No Alcohol, No Coffee for 27 Months (2016) | Hacker News Reader

No Alcohol, No Coffee for 27 Months (2016)

vanschneider.com

42 pointsedzx95 comments

> In the summer I now drink ice tea, in the winter regular tea.

Is the OP aware that tea also contains caffeine, right? Regular black tea has generally much less than espresso, but it's still a caffeinated beverage.

Drip coffee has even more than espresso.

https://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-complete-guide-to-starb...

>Drip coffee has even more than espresso.

Only if you also think that beer has more ethanol in it than whisky.

In equal quantities, neither is true.

And if you believe that people routinely drink the same quantities of espresso as they do drip coffee or beer and whiskey that comparison would make sense. But people usually drink much less whiskey and espresso, therefore it's much more relevant to compare commonly used quantities.

what would the quantities of ethanol be in 100ml of whisky vs 100ml of beer?

  40% × 0.1 L = 40 mL.
   5% × 0.1 L =  5 mL.

If you drank the same amount of espresso as you normally would drip coffee, you would die.

Nah, the LD50 of Caffeine is pretty high - something like 14g [0]. Thats way over 100 shots of espresso.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Overdose

Why would that matter? Only the quantity in serving size matters...

>Drip coffee has even more than espresso [in typical serving sizes].

FTFY.

You need 4 shots of espresso to match the caffeine in 16oz of drip coffee. This does depend on roast; darker roasts have less.

A 16oz or 20oz latte at Starbucks will have 2 shots, i.e. medium roast drip is double, and even a standard 16oz americano at Starbucks only has 3 shots; drip still has 33% more.

Flat Whites are trickier, because despite having an extra shot over lattes (3 in 16oz/20oz), the shots are ristretto (less water), which extract less caffeine.

> This does depend on roast; darker roasts have less.

While this is technically true, it's quite misleading because coffee measurements are typically done by weight. Caffeine content between roast levels only differ meaningfully when measuring by volume instead of weight. Coffee beans swell as they are roasted meaning darker roasts are less dense.

FWIW it does impact coffee at Starbucks, at least in Canada.

(Nutrition Information linked from starbucks.ca) https://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/94fbcc2ab1e2435985...

A 16oz cup of Dark, Medium and Blonde is listed as 260mg, 310mg, and 360mg respectively.

For those interested, Starbucks publishes caffeine content of all their drinks, which makes a nice baseline for comparison.

A 'tall' filter coffee, which IIRC is 16oz in the US, is 229mg, about equivalent to 3 single espresso shots (page 4 of the link below).

https://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/E3DA4F2E01A148DD88...

Short, Tall, Grande, Venti => 8oz, 12oz, 16oz, 20oz respectively.

16oz of drip is listed as 308mg.

Only if you think people drink beer and whisky in "equal quantities".

In the real world, people drink more beer, and far larger cups and amounts of drip coffee than espresso.

As a regular black tea drinker, the caffeine in it has zero effect on me. Drinking any kind of coffee except decaf on the other hand makes me jittery and sweaty.

Depends on the type of tea, for example Roibos tea, ginger, camomile don’t contain caffeine

These are generally known as herbal infusions or tisanes, and not tea.

That varies by locale

I would say that ‘herbal tea’ is a valid term, but that whatever is a ‘herbal tea’ is generally not viewed as ‘a type of tea’, and rather, as ‘a type of herbal infusion’. ‘a type of tea’ is generally viewed as ‘type of tea plant and its dried leaves’.

That's tisane/herbal-tea - not "tea" per-se, you can make infusion like this from pretty much anything. Tea has more caffeine than coffee by dry weight. It also depends how long you infuse it, you can easily have a cup of tea that has more caffeine than cup of coffee.

> Depends on the type of tea, for example Roibos tea, ginger, camomile don’t contain caffeine

With "tea" I generally mean _Camelia sinensis_, and the variety of teas made from it (black, green, white, yellow, oolong, puerh, ...)

Caffeine is packed with [0]health benefits that outweigh the few downsides though.

[0] https://selfhacked.com/blog/caffeine-benefits/

Context: I stopped drinking alcohol and coffee 5 months ago.

Even though tea also contains caffeine, you can drink quite a bit of it and not get the same effects as you get with coffee – increased anxiety, jittery hands, overwhelming feeling of tiredness when you're on your way down from a caffeine high, etc.

