Quitting coffee and the ensuing effects

But if you really want to, I'm sure you'd be okay after a few days to a week of headaches (moderated by soda and aspirin if necessary).

I switched to black tea in the mornings a few years ago and I've never looked back. There's enough caffeine there to get me up, but it's a heck of a lot easier on my stomach / nerves / etc. I'll still have the occasional cup of coffee - maybe once a month - but then it's more like an indulgence than a necessity.

High blood pressure, mainly, and it makes me shake. Literally. I can't hold my hand steady at all from morning to early afternoon, and when combined with adrenaline it makes me really light-headed and almost dizzy.

Can't you use a substitute caffeine source that's not so harsh on your stomach? What kind of coffee do you drink?

I've taken to only drinking espresso oddly enough. Cuts way down on the caffeine, big on taste, and because of lower volume and no milk ends up easier on tum as well.

I suppose I could get the fob from a tea bag tattooed over it so it would become a cup of tea, but that's kinda wanky.

but yes you should drink FLAT coke with ice, it won't mess up your stomach, and if you drink five of them you won't be fiending for caffeine

or just eat no-doze

but here i am and im feeling fine. well, right now im not. starbucks gave me a regular latte and i feel like im going to die.

I remember that one. That was kind of a weird gimmick.

No stomach problems but really affected my sleep when I have enough trouble sleeping anyway...

^^

i also worry a lot about what drinking an entire pot+ a day does to my metabolism and stuff. there are a bajillion articles out there on the health detriments of coffee, but then there are also tons out there saying exactly the opposite (one specific battle that seems to pop up is coffee's link to diabetes), so man idk.

that camping mug is cool but a lotta times it's just not in the cards to build up another fire in the morning, boil more water. and when you're on a pot a day a little mug ain't doing it.

hmmm. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/quit-coffee_b_1598108.html

In the 1980s and 1990s several prospective cohort studies were done to investigate the correlation between coffee and diabetes. Many of those studies reported that there is an inverse dose-dependent association with the risk of Type 2 diabetes. This means that for reasons still unclear, all those research studies found that the more coffee people with normal blood sugar drank, the less risk appeared for developing Type 2 diabetes. Several constituents in coffee might be responsible for these consistent findings.

Chlorogenic acid in coffee might inhibit glucose-6-phosphatase, an enzyme that regulates blood sugar metabolism in the liver. It could also be due to the indisputably-high levels of antioxidants, which have a benign effect on insulin sensitivity.

Not surprisingly, the news channels then sounded the bell that coffee was protective, and we all enjoyed our cup of joe without any remorse.

Until the next report.

Some curious minds wanted to know exactly who was protected. And why? How? These studies showed that in people with Type 2 diabetes coffee intake was correlated with insulin spikes and increased blood sugar after a meal. Further research has shown that the caffeine in coffee might be the culprit responsible for the secretion of higher levels of insulin from the pancreas.

Clearly higher insulin and glucose levels are not the work we want to bestow on a body healing from insulin resistance. Considering that diabesity affects nearly 1.7 billion people worldwide and growing, the nightly news now sounded the alarm of caution that perhaps our coffee habit is a detrimental addiction needing to be kicked to the curb.

i mean i'm not a diabetic, but interesting

i am back on a quasi-quit jag, reasons =

1) will sleep better
2) less waking tired and sluggish every morning
3) fewer headaches
4) also reduces non-caffeine-based self-medication for headaches

(all effects attested to from previous breaks)

i love love love coffee but i think it cuts into my working/writing routine when not on deadline -- next hard deadline is two months away, here's to a headache-free late summer

i have considered switching up to green tea but maybe that is a frying pan / fire situation

luckily i dislike tea in all its forms

even chai? I like coffee fine but I don't know what I'd do without chai

I drink nuts amount of coffee.

Last holiday, the opportunity for coffee drinking was negligible. Didn't particularly miss it, until one day I felt like I'd like one. Even then, if they hadn't had it, it would not have been a biggie.

More surprised there wasn't any crayvinnnggsssss

even rooibos and pu-erh and russian brick tea

I have found since I started taking arctic root (proper name Rhodiola Rosea) every day I barely crave any caffeine on a morning any more. It actually gives me an energy jolt that lasts all day. Although I take it in tablet form and couldn't vouch for brewed method of ingestion practiced in the Russian arctic regions for centuries. It probably tastes like bear piss but it's effects and benefits as a natural stimulant are exceptional.

verveine/verbena is pretty amazing as a late-nite rinse-out

no caffeine tho

my basic intuition -- about myself anyway -- is an energy jolt is energy borrowed from the future and that while you can obviously set up a cycle of repeat-borrows (and do), you end up paying a price for this, same as two days after something's really adrenalised you you feel like shit

my price seems to be just constant low-level headaches -- they are shiftable (esp with caffeine) but are really only always deferred

plus i would like to sleep better sometimes

well-put.

I've been pretty bad at my quitting scheme this year but not awful. Splitting days about evenly between one cafe au lait when I have the urge to leave the house and go to the coffee shop, and one black tea when I stay home (sometimes topped up with a Coke later on, which come to think of it NEVER actually makes me feel better). Green tea hits my stomach way too hard. What's really hard to shake is when I go out for a full breakfast and it just seems so obvious that steady refills of a little off-white mug of drip coffee would just hit the spot perfectly. I don't think I've broken the habit hard enough yet where I could just indulge in that one day here and there and suffer no relapses in my overall project of cutting back. But good sleep and not having headaches and just generally being more even in my energy level throughout the day are all important things.

