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Comment by b800h | Hacker News Reader

Can I just add: In addition to this, if you struggle with anxiety or have some sort of ADHD, then try cutting out caffeine entirely. Not just switching to "decaf" (which isn't), but cutting out tea and coffee, and switching to an alternative like Barleycup.

Doing this has had a massive positive effect for me, and combined with decent nutrition and daily exercise, has been wonderful.

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Agreed, anyone that already struggles with something like this should quit caffeine. My life is so much better off of it, but I struggle to stay off of it because I'm addicted to the 2hr productivity boost vs the all-day steadiness when you're not on caffeine. Things that improve for me were: No sense of urgency for every single thing. Significantly improved confidence. Word things better and speak better in general. No hard crash later in the day. All my scattered thoughts become cohesive. No more random heart palpitations.

All of these likely got better due to the overall effect of decreased anxiety and not making ADHD worse. I'm not myself when on caffeine. Nikola Tesla quit all caffeine/other stimulants for a reason.

The silly thing is that when I drank caffeine, the hit from it would make me overcreative. Yes, I might do more, but it probably wasn't what I was supposed to be doing - I'd pursue some new and exciting thing with tremendous fervour, before realising later that it was a load of nonsense.

> Not just switching to "decaf" (which isn't)

Going to argue here, this is wildly bad advice. Decaf practically has no caffeine, it has 2-7 mg from what I can tell which is less then chocolate. 2-7mg is like impossible to notice and might aswell be water with how little there is.

My advice was along the lines of saying, in the 1950s, "give up all cigarettes, not just 'low tar'". Potential straw man here, but surely you wouldn't call that "wildly bad advice".

My comment was predicated on the belief that we wildly underestimate the negative effects of caffeine, as well as its activities at lower doses.

Agree, althouh quiting it altogether might simply help with establishing the new habit.

But replacing it with decaf is also easier to get into.

Yeah, some people need to go cold turkey. Or... Help them out by replacing their coffee with decaf without them knowing. ;D

As someone from the Middle East, just thinking about not drinking coffee makes me lose my will to live. It’s like asking me to wear sunglasses on a cloudy night.

I love coffee so much, I'd prefer to deal with the anxiety, and I do suffer from it.

You can also get decaf beans, or try to see if you can get used to tea. I do both right now and I feel a lot better

Or the addiction just makes you think that this is good for you when actually you'd feel better without it?

It's the smell, texture and taste of coffee I love, not really the caffeine. I tried decaf, doesn't taste the same.

Find better decaf. Caffeine has no taste.

Don't the beans need to be processed to remove the caffeine ?

The quality of the coffee depends on the technique used (and who does it). Yes, most decaf coffees suck, but there are some very good you can find. For example, Arpeggio [1] is for me and few people I know the best of all Nespreso coffees. In specialized coffee bars you can get amazing decafs.

[1]: https://www.nespresso.com/us/en/order/capsules/original/arpe...

I did the same thing and experienced the same effect.

I'd add that my ability to sleep naturally was negatively affected as side effect of medication. I tried a various combos to induce sleep and found the best solution to just be... exercise.

No caffeine, exercise, sleep lead to a significantly reduced anxiety and more.

Downside with going completely off caffeine is you get so tired and unfocused and it lasts for ages.

I tried doing this for almost a full year, and while the improved sleep and generally improved mood was fantastic, and even toward the end it was so much harder to get any focused work done.

I think my average level of useful focus is just simply higher with caffeine. I was off it for three years, which is well beyond the time it would take to lose any tolerance, but never really reverted back to the same level of focus that I get with caffeine.

I'm not sure my overall focus over time is higher with caffeine, but it does allow me to nudge more of it into the useful part of my day. However I'm a fast metaboliser of caffeine, and it doesn't impact my sleep at all, so could be that there's a genetic component to one's experience here.

I have to say that I don't find this at all. I've been off caffeine for years, and I'm perfectly able to focus without it.

Stimulants (of caffeine is one) are the de-facto treatment for ADHD, not entirely unlikely caffeine is keeping me subclinical.

Some stimulants are a treatment for ADHD. Caffeine is not one of them, and whilst there are suggestions it can act as a short-term treatment for some people, it's not recommended.

Actual ADHD meds aren't available to me, so it'll just have to work.

I am in the middle of trying this out. When I first stopped caffeine I had better sleep and very vivid dreams every night. I also feel better as I think coffee was making my stomach too acidic which was causing me other indigestion problems, not to mention that coffee was nuking my teeth as well with acid.

Im on week 3 of no coffee now, I will maybe give it a month or two more to make a judgement call if I want to continue with coffee or not.

It is unfortunate as I really enjoy coffee, but it causes some issues for me with anxiety and stomach problems.

> if you struggle with anxiety or have some sort of ADHD

Those are two different things. Cutting out caffeine can help with anxiety but not ADHD. It's the opposite for ADHD, stimulates help significantly.

This is not true. Caffeine is not necessarily helpful for ADHD. It has a different mechanism of action from ADHD stimulants. They are not interchangeable. Not all stimulants help ADHD.