Coffee is caffeine and tea is caffeine, but one is much more potent than the other. I've never been able to push myself over the edge, even when drinking tea.

Tea, coffee, and chocolate all contain caffeine, with coffee (typically) containing the most caffeine. But variation in caffeine levels isn't the only reason these herbs impact people differently.

In addition to caffeine, all of these herbs contain other stimulant alkaloids, such as theophylline, theobromine, paraxanthine, and others. Levels of these minor alkaloids vary depending on the herb, the variety, and how it was prepared.

But yeah, everyone's body is pretty different, and herbs vary wildly in how they impact people. It's interesting how you can drink quite a bit of tea, whereas I pretty reliably get a headache, start feeling anxious, get crazy palpitations, and have a brutal crash if I have more than a cup a day. Coffee is usually OK up to quite a few cups a day -- there's particular roasts that I handle better than others, and I use reusable K-cups for the consistency.

This is quite interesting to learn that what coffee contains than other caffeine included ones. I've kind of a feeling that choclate should be the most effective one between those. It helps to release endorphins and stays much longer in digestion than others. I think these could make chocolate the most beneficial one in the long term.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Having read up on it, it indeed seems that people's sensitivity to tea vs coffee varies wildly. I just happen to be a person who's more sensitive to coffee (the 2nd cup of the day could result in a crash, anxiety, palpitations, etc.).

In fact, the French have separate words for the stimulants in coffee and tea: caféine and théine. And if your goal is to describe the "source of stimulation" then this may be more accurate than using the same word for both coffee and tea as the stimulating effects come from a variety of components in coffee and tea (as a sibling comment points out).

Also, hi Stefan!

There is also a difference in how body absorbs caffeine.

With coffee there are spikes in the energy while with the tea the caffeine is absorbed over a greater period of time.

I've stopped drinking coffee for that reason, now having a cup or two only on Sunday. Before I was drinking two, three sometimes more cups during the day and was really anxious. Came back to green tea and the energy is more balanced now.

Tea also contains L-arganin, which is a nutrient depleted by caffeine. Having not enough contributes to the "jitters" people experience drinking coffee, so this is one reason tea drinking can be a bit less harsh.

Do you mean l-theanine?

yes

I can drink much coffee and feel almost no effect (although I usually stick to two coffees a day).

When I drink tea, I have shaking hands, especially with the bottled ice tea from the supermarket.

Let's say I wanted to change from coffee to another hot but not sweet beverage: which one?

Have you considered the shaking hands might actually be caffeine withdrawal?

Certainly it is not the case. It occurs specifically when drinking tea. I can spend a day with only my morning coffee.

>When I drink tea, I have shaking hands, especially with the bottled ice tea from the supermarket

Could be the tons of sugar? Or other artificial crap?

>Let's say I wanted to change from coffee to another hot but not sweet beverage: which one?

Tea is great and has health benefits.

The tea in "bottled ice tea from the supermarket" is not representative.

I can recommend green tea. It has also a waking effect but not as strong as coffe and in my experience longer lasting. It is more subtle.

There are many green teas with different tastes and you have to infuse them the right way. Worth noting is that you should not use teabag green tea but loose one. The teabag tea usually has a bad quality.

If you infuse green tea you should not do it too long (usually about 1,5min) and the water should be lower than 80°C. You need to experiment there a bit to find your perfect timings.

TLDR Green tea is worth a try, just don't use a cheap one (avoid teabags).

Sounds a lot like what my dad is drinking :) so it will be easy to try next time I see him.

Well, we are aware that "much less" is much less right? And the parent doesn't talk about quitting caffeine, but quitting coffee. And that there are lots of tea varieties, many with 0% caffeine.

I did the same thing, giving up coffee, alcohol and also sugar for about 2 years. I expected to feel superhuman but the truth is I felt basically the same, still often a bit tired on the morning - but I did get quite skinny.

I always envy people who have these dramatic effects. I went vegetarian a few years ago and I don’t feel any better or worse. Same when I take marijuana. I feel a little heavy and dizzy but that’s it. Sometimes I wish I would find that thing that totally changes my life like other people claim to have found.

The big difference is when you stop abusing things like Coffee or Alcohol, if you quit causal use of either one I can't imagine the difference for your body being that much.

I guess you can experiment, for me chelated magnesium and sometimes l-tyrosine does the trick.

