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Comment by ChrisRR | Hacker News Reader

A year? I did it in a week. It's not worth the long effort to do it over a year. Just rip that plaster off

Yes, I can confirm I got headaches for that week, but after that, it was fine. I no longer found myself getting drowsy mid morning or mid afternoon when I'd normally have cups of tea

But it's not worth dragging it out when it's easy to get over a caffeine addiction in such a short timeframe

Edit: And due to the quick quitting, the benefits were much more noticeable. Within a couple of weeks it was immediately obvious to me how much more alert I was throughout the day, how much of my normal workday sluggishness and brain fog was artificially caused by caffeine, and how much less greasy my skin was

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> And due to the quick quitting, the benefits were much more noticeable. Within a couple of weeks it was immediately obvious to me how much more alert I was throughout the day, how much of my normal workday sluggishness and brain fog was artificially caused by caffeine, and how much less greasy my skin was

Interestingly, I also quit fairly quickly, about two years ago. Honestly though, I did not experience such major, obvious benefits. I was definitely overdoing coffee in the past, and when it got to the point that I needed two strong ones before 9AM to get going, I decided it's time to stop taking loans out against my sleep.

But basically post-quit, I have similar levels of energy/tiredness, overall (compared to a normal, on-coffee day). It's just less peaky and trough-y, and sleep is more predictable. The main difference I would say is that on that rare occasion when I now have a coffee, it has an extremely sharp effect. It's pretty odd, and I'm wondering if people are overblowing the effects, or if I'm just the odd one out.

Don't forget that caffeine may not be the only thing causing lethargy. You may also be deficient in other vitamins (quite often people don't eat anywhere near enough vegetables), or you may just be getting a bad night's sleep. Maybe you're not sleeping for long enough, or suffering from sleep apnoea

Maybe you're simply sat in your office chair for too long every day and just need to go for a wander once an hour to get the blood flowing.

Quitting caffeine is just one step, but if it's not what's causing your issues, don't forget to look into other aspects of your lifestyle,

I suspect you're right. I've got most of the first paragraph covered very well, but definitely could have a more diverse diet, and my physical activity levels vary between something quite decent (walking / cycling to work, alongside other fitness routine) to periods of almost no activity (lockdown + no fitness routine). It could definitely be improved, and I will put a bit of focus on it.

For me exercise is vital, it wakes me up better than caffeine ever has. Working up a light sweat and getting your heart rate up seems to increase mental sharpness, likely due to the norepinephrine response.

I'm in this boat. I didn't drink coffee til mid twenties, and I have never used an alarm clock. Now, I love the taste of coffee.

I have given it up a few times, but have never really felt better or worse for it.

Same here; coffee has never made me feel generally "bad" in any way that I can detect. I drink several cups a day - sometimes (not usually) as late as 5 or 6pm - and sleep like a baby anyway. I haven't ever given it up completely, but I did cut down to a single (8oz) cup first thing in the morning for a little while. The only noticeable effect was - as you said - the coffee I did drink had more of a punch than before. I didn't feel like I had more or less energy overall; I certainly didn't notice anything like "skin greasiness" before or after.

It's interesting that it affects people so differently. It takes a whole lot of coffee for me to even feel jittery; most of the time it's just a pleasant boost of emotional energy. Like an anti-depressant. I feel excited about life and ready to go dive into it. That's the main reason I drink it most days; not to keep myself awake. It just feels good, seemingly without downsides.

Maybe because caffeine is inversely additive. The more you have the less its effects are.

https://lifehacker.com/what-caffeine-actually-does-to-your-b...

The big benefit of caffeine for me is avoiding drowsing off. I haven't been drinking coffee very much at all during the pandemic, but that's because there is no risk if I drowse off at home. At work, if I didn't have my coffee I would be clonking off in every presentation, because who doesn't start feeling relaxed and tired in a dimly lit climate controlled room in a comfortable chair with nothing to do but sit in silence for a while? If I sit anywhere not doing anything I will start falling asleep, and I do get my 8 hours+ a night.

What was worse was if I had to drive. Same issue. Comfortable chair, light vibration from the car, warm interior, not much going on going straight on the highway, and I start dozing off. Coffee prevents that from happening. In desperate times I would start to rip out a leg hair every now and then to keep myself awake, or slap myself quite hard in the face. I keep emergency caffeine pills in my car now for this purpose.

If you look around on the internet (e.g. Reddit) for quitting plans, 2-3 weeks is the standard tapering time to avoid side effects.

If you don’t have the measurement tools or discipline, there are products with pre-measured doses you can buy to walk you through it, e.g. https://www.weancaffeine.com/

Following that regime I not only notice hardly any side effects, but also by day 3 or 4 feel noticeably better than during addiction.

2-3 weeks without side effects sounds like a good trade off. I guess the point of my comment is that dragging it out for a year is way longer than it needs to be.

This person is likely causing themselves more hassle than they need by trying to micro-manage their levels for an entire year what can be done in 3 weeks.

That is for sure. Impressive long-term self-discipline though.

I'd been buying regular and decaffeinated coffee and mixing then for the last few years. One day a few months ago I just bought the decaff and used that and had no difficulties at all. None.

So yes, some/many people will have withdrawal issues, but it might also be that you have no side effects in quitting.

I'm totally happy to have quit caffeine.

Many people in this thread are making the assumption that coffee produces its effects solely through caffeine. This is not true. Coffee contains large amounts of Harmala alkaloids that act as reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Their half-life in brain fatty tissues is several weeks.

