Comment by caminanteblanco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by caminanteblanco | Hacker News Reader

caminanteblanco

This article (and it's second part) couldn't have come at a more helpful time. I have such an unhealthy relationship with caffeine (and sugary drinks in general), that I would literally go days without drinking any water. If it didn't come from a 7-11 or a coffee machine, I wasn't going to drink it.

Just this week, I decided to quit cold turkey, and drink nothing but water, and it has been eye opening. I didn't realize how much I depended on the drinks to get me through the day. But going just-water is definitely the only way I could have done this. Something about knowing I have nothing to look forward to besides water helps me just drink water, instead of waiting until I can find some energy drinks, and getting dehydrated in the process.

Not everyone is going to have as unhealthy relationship with caffeine as me, but I'm hoping my kidneys and gut will thank me. I know 22 year olds seldom suffer from heart attacks, but I'm not going to be 22 forever, so might as well start now.

I would literally go days without drinking any water.

The idea of that is horrifying. I can't imagine voluntarily putting myself through that in the absence of some sort of extreme drought situation. Personally, I'd be miserable without 64 - 128oz of water first thing in the morning. I've long suspected that a lot of people who think they're addicted to caffeine are really just chronically dehydrated.

I think there's a lot of truth in that. The most surprising thing to me has been how much water I've been drinking. Around 3 quarters of a gallon a day, which is far more than I would drink of anything before. And I think that will have a whole bunch of benefits beyond just the lack of caffeine.

I think I was less caffeine addicted, and more sugary-caffeinated drinks addicted.

I used to not drink coffee, joined the high-end VFX industry, started to drink a lot, e.g., 3 big dark mugs at work each day. We had top-of-the-line espresso machines and great coffee so it was easy. Something I noticed is that on weekends, I had systematically huge migraines, those were soothed by drinking more coffee...

The issue is that caffeine has a vaso-constricting effect on blood vessels [1], which then, when they re-expand by lack of caffeine creates the migraines.

One day, I decided to stop, I had an horrible week, constant migraines, it eventually stopped and I never really had coffee since then. Only 2 times during conditions where I needed which added the benefit that the caffeine had a really strong effect then.

I'm certainly missing the taste and ritual, so I replaced coffee with green tea, not as good but no migraines!

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2748160/

personally I've found the best way to go cold turkey is when you have a cold or the flu.

if you're going to feel like shit you might as well have something to blame it on and once you finally get over it you'll feel good enough to not worry about the lingering withdrawals

I'm very sensitive to caffeine and get jittery and anxious around the 80mg mark. But I also adore coffee and keep ramping up. Eventually I'm at 240mg per day and can't actually function, I'm just a terrible person that doesn't sleep much at night. I really wish we'd make caffeine harder to get :D

Speaking of which, time to cycle down. Back to tea or water.

Good luck.

The major plus of having low or zero baseline caffeine consumption is that when you really need a jolt, a single cup will have the desired effect!

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