I hear you on magnesium, that thing is like a flip-switch on an overactive brain if you get the right type of it.

What do you use l-tyrosine for?

I don’t know exactly why it works, may be related to vaping or something else, but for days when I’m lazy-brain dead-not motivated taking l-tyrosine on empty stomach seems to make me normal/productive again.

ahhh brain fog, cool I'm going to give it a try.

In the the last couple months I've drastically cut down on my caffeine intake noticing more even energy levels. In the past two weeks I've been on a (not fully strict) vegan diet. The improvement has been dramatic, I have much more energy/motivation after hours and on weekends and started digging out stored equipment to sort through, use, sell, discard.

You must not only avoid sugar but also food mostly composed of starch such as bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and favor beans, peas, lentils and vegetables.

Starch in processed food is hydrolysed into sugar very fast: it actually starts in the mouth where saliva contains amylase.

Yeah I did this - no white carbs at all and no bread.

Like I say, I did get quite skinny at least!

Worked this way for Madam too. Weight loss is slow but real and durable. I had no weight to lose myself, and do not feel superhuman as well ;) except that I am no more hungry at 4-5PM.

I also went without alcohol for 25 months and my expererience couldn't be more different.

I never stopped going out for drinks. I always kept enjoying being with other people, it has never been about the alcohol going out. When going out for drinks, in the first couple of months I would simply order non alcoholic beverages. After a while I realized that it was unnecessarily expensive and I simply stopped ordering drinks. On this the author is right, this led to huge savings. I just got out for the fun of being with other people. As the author himself explains, the drinks are just an excuse to go out and do stuff. Unless of course someone has a problem with alcohol.

I think that the only thing that I can really relate in the article is the difficulty of explaining why I was not drinking. But even that I think is something I did very differently from the author. After a few months in which I tried to explain myself, which got the kind of arguments the author mentions, I started saying that I just didn't like to drink. That's a pretty short answer and mostly no one investigates that.

So in the end in my experience my social life was not affected in any negative way by not drinking. To be honest, if anything, I think it increased my social skills, as I was more focused and "awake" by not drinking. And this is a experience that still has positive impacts on my personality. The only reason I started to drink again is because I actually like the taste of most alcoholic beverages (wine, beer etc), so I was missing a good glass of wine with my dinner.

On the contrary, the experience of the author reminds me of someone that has made alcohol a requirement of his/her social life. Which is looking troublesome because it denotes a poor relationship with alcohol. The author should focus on what's funny in going out without alcohol, which is what matters. Alcohol should not be what makes going out funny.

I would suggest to everyone to go at least 1 year without alcohol while still going out and having a very active social life in a context where everyone else is drinking. This is a great way to better know yourself.

> I never stopped going out for drinks. I always kept enjoying being with other people, it has never been about the alcohol going out.

The author writes the same about coffee: "I found out that “Going for a coffee” turned out to be more of a social activity than the actual craving for coffee. Keep the social habit, replace coffee with something else."

They seem to be saying that they can't stand "gossip" in one setting (in a bar) but do enjoy it in another (in a coffee place). Maybe the author's acquaintances are really all terrible drunks, but maybe the author is just contradicting themselves to justify to themselves that alcohol is bad.

I congratulate the author on stopping drinking, but article does wade a bit too deep into "I'm virtuous, you are all phonies" territory.

Society has been duped in thinking they need coffee to stay awake. People need good sleep, occasional naps and that's it.

Since becoming a father, I’ve started taking naps when feeling low on energy and let me tell you, that stuff is incredibly powerful. I lie down in a dark room with a timer set 40 minutes into the future, drift off and reappear with my energy meter glowing.

Can you do that at work?

When working from home - sure. A previous employer had a resting room that you could book in Outlook and it was almost always free.

I think most people know this, but naps aren't accepted in the workplace.

I function much better on 6h at night and nap after lunch than 8h at night, but society forces me to stay awake after lunch. I've even thought about looking for remote jobs, just to be able to have an afternoon nap.

That's why we invented remote work.

As the boss of my own company, I've made naps acceptable.

Have you heard of nappuccino by dan pink ?

If you avoid bread, pasta, rice and potatoes in favor to beans, peas, lentils and vegetables, the after lunch energy dip is much less pronounced. You also tend not be hungry in the middle of the afternoon.

