/5 of the maximum, and about 1/3 of what people get on average.
Still, even this low dosage helped, before I had the meds, I reached a point where I was spending more on caffeine than food every day (and this is in a country that exports coffee and erva mate, thus caffeine in general here is really cheap)
I live in the US and had the same reaction from doctors. One doctor spoke with me for a few minutes (literally like 5 minutes) and decided I was trying to abuse uppers to gain an edge at school/work, despite having been previously diagnosed with ADD and treated as a teenager (and despite asking for help, not medication). It was a really, really humiliating experience. I eventually was prescribed medication but I've since lost and regained medical insurance, so I no longer have that prescription. I often have difficulty staying on task, but I cope with it myself out of fear of going through that awful process again.
To me it seems that adults seeking help with ADD/ADHD are looked at with immediate suspicion. I always assumed it was a lack of mental health education for doctors in the US, but now I suppose it might be a global phenomenon.
Is this 'self-medicating'? Focus and tiredness have always been big problems for me. I scored in the 80th percentile on the Wender Utah Adult ADD test a few years ago. Nothing any doctor has plied me with has worked for more than a few days before tolerance sets in.
IMHO, much of this 'quit caffeine - you'll feel even better without it' is uninformed zeal. Some will, some won't. Mileage will vary.
Coupled with L-theanine caffeine has really been a useful tool for me.
- fewer head aches - much better sleep - reduced mid afternoon blahs - easier wake ups - ability to use small amounts of caffeine for medicinal purposes. (by itself or to enhance the effects of other drugs)
The frequency of migraines for me is independent of caffeine consumption; I've gones months with no caffeine and suffered though migraines, just as I've gone through months of heavy coffee/tea drinking and suffered (a little less) through them
I can go without coffee for weeks, have gone 2 months last year. Everything seems fine, but some days, I wake up in the morning with a terrible, terrible headache that fortunately goes away after a rather high dose of paracetamol+aspirin.
Sometimes it occurs in the evening when I come home, seemingly fine, but then bam, hammer to the head.
If I drink coffee regularly, I pretty much never get them...
I felt cheated :)
If you're comparing how you feel drinking coffee, to how you feel a few days after quitting, then of course the coffee will feel better.
If this doesn't describe your situation, then disregard.
Personally though, I love the taste and enjoy the experience of "waking up" with a cup of coffee over the course of the first 20 minutes of the day.
Yep, which is why I switched to decaf. Still the same taste (there are ok decaf coffees out there) but none of the bad effects of excessive caffeine.
(Most decaf still has ~10% of the caffeine of regular coffee, but even with 4 or 5 cups of decaf a day it's not enough for dependency; I get no withdrawal symptoms if I stop for any length of time).
I still drink the odd normal coffee (if someone/somewhere doesn't have decaf) but a maximum of one a day otherwise it will affect my sleep that night; it also gives me a proper coffee buzz for the short period after drinking it.
The roasting process is probably introducing some nice awful compounds into the mix anyway.