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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

I had a >300mg caffeine/day energy drink habit for a few of years. It took around six months to get past the additional fatigue after quiting. There seems to be some long term effect on me way beyond the half life. Does everyone else get past the effects of going cold turkey in a matter of hours?

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I went cold turkey after developing a facial tic and realizing I was consuming 1000 - 1200 mg of caffeine a day (mostly coffee, French press and canned, with some energy drinks too). I was 100% not aware that caffeine is physically addictive and causes receptor changes in your brain. Aside from withdrawal symptoms (joint aches and pains for me), the fatigue didn't fully go away after several months.

What did "fix" it was bringing it up to my doctor at my yearly checkup -- I explained that my mystery joint pains from a few years ago were almost certainly physical symptoms of caffeine withdrawal. This led to "why in the world were you consuming that much?!" questions and an eventual diagnosis of adult ADHD (likely lifelong and never diagnosed). 10 mg of generic ritalin twice a day and not only is the no-caffeine fatigue gone, but I basically don't tolerate caffeine anymore and have zero desire to consume it. Fortunately the local coffee roaster has a decaf :P I love coffee with or without the caffeine.

My last non-decaf drink was early July. Went from ~1000 mg a day to ~60. Change in sleep was pretty dramatic. I am sleepy every evening. Sleepy during the day just means I’m bored. I wake up feeling more rested.

The third day quitting was rough. Other than that it was pretty easy. Now my biggest complaint is finding decaf when I’m out.

> my biggest complaint is finding decaf when I’m out

I've been drinking decaf for a long time (now exclusively so), and this is a real issue sadly. Even when you go to a regular coffeeshop that has it, it's often been roasted and ground aaaaages ago (because of low demand) and then very loosely preserved, which results in drinks that taste bad and are potentially unsafe.

It’s minimal, but just FYI; caffeine free coffee still has small amounts of caffeine.

Not to intrude but I highly recommend you “play around” with longer acting ADHD meds. Generic short acting Ritalin is the worst. It doesn’t last long and you can “feel it go away”. There are much better meds that have the same underlying drug but in much better delivery mechanisms.

I’m sure you’ve done the homework but if anybody is reading who hasn’t… if generic short acting ritalin works, great! You know you respond to stimulant adhd meds. Now go find a better long acting one… focalin xr, adderal XR, vyvanse, etc…

I've actually done very little research on it, other than the mandatory "make sure your doctor isn't a pill pusher" kind of research. Mostly I figure they don't try and tell me how to fix hardware or software so I don't tell them how to fix meat :P

Not a chance. The body has to adapt and start producing chemicals naturally again which it hasn't. You'll also have to go through the addiction side effects of the habit which can be hard for your mental health. In my experience it's taken about 2 weeks for my body to adjust and get rid of the side effects... but then again sips coffee I've not stopped for to long.

It's caffeine withdrawal, you can also get other symptomps like stomach ache and headache.

Hum I sometimes just don't drink coffee for a week or whatever, and never noticed any symptoms

Would gradually decreasing the amount of caffeine consumed have made quitting the habit easier?

I quit caffeine in January and it took me about the same - 6 months for the fatigue to go away - though I would say it gets much easier after 3 months. I think gradual decrease would make it easier but it would take longer. You might need to step down to one cup of coffee/tea a day for 6 months before quitting. I ended up mixing small amounts of instant coffee with decaf instant coffee so that at the end of the day it was like I had only consumed one cup of coffee. I only did that for a few weeks and then just quit altogether and still got huge fatigue. I have recently started going for runs almost every day and that has helped me a lot so you may be in a better position if you exercise. I tried lifting weights for ages but couldn't get into it then I switched to running and found that to be way better at reducing fatigue for me.

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