How To Break Your Daily Caffeine Habit And Use Coffee Strategically | Hacker News Reader

How To Break Your Daily Caffeine Habit And Use Coffee Strategically

fastcompany.com

90 pointsdriverdan67 comments

I cut caffeine out of my life completely when I went to see a psychiatrist about my anxiety problems and she told me one cup of coffee was enough to trigger a panic attack. A year later and I still don't consume it. I sleep better, go to bed and wake up on time, and have much more manageable energy levels throughout the day.

Just because it's socially accepted doesn't mean it isn't one hell of a drug.

(If you want a citation for caffeine's anxiogenic effects: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/145/5/6...)

I've noticed a similar effect. Its not particularly powerful, but if one is prone to tense up then it can be just enough to push on over the edge.

My two thoughts:

1) Before you attempt to deal with a 'caffeine addiction', look at whether you have sugar addiction - which is far more dangerous for your health and more complicated to address.

2) Many of us don't get the amount of sleep we really need to function. Unless you sort that problem out first, you will just end up feeling sluggish and unproductive without the caffeine.

Thank you. I'm a habitual soda drinker, and I realized that after giving up caffeine (several times) it's really the taste of soda that brings me back; aka, getting my sugar fix throughout the day. I'm working on addressing this now even as I continue drinking caffeine, simply so I don't deplete myself of any self control.

Do you have any relevant articles on addressing sugar addiction? I'm not sure any grand strategies besides cold turkey.

I've had a lot of success at slowly phasing sugar out. I spent a while consciously trying to put less into my coffees (it was a struggle sometimes), and now I drink it without suger.

Likewise I mix my on soft-drinks from cordial + soda water (seltzer) and i've scaled it back to the point where I often prefer the water plain.

The great thing about it is I use the sugar as a hit for its own sake now if I'm feeling tired/whatever. It doesn't last long, but it can be a great way to get yourself going.

I cut out regular and diet soda entirely, switching to green tea and san pelligrino carbonated mineral water, in January 2011.

There's really no way to do it other than cold turkey, but similarly to kicking morphine for heroin after the civil war, it's easiest to do cold turkey by replacing with something better. :)

Gradual descent.

I used to put 4 teaspoons of sugar in my tea, it just wouldn't taste right without it. Then I decided to cut down. So I started reducing it in very gradual steps. 6 months down the road, I was down to 1.5 teaspoons.

I tried for years to give up an 8+ cup a day habit. The first few times after a few days of no coffee I would be literally falling asleep at my desk at work.

Recently I went on a long vacation, and though I was drinking coffee, it was no where near as much as usual, and even that trickled off completely during the last week. At that point I thought I may as well try stopping completely - it was hard, but it's been about a month now, and I definitely feel the better for it.

The main benefit is just being able to wake up easily in the morning - previously I would wake up and feel groggy for 30 minutes or so. I'd feel normal after 30 minutes whether I had a coffee or not, but it still made waking up unpleasant. Now, as soon as my alarm goes off (and usually 10 minutes before) I'm wide awake and feeling alert. It's seriously life changing - no more hitting snooze 17 times in a row...

The downside is, I miss the taste of coffee. There's some cereal drinks that make a passable drink, but they're like a watered down, bad tasting substitute for the real thing =/

The good tasting coffee that I enjoyed encompassing a meal is what kept me on it as well. A good decaf can kick the habit. I even like my decaf more than a normal one.

I've been off coffee a few weeks ago like you are now and it had the same effects on me. For a long time I got back into normal sleeping habits without even doing anything for it. I just got sleepy in the evening.

Then I started drinking some normal coffee again to push the boundaries at night (learning, programming) and here I am. It's 6 in the morning and it'll be a few hours before I go to bed.

I've planned on decreasing my caffeine intake again - actually avoided coffee but kept drinking sugar-free caffeinated soda, but cold-turkey is definitely the better way and it's my end-goal to go caffeine-free anyway. So this article and the discussion here had at least some impact. ;-)

To clarify the last paragraph: From experience I actually have doubts that just lowering intake works for me. I'll need to find a good replacement for a cold coke zero, though. There is a decaf version of coke too, maybe I'll try that again, or I'll try to avoid soda completely.