Also there’s a growing trend of diagnosing every focus problem as ADHD when many patients might have focus problems secondary to another condition like anxiety. It’s sadly all too common to find someone who believes they have ADHD due to TikTok self diagnosis or even a lazy doctor’s diagnosis but their core problem is actually anxiety. For these people, stimulants of any kind can actually worsen focus even if then provide a short term perception of helping due to the energy boost.

Tea, especially green tea, doesn’t have the same caffeine bioavailability as coffee – otherwise people would abuse it just as much as coffee.

I’m quite sensitive to caffeine, yet I can drink green tea all day without noticing much effect, while even a light coffee or a caffeine pill is clearly noticeable. I can also drink tea before going to sleep without any problems.

> Tea, especially green tea, doesn’t have the same caffeine bioavailability as coffee – otherwise people would abuse it just as much as coffee

You can absolutely get high doses of caffeine from tea if you really want to. It comes down to the type of tea, how much is used, and how strong it’s brewed.

There is nothing special about tea that breaks the rules of caffeine. It comes down to the content of the leaves, quantity, and extraction into water.

> while even a light coffee or a caffeine pill is clearly noticeable

Caffeine pills generally have really high dosages, FYI. Even light coffee drinkers can be caught off guard by how much caffeine is in a typical off the shelf caffeine pill.

> There is nothing special about tea that breaks the rules of caffeine.

There's definitely something special, just poorly studied: typical "how much caffeine is in X?" tables show tea having caffeine levels similar to coffee, but I never feel the same effects.

> Caffeine pills generally have really high dosages, FYI.

I use 200 mg tablets split into quarters for doses of 50–100 mg. Yet, they produce a much milder curve than coffee (which I no longer drink) and, as a side effect, cause no gastrointestinal side effects!

> typical "how much caffeine is in X?" tables show tea having caffeine levels similar to coffee,

I have never seen a caffeine comparison table that shows tea and coffee at the same level.

It’s common knowledge that typical coffee brews are in the range of 2-5X higher in caffeine content than typical tea brews.

Tea is widely used as a lower caffeine alternative to coffee.

Quick search shows various infographics: green tea at 20–35 mg, black tea at 45–50 mg, espresso at 45–75 mg, and instant at 60-80 mg on average. The day I feel anything close from a cup of black tea to what I get from an instant coffee or a quarter of a pure caffeine pill, I might start trusting those numbers, but for now I see them as nonsense that tries to present as science.

There are also other ingredients in coffee and tea that may affect caffeine's effect (L-theanine in many teas for example). Same with energy drinks, these will have a different effect even when the same caffeine intake is the same due to presence of taurine.

i thought that the mechanism in green tea is that it has l-theanine that helps with caffeine jitters/spikes. a bunch of people drink coffee + theanine which gives a much calmer high.

I cut coffee for over 6 months, and one of the most significant thing it did for me is that, when I resumed, I noticed that caffeine actually helped me feel more awake and alert (while I didn't notice any effect when taking a lot of it before stopping cold-turkey)

Fascinating.

Can you describe what else you tried? Other supplements? Any other non-food/supplement techniques like journaling, breathing, etc.? Any therapy and other similar human interventions?

After all those - is it / was it still the case that cutting caffeine drove the best outcome?

Not OP but I'll share my experience. For me, I have to quit caffeine for those to even become an option. Otherwise I get my short burst of productivity then everything shuts down after and I don't want to do a thing, everything feels "impossible" or like it doesn't matter at all.

Things like journaling / breathing / etc calm the nervous system while caffeine stimulates it. I would say caffeine is counterproductive to those practices.

Thanks for sharing.

I briefly quit caffeine once but it as well before any realization of anxiety. So, hard to extrapolate forward from that experience.

What feels different to me (compared to you) is this: sometimes I'll drink 2 cups of coffee in the morning and be awake but useless. Sometimes totally productive. Caffeine in some form is there - recently sometimes substituting coffee for a Celsius.

I am OP, and I can confirm exactly this line of thought. Once I had given up caffeine, I was able to start using methods like Pomodoro and Eisenhower grids, and they actually worked.

How long would you say it takes to feel the effects after switching? I did this a couple of years ago and as far as I remember the only real effect was my energy levels were more stable.

I gave it maybe 2-3 months and decided it's not worth it.

Tempted to give it another shot!

I think some of the positive effects are very quick (better sleep) whereas others take longer to materialise. My wife commented after maybe 2-3 years that I had become much more organised. I think that happened because I came off caffeine and then adapted over time to having a different brain chemistry, so I learned techniques to organise myself that I wouldn't have stuck to had I carried on consuming caffeine.

Very true! I recently found out that i am extremely sensitive to caffeine, and one cup at 6 pm makes me unable to fall asleep at night until 4 am. Trying to cut off the caffeine entirely now.

Yes, I'm sensitive to it, and a slow metaboliser. A lot of people will be in the same boat and not realise it.

I wish I could cut down on my caffeine intake to help my ADHD. Unfortunately, I already have basically zero caffeine intake (apart from diet coke sometimes)

Exercise is another good thing to do on a daily basis. It prevents me from self-medicating with alcohol.

Does walking 1.8 miles to work and back each day count as exercise? :P

Counterpoint, purposely adding caffeine in the form of different mushroom coffees has greatly improved my ADHD symptoms.

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