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Comment by petesergeant | Hacker News Reader

That is also how you know you have a caffeine dependence, though

Yeah, back when I drank a lot of coffee, one cup would make me feel calmer, while going too far and drinking like 3-4 cups (which I did do once to see what it was like) makes me feel like shit, have a headache, be unable to sleep well, etc.

After stopping, even one cup makes me jittery and I no longer feel like I need to drink coffee to feel awake.

Caffeine dependence is terrible and widespread.

> Caffeine dependence is terrible and widespread.

There are plenty of reasons to not want to be dependent on caffeine, but I wouldn't put its dependence in the terrible category.

Agree. If I don't drink coffee for a couple of weeks, which I rarely do due to the extreme migraine from withdrawal (3-4 days), and then drink one with half a spoon of coffee, I'm extremely alert and focused for house. Now I'm drinking like at least 10 cups a day with zero benefit.

It is easy to quit without headaches - slowly reduce your caffeine intake over a few weeks. Quitting cold turkey (abruptly stopping) will give most people nasty withdrawal symptoms.

I regularly give up either (a) using caffeine only pills and breaking them to linearly decrease caffeine dose, or (b) measured reduction of instant coffee over time.

Start at your current caffeine intake, every morning take one dose (might start high) and reduce slowly over say 3 weeks. It requires significant patience and self-control, but it has worked for me. My main problem is ensuring I don't have social coffees: it is easy to fall back into the habit of drinking coffee if I don't follow the titration regime.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=robocat%20caffeine%20quit&type...

One easy thing you can do to reduce your caffeine intake is to drink 1/2 caff or have every X coffee be decaf. I switched to 1/2 caff and tapered down, that was a lot easier for me.

I don't drink coffee regularly.

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