> The downside is, I miss the taste of coffee.

You can always put it in your mouth, and then spit it out.

I don't think anybody would seriously consider doing that; it wouldn't be enjoyable at all.

I hit snooze 17 times a row and I don't touch coffee. Maybe I should start? :)

Genotype & Coffee:

“Coffee, I Must Have Coffee…”

http://spittoon.23andme.com/2011/04/18/coffee-i-must-have-co...

"Caffeine Consumption "

https://www.23andme.com/health/caffeine-consumption/

"Caffeine Metabolism"

https://www.23andme.com/health/Caffeine-Metabolism/

"Some people get jumpy after drinking a single cup of coffee, while others can gulp down a Venti Americano without feeling a thing. Part of that variability is due to the development of tolerance by regular coffee drinkers; but there are genetic differences in how people metabolize caffeine as well."

---

http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Caffeine

Cold turkey from caffeine is hard, often involving lethargy and headaches for a few days.

But you can taper off. In my experience, tolerance/dependence can be reduced by acclimating to lower dosages without triggering the full withdrawal symptoms.

So when quitting, I've found it useful to progressively:

• substitute smaller coffees for larger

• mix in decaf grounds in growing proportion over several days

• substitute tea for coffee

• avoid caffeine between meals and have only one caffeinated drink at full meals

• get to just one drink in the morning and one to nurse all afternoon

• get to just one drink (usually tea) to nurse all day

After progressively less each day for a week or so, and reaching just a single cup-of-tea a day dosage, then cutting it off entirely becomes much easier, and no day of the process is like the worst day of cold turkey.

I have been off caffeine for 6 or so months now. I stopped cold-turkey before and went a whole year before joining my new job and free soda was too big to pass up.

I have found that being with caffeine has actually helped me tremendously, I don't feel jittery anymore, I am more alert, I am able to stay awake longer (that one was weird to me as well), I was less likely to feel mentally tired at the end of the day, and my sleep has never been better (although I still have a delayed sleep phase ... luckily my work lets me work on my own terms =))

I also kicked the soda habit, about 3 months after I kicked the caffeine habit, and it has also changed me. I drink a LOT of water now, and overall don't mind the taste. I stay away from most everything that contains high fructose corn syrup, and have found that I have less energy dips throughout my day, and since I can keep my blood sugar pretty constant throughout the day I don't have any major dips where I feel like I am crashing.

I used to be at the point where I would roll out of bed, drink a liter of Mountain Dew, then half a pot of coffee when I got to work, and at least another can or two of coke or something along those lines before lunch to try to kick-start my day. At some point I figured that I was dependent on caffeine much like a drug addict and that I did not like the fact that a chemical I was knowingly putting into my body was directing how I lived my life and what I bought for food.

> I stopped cold-turkey before and went a whole year before joining my new job and free soda was too big to pass up.

Free soda at work?? Do they really not care about their employees health at all?

Caffeine is one thing but having your employees guzzle HFCS throughout the day ... does the job come with a healthcare plan? That covers diabetes? :)

Either I am going to drink 4 sodas a day and pay 2USD to do so, or I am going to drink 4 sodas a day on my employers coin.

Neither situation has a health advantage to the other, but one of them makes me a happier employee.

If you have health concerns, then just do not drink it.

Diet soda?

Anti-caffeine bloggers are so annoying. There is nothing wrong with caffeine, it pretty much drives the modern world. Caffeine is a highly successful and safe nootropic and I'm convinced that people who tell you to stop it are the same people who would tell you to stop masturbating, or to take cold showers, or to sleep without a mattress.

There is no good reason to stop caffeine. If you want an extra boost, just drink more! Duh!

Successful? Yes. Safe? Not for everyone.

Repeated studies show caffeine to increase panic and anxiety symptoms in people with depression, panic disorder, and related mood disorders.

