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Comment by jsonne | Hacker News Reader

I had a massive caffeine addiction (think 2 large cans of redbull a day) about a year ago until I quit cold turkey. It may be in my head, but after about a month off the stuff I felt like I had more energy than ever.

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I quit caffeine and ended up regretting it. I felt tired a lot more, even a year later. Staying awake after lunch became a real challenge for me. I'm just saying this to temper the confirmation bias here - I think people who quit caffeine and got nothing out of it probably don't feel any particular need to share their stories.

Especially when you are not working in a very structured environment caffeine helps (me) with keeping moving forward. The older I get the more important I feel energy management becomes. But then again I usually drink one in the morning and one in the afternoon to not get kicked out of various coffee shops...

By that do you mean that you try to conserve your energy expenditure over the course of the day, so you don't burn out too quickly?

Ditto – (also commenting to temper the confirmation bias). I give up caffeine now and then, usually have a day or two of headaches but after that my life becomes no different without caffeine compared to how it was with caffeine. Except I enjoy the taste of both coffee and tea, so I resume drinking it.

I will say I avoid having any caffeine after about mid-afternoon; perhaps this would help other commenters who find it affects their sleep patterns.

I was up to 4 cans of rockstar a day and quit cold turkey a month ago. The withdrawal symptoms are gone, but the low energy levels persist. I'm more interested in finding out why than going back to the caffeine. I wonder if it's the increased number of adenosine receptors, combined with lower amounts of dopamine. Some days, I take 1g of L-Tyrosine (which gets converted into dopamine) and that helps me energetic and, in a word, normal. On the days I don't, I sleep 9 hours at night and take a 3 hour nap in the middle of the day. I don't have a lot of answers right now, but I hope my low energy levels don't persist for a whole year.

Hmm, I quite caffeine for a bit more than a year. I didn't feel like I had more energy per se, but I definitely felt better overall. It did take a long time to get through withdrawal.

This overlapped a period of two springs where I had terrible, terrible allergies, which claritin/etc barely helped with. As a test I drank coffee for one week, and the allergies completely vanished. :(

I've firmly stuck with 1 cup a day, though, drinking decaf after that. I think only drinking coffee right after I wake up probably helps.

For the post lunch blues, try eating a much smaller lunch. You might have tiredness resulting from your body's digestive system kicking in.

The siesta is a more natural alternative to drugs. ;)

As sad as this is going to sound, it may be more natural, but it's less socially acceptable in the US. I used to take a nap during lunch, but I was told by my co-workers that it freaked them out to see me sleeping under my desk. ;)

Those are the same types who will keel over at 55 of heart failure. Don't join the club. My parents are anti-nap also... always found it odd. I just don't bother to listen to such complaints.

However, a better location might be in order, or perhaps a change of jobs. E.g. Occasionally I conked-out in the car, though it was a relatively dark parking garage.

I've never been a caffeine addict but I often get tired around lunch-time or before that. In cases like that I'll drink a cup of coffee - not out of an urge, but out of necessity.

It doesn't always seem to work, though.

I read once that the level of energy you feel from caffeine is actually your normal energy level, and that the 'boost' you feel is actually the caffeine dragging you out of a low.

Or something like that. And I can only presume this is after you've been consuming it for a while.

Up until recently I would drink about a pot of coffee a day. I've also gone cold turkey and while I have fallen off the wagon a couple of times, I've felt more energised (especially in the morning) and definitely less irritable.

I'm also finding that my sleep these days is amazing!

I used to drink two cans of Mountain Dew per day. I was 100% dependent upon it -- without my Mountain Dew I couldn't function at all. Anyway, I recently took a few weeks off between jobs, and during that time, I decided to quit caffeine cold turkey as well. I feel great! Some benefits include:

  -Sleeping better

  -Being awake and functional in the morning, even before the caffeine kicks in

  -Having a consistent energy level throughout the day

  -24oz of soda/day is not healthy, so getting that out of my diet was definitely a good thing

The only downside is that the startup I work for now has a tab with a number of local coffee shops that I can't take advantage of :(

I think you are confusing quitting caffeine with reducing intake of HFCS.

I used to (a long time ago) drink 2 liters+ of Coke at work. I switched to diet, but still caffeinated, and within two weeks, I felt like a new human being.

Among everything you listed, I'll also add that I went from needing 8 hours of sleep at night to needing only 6.

Decaf?

Depending on the place you get it, the label decaf often doesn't mean much. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17132260

That is still at least a rediction by an order of magnitude. For normal consumers thats good enough

> massive caffeine addiction (think 2 large cans of redbull a day)

Son, that is not a massive caffeine addiction.

I'm sorry to say to you but, Red Bull and such is not coffee lol. What you are addicted is to sugar, not coffee.

It's amazing how so many people in IT which by default are very smart, can be so ignorant about what they drink/eat.

considering the smallest can of red bull has as much caffeine as a cup of coffee (80mg) and a can of rockstar has twice that (160mg) I would say you're off base. Especially since both come in sugar free versions (which I used to enjoy more than the HFCS laden stuff, before I quit).

I only drank the sugar free versions. It was very much so the caffeine (and possibly the 1000% of b vitamins they pack in.)

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