> Some might think that this is heavy alcoholism, but trust me when I say that having 1–2 drinks everyday in New York is more than normal.

Maybe not heavy, but that sounds still pretty bad. Just because that’s possibly normal does not really make that better. I don’t even think I’d be able to function properly with that much alcohol, and I’m not a light drinker. That’s more than what I drank in University.

> But removing coffee from my diet helped me become more relaxed. Coffee always made me stressed out.

For those who have this problem but don’t want to skip coffee, I can recommend looking into L-Theanine [0] supplements. It’s a part of tea (mainly in green IIRC) and in combination with caffeine helps concentration and wakefulness without producing coffee jitters.

[0]: https://examine.com/supplements/theanine/

I don't drink alcohol, but I do drink two cups of coffee a day - one in the morning, and a second after lunch. The first cup is to wake me up in the morning and it makes me highly productive. The second is to avoid the food coma.

If I ever feel stressed, I know I can go for a walk to exercise off the coffee. But most times I'm not.

This is the trap many people (including myself, for years) fall into... You develop dependency on coffee and then you claim it is what makes you focused and productive. But if you never had a cup of coffee in your life (or if you stop and let your body adjust), you'd be as focused and as productive without ever feeling like you're missing it.

I drank no coffee up through university and my productivity was sound - I ended up getting good grades. I started drinking coffee after I got a full-time job.

Problem is society exactly as the author describes. There is so much pressure on having drinks when going out. This is due to people trying to suppress their insecurity.

Start with yourself: If a sober person is in your round, help him by not let other's in the group mob him. Do not say things like "ohhh why the fuck you not drink?" - just say "cool you don't drink, I respect that" and still do conversations although you do have a drink yourself.

If your group does understand, that there are people who do not need a drink every time, it will help yourself also to "survive" in that group so it becomes more easy to go out sober.

Me myself find it very hard to not drink - but I like to drink and I like to be slightly drunk every now and then. I know that and I live with it. Chances are that some day this might change :) good luck everyone with whatever helps you to feel better

There are a lot of non-alcoholic (and sometimes non-caffeinated) drinks you can order at bars and restaurants, many people would not even know are non-alcoholic - just ask the bartender.

If the people you are hanging out with are judging you for your life choices then they are assholes and you should honestly call them out on it and disassociate with them.

exactly

Remove alcohol, caffeine and sugar though and your drink choices are slim to none.

That's why god invented tonic water with a lime

Tonic has a ton of sugar.

Remove alcohol, caffeine and sugar though and your drink choices are slim to none.

Over the course of the year I've seen articles pop up on the supposed rise in popularity of dry bars. I've never been to one myself but I think there are a few in San Francisco and I'm sure there are some in New York. When I'm not at a bar I tend to like flavored sparkling water (a.k.a. seltzer or soda water or whatever else) but I've not seen that sort of thing in bars out here. And seltzer water has definitely not faded in popularity in New York.

Personally I'd like the THC hops stuff you can find out here, but that's typically not sold at bars and not really suitable if you're forgoing mind altering substances.

The problem is that because young people in places like London and New York normally live in abject shitholes, they are forced to go out to socialise, which implies drinking and expensive food.

I’ve temporarily moved away from London to somewhere a lot smaller, but I live in a much nicer and bigger place for less than half the price.

I invite people over and am invited over. We talk and things, or sometimes watch something and talk about that. I can make a cup of tea or maybe even coffee, and I don’t have to pay through the nose for it. I can cook for a group for less than the price of a single meal outside.

No one gives a fuck if you’re not drinking in your own home. I’ve been drinking a lot less. It’s a sobering experience.

I was like $1,000 a month on coffee!? Then I saw that it’s cocktails every day.

“Some people may call that heavy drinking”. Ya think?

Also, here in Ireland, even we call $1,000 a month on alcohol pissing your money up a wall.

It’s crass, but based on a large body of evidence from our history.

How does he know the sleep effects were due to the alcohol and not the caffeine?

I rarely consume either, but when I do, caffeine is by far the most disruptive to my sleep and will derail my routine for days.

I second that, I used to have sleep issues and it got fixed after moving my coffee habits to morning.

My experience is anecdotal but I drink both. I've found that once you're a heavy caffeine drinker that you hardly notice it's effects on things like sleep. Alcohol is different. 8 drinks before bed and I wake up tired, despite my usual bedtime. I drink way more caffeine than I do alcohol, yet alcohol is the only substance that has ever seemed disruptive.