I stopped taking caffeine when my psychiatrist told me it was contributing to my anxiety problems. Went from several sleepless nights per week to falling asleep at the same (reasonable) hour every night.

Masturbation changes your testostron levels, so I some cases that might be beneficial. Cold showers influence your metabolic rate, so they can help with weightloss.

Sleeping on the floor may be better for your back, but honestly I don't know.

If you want to speak "honestly" . . . everything you just said was pulled out of your ass.

Cold showers may influence metabolic rate but their most pronounced effect is that they make you want to avoid taking a shower, resulting in stinky, anxious, unhappy people.

Masturbating is so much fun than any health benefits or detriments are irrelevant. It increases quality of life.

There seem to be genetic variances in how well you deal with caffeine. Some people definitely have problems with it. 23andMe claims a slightly increased risk for heart attacks for me in relation to caffeine, though I don't think it is so bad. But I do have a problem with caffeine. (According to 23andMe, I am a slow caffeine metabolizer - I suppose that means that I can't gulp down 8 cups without side effects, like some people claim doing).

Sure, you could use coffee strategically. But what do you have to give up to do it? [Decaf isn't really an option, whatever the author says at the end of the post].

I think there'd have to be a serious health negative to maintaining my coffee addiction before I feel it'd be worth skipping my morning latte.

Oh, and a sugar hit can have a very similar effect in my opinion.

Really? See, I drink mostly decaf espresso, and I'm pretty picky about my coffee, grind my own beans, etc. I can't tell a difference. If it's good coffee, it's good. If not, it's not, no matter decaf or regular. Am I the only one?

Good quality decaf is a nice beverage, similar in aroma and flavor to regular coffee, but there's definitely something missing in the flavor. The decaffination process is pretty harsh on the beans, as I understand it.

This has been my experience with decaf as well.

Really surprised me when I found out, too. (when someone told me I'd been drinking decaf for the past few days)

Really, that's interesting. Maybe I need to give it another try.

I mean, I have no doubt in your statement, I don't know many people who can't tell the difference, I just never have been able to.

> I think there'd have to be a serious health negative

Not a health negative but you build a tolerance to it. So then when you actually "need" a caffeine boost you'll need more of it. So...you'll have to buy a bigger mug and deal with more sever headaches if you somehow go without it.

I am actually doing what the article suggests. I normally don't drink coffee (I drink tea) except when I need a boost, then wean myself off of it. Then I do get the headaches and I manage them buy drinking more tea than usual and taking aspirin.

I guess I am saying the downside of not having regular coffee (just that) outweighs the upside, which is the occasional use for an energy boost.

You switch out the first benefit for tea, I switch out the second for usually either sugar or exercise.

I've got a headache just thinking about trying to go cold turkey.

I drink 6-8+ cups a day and I have pretty severe sleeping problems.

I love the taste as well, but I certainly don't get a 'buzz' out of it anymore. I just.. drink it.

The advantages seemingly to give it up as a daily habit is the ability to sleep better, and to actually get a kick when you drink it.

Maybe I'll give kicking it it a try, ugh!

This article is not about how to break a caffeine habit. It's about the benefits of only taking caffeine occasionally.

I agree. I was never even encouraged to do so. I'd still continue my avid coffee drinking habit.

I got off alcohol, can live without Red Bull but coffee always seems to find a way back into my life. The quality of sleep after being caffeine free for a week is amazing. But unless you set your own hours, that coffee becomes tempting when you're running low on sleep. I think I'll give it another go though.

I used to be addicted to caffeine. If I didn't have some before lunch I'd get a terrible headache. So I used caffeine pills to control my dosage and step off gradually.

One big benefit, I find that my hands are much steadier now. Helps tremendously when soldering.

I used to not drink coffee until a friend of mine introduced me to good coffee (i.e. not Maxwell House or Folgers). I normally only drink about 3 cups a week, usually in the afternoons, on busy days when I'm feeling sluggish. If I drink much more than that, I do notice that it loses its effect of waking me up, while simultaneously making it harder for me to sleep. It's kind of a shame, because I really enjoy the taste of good coffee now that I've found it. Making the perfect cup of coffee is a kind of art.

