Hacker News Reader

Comment by thurn | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com