Yes, after a while your body gets addicted to caffeine and adjusts to the amount you are ingesting, so you need to increase how much you're taking in order to keep feeling the high you expect from coffee.

If you suddenly stopped assuming caffeine, you'll start suffering from withdrawal symptoms such as headaches and drowsiness; this is because your brain adenosine receptors are accustomed to a certain amount of caffeine (which is itself an adenosine antagonist). Your brain receptors recalibrate themselves after a while if you stop drinking coffee/tea, or if reduce your intake of caffeine to a smaller amount.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted.

The withdrawal symptoms for caffeine are brutal in my experience. It's really surprising every time I dabble with having an espresso a few times a week when I'm in a cafe-frequenting mode. Even just one week of having a double espresso every other day will leave me with 1-2 days of terrible headaches and nausea beginning 1-2 days after completely stopping.

No other drug I've experienced so quickly establishes such miserable withdrawal conditions. And I've been around the block in this neighborhood.

8 drinks is quite a lot. That much alcohol affects a lot of things.

> That much alcohol affects a lot of things.

Don't take this the wrong way, but it's been a long time since I read a sentence that conveyed no meaning whatsoever. I found it amusing.

I think with 8 drinks I would either die or have a weeklong hangover :)

8 drinks are about 6 beers of 375mL volume here. In my country (Australia) beers are typically sold single, by 6 or by 24. So having 6 beers isn't uncommon. It's something you may do at a weekend BBQ during summer.

Yeah, I can't have caffeine after 2pm or I will have terrible sleep. Alcohol also causes bad sleep, but only in larger quantities.

I'm sure it depends on people to people. Everybody has different tolerance levels for both alcohol and caffeine. For me, mostly it doesn't disrupt my sleep even if I drink an hour before to go. But, the thing is decreasing anxiety level if I'm surrounded by a crowd. My focus can be easily fucked up then. While alcohol feels more comfortable at the same time.

It is. Try sleeping with a smartring, smartwatch or phone app that measures your deep sleep. The difference is shocking. The sleep quality for me is about half of what it is when I'm sleeping sober.

I'm sure different people have different sensitivity to caffeine and certainly the author's sleep benefited from both reducing caffeine and removing alcohol entirely. But if you read e.g. the studies mentioned in "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker, you'll see that alcohol's effects are much graver.

"Assume that I have 2–3 cocktails every other day"

Ehhh what, sorry but my friends that have 2-3 every other day I would tell them they have a problem. Is it some shock to the author that this is unhealthy and expensive?

Depending how strong the cocktails are, 2 cocktails every other day doesn't seem to be much, if at all, over the NHS advice for regular drinking [1], for example. Would you really call out your friend as having a 'problem' based on that?

[1] https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/new-alcohol-advice-iss...

yeah, maybe not a problem but I would not call it "more than normal"

> > Some might think that this is heavy alcoholism, but trust me when I say that having 1–2 drinks everyday in New York is more than normal.

It is alcholism, maybe not heavy, but alcoholism nonetheless.

I don't agree.

Drinking 1-2 cans of coke doesn't make you dependent on coke as an example. You can simply enjoy coke even though you don't need it.

If you feel upset/unhappy (even mildly) any day you can't have your 2 cokes, that's a dependency.

Perhaps, but that's my point with regard to the parents claim that 1-2 per day is definitely alcoholism. It may be for some people. Someone drinks 2 large vodka drinks, they are alcoholic. 1-2 glasses of wine, probably not.

1-2 cocktails every other day, which is first given in the article, is 3½-7 a week. 2 per day is 14.

A carefully made cocktail (e.g. in the stricter European countries where the measures must be accurate) might contain 40-60 mL of spirit (2 US fl oz ≈ 60 mL), depending on the standard measure in use. Taking 50 mL, each drink is 20 mL of ethanol (40% × 0.05 L).

That's 75–140 mL/week, up to 280 mL/week if it's two cocktails a day.

The medical recommendation in the UK is not to drink more than 140 mL/week.

This is the low estimate. In the USA my experience is the barman pours in a bit extra (got to earn those tips!).

I'm not sure how we define alcoholism, but with the other mentioned drinks (beer, wine etc) at minimum the author was drinking at the UK recommended limit, in likelihood somewhat more than that.

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