This is a good point. I didn’t want to mention it since I’d only ever seen internet claims, but you prompted me to do a new quick search and it’s true:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16139309/

Apparently tobacco is so hard to quit not just because of the nicotine, but because of the MAOIs. Maybe coffee is the same. Every time I’ve quit caffeine, I’ve kept up decaf.

It would make sense that coffee would be similar. ”Keeping up decaf” is eerily similar to the results of this study:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00213-010-1810-2

The major finding here is that abstinent smokers preferred smoking denicotinized cigarettes over pushing a button to receive nicotine intravenously; i.e. ”keeping up denic”.

Eerie indeed. Time to rethink my free will.

It’s interesting, that study was 10 years ago. I haven’t heard of non-nicotine compounds becoming a part of the therapy since then. But what also happened in those 10 years was nicotine vaporizers took off, and a lot of people traded smoking for those. Wonder what the study would have found if it had nicotine puffs in addition to de-nic tobacco and sham puffs.

Thanks for pointing this out. Off to learn more about this.

Very interesting, anecdotally coffee always had a different effect compared to tea, this seems to be one important difference. Do you have any pointers for further reading regarding the half-life in the brain?

Here’s a review that might lead you there:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6520841/

Thanks, that is a more general review than what I was able to find. I wasn't able to find anything agreeing with a half-life on the order of weeks, however. Is it possible you're mistaking the half-life of irreversible MAOI's (since it binds to the enzyme irreversibly, the half-life is essentially the lifetime of the enzyme, weeks) with reversible (minutes to hours), which seem to be the ones in coffee?

No; the study I remember looking at was about reversible MAOIs being stored in fatty tissues.

I found the same results when I kicked two separate nicotine addictions (one was chaw and cigarettes, the other ecigs). The ecig addiction was way more painful to go through. I suspect that's because you end up injesting quite a lot of nicotine when you can hit an e cig basically anywhere, and it doesn't make you feel nauseous like too much chewing tobacco or hoarse like too many cigarettes so you just keep hitting it.

I had splitting headaches and trouble sleeping for a week then it was done. Cold turkey is the way to quit nicotine imo. Patches, gum, ecig, etc, are all just ways to drag it out and spend more money on nicotine, with the side chance of still being addicted. Cigarettes aren't heroin. It's gonna suck but then suddenly it won't.

Interesting. I’ve found both tobacco and coffee to be extremely addictive and habit-forming, as well as various other mixtures of caffeine and MAOIs (e.g. energy drinks bombed to hell and back with flavonoids).

Pure nicotine (ecigs) and pure caffeine, on the other hand, are much easier to keep in check or quit.

The craving to take a puff from an ecig is almost nonexistent compared to the massive drive to get cigarettes. I would walk miles for them just to light one up.

Same goes for energy drinks. They are addictive as hell, but the addiction is not caused by caffeine alone — rather, the massive interaction between monoamine oxidase inhibition and caffeine’s stimulant effects.

>The craving to take a puff from an ecig is almost nonexistent

It wasn't so much a craving, more that I would getting a headache if it started getting too long between sessions. Sometimes it would show up within a half hour.

Strange. I have never experienced that. Do you also drink coffee?

Thats funny, I always found quitting cigarettes way worse than ecigs, but I never tried the high impact nicotine salt versions.

I just attributed it to Big Tobacco finding clever ways to make the hit so much more satisfying in cigarettes and the mom and pop ecig blenders hadn't figure them out yet.

As someone who sporadically quits coffee throughout the year, the only differences I've noticed is that I feel the same without caffeine. I don't feel magically any better or worse. I just feel the same as if caffeine wasn't a factor. So I go back to drinking coffee and tea because I enjoy it. But I also hold that bit knowing I can always quit because I have done it. It's not addictive in the sense of cigarettes. It's a pleasurable taste. Caffeine has a side effect that has marginally minimal negative effects. So I don't get why we criticize outselves for enjoying something such as beverages with caffeine.

I've done that before and yeah it feels great after the withdrawals.

However, it wasn't enough for a permanent habit change. I fell back into drinking coffee after a month.

This way I'm physiologically and psychologically less dependent on the caffeine and the habit.

I'm sure this varies person to person.

How do you know that these benefits came from quitting caffeine? There are lots of psychoactive compounds in coffee and tea. You need to get addicted to pure caffeine and wean yourself off that as a comparison.

Well I was drinking way more pepsi max than I was tea, but overall whatever caused the improvements from cutting them out worked. And those symptoms happened to be in line with caffeine addiction so it's quite likely

I think different folks have different experiences with quitting caffeine. I agree its worth the quick method for a lot of people, but I had a cousin who had to go slow like this.

It's clearly a thing that some people have significant physiological effects from/dependency on and others don't. I like coffee in the morning but I'm also fine with black tea and even herbal tea. I've no reason to want to give it up but if I had to for some reason, I could do so tomorrow without any real issue other than annoyance on the same order as giving up cheese or something like that.

I like a cup of tea too, and I really like pepsi max, but after a while I'm perfectly happy with a rooibos tea, squash, fanta, fruit juice and there's nothing wrong with the occasional pepsi.

I noticed too that my skin was less greasy when I quit drinking coffee abruptly.

After quitting, I had cramps in legs for 7 days while lying to the point I had trouble falling asleep.

My skin is very greasy, I drink about 4 big cups a day sipping constantly, to maintain the same level of caffeine to improve coding skills, but when I have long vacations (two weeks) I don't see any side effects like headaches and my skin is probably even greasier. Also I don't have any trouble sleeping with or without coffee, but I drink only until end of work (16:00 for me). So, everyone is different. If I don't drink coffee, I feel it very well when trying to code, I can even detect by effects if some cofee is low on caffeine.

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