I quit caffeine cold turkey about 6 weeks ago. I was drinking one cup a day in the morning, and the odd afternoon cup.

My energy level skyrocketed about a week after I quit. I was waking up an hour earlier on average with no alarm clock, and wasn't groggy like I normally was.

Then Yesterday AM I had a cup in the morning to see what it was like, and I was a productivity madman. Definitely wont be going back to the daily cup, but I think once every couple weeks to get some crazy work done will be a great little trick up my sleeve!

The same benefits could probably be achieved by maintaing your current habits and then increasing sharply your caffeine intake at times when you need a boost. It's all relative, right?

Caffeine's main effect (though not the only one) is as an adenosine reuptake antagonist. That means that it makes it harder for your body to re-absorb adenosine in your bloodstream. Wikipedia has more detail, but effectively, your body will adapt to regular caffeine intake by increasing the number of adenosine receptor sites. So in the morning, when there is very little adenosine in your blood to begin with, more or less caffeine will not have much effect. But after you've been awake for a long time and there's more adenosine in your blood, increasing the amount of caffeine will not have as much effect because your body already has a lot more receptor sites, it's got some resistance to the effects. But decreasing the amount of caffeine will cause a "crash" where your body starts taking up lots of adenosine all at once.

So, keeping a baseline level of caffeine in your system causes your body to become resistant.

I'm not sure. If I have too many coffees I become paranoid and shaky. I don't remember that happening early on when I was developing my addiction.

A good practice in general is to rotate your receptors. In this case would mean alternating between coffee, tea, and maté, because each has different analogs in different proportions.

Citation needed...

I'm not sure if it's ever been tested scientifically. Apparently the advice comes from Jonathan Ott though, in case that gives it any extra credibility.

In general though plant-based medicines have tons of different compounds, so it's important to change the strain every so often or else it A) stops being as effective and B) is more likely to cause side effects. E.g. if you keep smoking the same strain of weed then eventually it is more likely to cause anxiety then if you use a different strain each time. Essentially you want to prevent your receptors (and neural network) from adapting to what you're doing to them, and the best way to do that is to not do the same thing repeatedly.

N.b. this is not the same thing is polypharming, which is generally something to be avoided.

But I do like the taste of the thing.

"Drink coffee and then take a 15 minute nap.". Advice like this makes it hard to take this article seriously. It's also a little thin on the data. Sure, it's an article on caffeine, so it'll rank on the geek sites, but do you feel richer or empowered after reading it?

I used to drink about 5 cups of coffee a day. I stopped cold turkey and life didn't seem worth living. So I scaled back to one cup of really really FUCKING good coffee every day. Jamaican Blue Mountain roasted beans, $40 a pound. That's right bitches. The only thing more expensive has passed through the asshole of a small cat-like creature. You already know what it's called because you're a geek and you're smart. Hey, I like pussy, but that's taking it a little too far.

So I take my one cup of blue mountain black, no sugar, milk or other evil pollutants. Fresh ground, French pressed. And then it's tea for the rest of the day to segway from my morning caffeine kick in the ass to a righteous l-theanine zen buzz.

Drugs are good. Smart drug use is better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_nap#The_caffeine_nap

> That's right bitches. The only thing more expensive has passed through the asshole of a small cat-like creature. You already know what it's called because you're a geek and you're smart. Hey, I like pussy, but that's taking it a little too far.

Was this part really necessary to make your point?

The rest of your post was spot on:)

Seems one cup may be too many. Calm down.

The caffeine nap works. Well for me anyway. Also helps with stopping you from sleeping longer then the recommended 20min (give or take) and falling into deep sleep.

>The only thing more expensive has passed through the asshole of a small cat-like creature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

Actually for the money, you can do better than Kopi Luwak or Jamaican Blue Mountain.

Cup of Excellence winners are always good, though it may be more expensive than Blue Mountain. I was given a sample to roast once. Something like $40/kg _green_. Otherwise just sample various beans from a speciality roaster.

Caffeine takes a while to kick in, if you use that time to take a nap then you will wake up with the benefit of the nap AND caffeine.

You mean "segue."

If you're breaking a caffeine habit doesn't that imply that you are no longer drinking coffee? That's sort of like saying you are giving up on nicotine but will only have a smoke every now and then. My thinking is you either embrace you vice or avoid it — no?

Abstinence is not the opposite of habit.

But it's a good start -- no?

Going through withdrawal effects right now. The effects of coffee are great, but they comes at a huge cost for me. Coffee and auto-immune diseases are a recipe for disaster (joint pains).

21 days cold turkey here.

I love the comments here. Screw the fact that it's a stimulant drug, it's "just caffeine". How many among the caffiene abusing crowd also go out of their way to demonize other, possibly less legal, drugs with similar or safer effects? Even ones with considerably lower lethal doses.

"How to Break Your Daily Meth Habit And Use Meth Strategically". (edit, I'm not saying meth is an example of a drug "safer" than caffeine), but seriously, meth is used like coffee in many other parts of the world, especially those in migrant jobs or need to maximize their hours when a job is available. (I'm not, for the record, advocating that anyone even so much as try meth).

Are you sure you don't mean some other kind of amphetamine? Methamphetamine is really addictive and toxic.

I'd imagine it's used by migrant/long-hours workers because it's relatively cheap (for the given effect), and quite readily available.

It's even licenced by the FDA for certain conditions such as ADHD, and exogenous obesity[1].

I believe (although I can't find a direct citation to justify it at the moment) that it's considered to be more damaging than other amphetamines (both psychologically "meth psychosis", and physically (cardiovascular stress).

There are a number of drugs with similar(ish) properties, although some of them are either illegal, or prescription only. Off the top of my head, there's Provigil (modafinil)[2], Khat (cathinone)[3], Coca leaves[4], and the various other non-caffeine forms of the xanthines (Yerba mate, Cocoa)[5].

In addition to those, there's the whole class of the stimulant Phenethylamines, (of which the * -amphetamines are a subset) although some of them have hallucinogenic effects which would limit their use as a performance enhancer.

The only one I would outright demonise is Methamphetamine, not necessarily purely due to the potential side effects, but due to the relative ease of (very poor quality) manufacture. This leads to a whole bunch of really nasty reaction side-products, on top of whatever cutting agents the distribution chain has added to maximise profits.

In any of these discussions, it's considered traditional to present Paul Erdős[6] as an example of productive amphetamine usage, so I will :)

On the topic of therapeutic index (therapeutic dose / ld50 dose), caffeine is probably one of the highest in my list above, with an LD50 of ~150mg/kg over a short period of time, and a productive dose being of the order of 100-1000mg/day depending on tolerance. Discounting time, that's a ratio of ~1/10.

[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Methamphetami...

[2] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Modafinil

[3] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Khat

[4] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Coca#Traditio...

[5] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Xanthine

[6] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%9...

Really? Meth is similar or safer in it's effects?

A lot of IT people I have known over the years have had Meth habits of one sort or another. A few have had it turn into a full blown problem while others just stopped without it becoming an issue. All of them have talked to me about what a slippery slope it is. I don't think any of them would never suggest caffeine is anywhere near as dangerous.

No. Sorry, I should have been more clear. There are other drugs often demonized that have much less stressful effects than caffeine on the body and have lower lethal doses. While there is a lot of scare-mongering about meth as well, obviously meth is not an example of one of those drugs. I apologize that I didn't make that distinction clearer.

Yeah, fair enough. Caffeine does tend to get off relatively easily, although I would argue there is good reason for that, when you compare it to alcohol and nicotine for instance...

You can use your mind to control your adrenal glands, the most productive years of my life were the years I spent not drinking one cup of coffee. Coffee is a drug.

If you are drinking more than one cup of coffee a day, you need to get some help.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com