What I find with the Rhodiola is that it doesn't keep me awake at all, but it does give me lucid dreaming maximus - like when on nicotine patches. But I never feel like it is tapping out of future reserves. They have been using it in the east for millennia without much complaints. But if someone is sensitive to headaches it could cause problems I guess. I only just had my first migraine a few years ago and I thought I was dying or going blind! I am so unused to headaches it is probably one of the areas where I have to check my privilege:p It is strange because my mum was always afflicted with very debilitating headaches on a weekly basis, but i never get them at all.

I quit drinking coffee for a few weeks recently and noticed I would feel tired and like I was "coming to" for the whole day. One coffee in the morning was a ritual to get in a better mood for the day and certainly it elevated my mood to be able to deal with my office job. I'm back drinking coffee daily again, and I've traded the ennui for a momentary bump and an inevitable crash.

Got completely off coffee a few months ago. Wasn't sleeping, acidy stomach and even noticed my perspiration - when I did - left my clothes smelling bad. Began to drink black tea and green only and all that bs is gone now. Bye coffee! I loved ya but ...laters.

no coffee at all now for two months (w/one experimental relapse not repeated) -- i miss the taste a lot but not the effects

related matter in this thread:
the thread of ATRIAL FIBBING

article about sleep/coffee/etc

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/how-to-sleep/508781/

Tapering off coffee by substituting a less-caffeinated hot drink might not be everyone's cup of... eh, fuck it.

i've heard good things about yerba mate

i don’t want to shit up the Coffee thread so i’m here

and this sucks

on the plus side your breath smells even fresher

I switched to tea in October to see if it would stop the palpitations and it seemed to do the trick immediately. So no more coffee for me I guess.

damn tracer, sending strength <3

the coffee thread reminds me of audiophile shit sometimes lol <3 in a good way

Sheesh how much coffee were you drinking camaraderie? and you too Tracer if you don’t mind answering

Not even that much! I'd say 3-4 cups a day. 2 in the morning, then a double espresso in the afternoon. But I've done this for pretty much ever since I can remember. A decade? Two? So the switch has been a little rough. I feel fuzzy and disconnected, like what I imagine antidepressants might feel like. The edges sanded off. I miss ol' rootin tootin Tracer. And it takes.. several seconds to like, form the words of a response if somebody asks me a question. It's like Flowers for Algernon lol

Worth saying too this was not my idea; my doc recommended it as a mitigation for my migraines

I was having two, maybe three cups per day, but I have a heart condition which causes frequent tachycardia.

I felt groggy for a few days but now feel significantly better in the mornings especially (the "before I've had my coffee" time)

Sincere best wishes to you both

I know more people that have cut out coffee than have cut out alcohol, tbh. I couldn't imagine. The same neuroscience doc I posted about in the alcohol thread, he's brought up coffee a few times, and given his objective buzzkill-ness I keep expecting him to tell everyone to cut it out, too, but he keeps finding positive things to say about coffee/caffeine. For example, not only is its dopamine kick much, much lower than stuff like chocolate, but chemically it actually positively affects your dopamine receptors in a beneficial way (as opposed to the usual peaks and valleys of its stimulant peers). Surprising.

Anyway, good luck! I hear the first two weeks of quitting anything can be the toughest.

yes post all my procedures (see the atrial fibbing thread for details) i have a high resting heart rate and have intermittently come off coffee for a few months at a time to see if that makes a difference

well it doesn't so i'm back on right now -- my cardiologist says absent other problematic symptoms the high heart rate isn't concerning him especially (check in again at the end of the year) and as far as he's concerned coffee is unrelated and good for you in other ways

once i've actually fkn moved house -- i whish this could hurry up a bit lol -- i might try cutting down again as i want to shift all my habits a bit in the new place (walk more, swim more, lose some weight, eat a salad) as i definitely sleep much better after the several (many) days of dreary grief

mainly i fall off the wagon bcz hard-deadline subbing & proofing needs me to be SHARP AS A PIN FIRST THING (but my plan is to be doing less of that also, as it pais less and less and less and less)

Ugh, I have both migraines and heart palpitations, so I guess I probably should cut out coffee, but I'm scared of the withdrawal migraines and what will happen when I don't have it to help me focus.

(lol not me discussing proofing and being sharp as a pin and then spelling "pays" as "pais")

fwiw have have had only a low-level headache for one (1x) day as a result of this and today i'm actually feeling pretty good mentally, just a bit bereft of my little ritual

In my experience, the brutal symptoms (headaches, fogginess) are all really, really frontloaded in those first few days. Superstitiously, I go for rehydrating drinks, hot showers, Tylenol and naps. Eventually you're on the other side.

and that’s where i am

guys i have been taking only magnificent shits

A good substitute for the ritual aspect, I've found during times where I had to swear off coffee: heating a cup of broth.

i am drinking roiboos tea like my life depends on it. probably will develop some form of roiboos-inflicted malady

I gave up alcohol five years ago to save my life and my marriage. I'm sure as fuck not giving up coffee.

guys i have been taking only magnificent shits

lol a barry zito macro for every occasion

i just had coffee again and gents this is the stuff

sorry wrong thread. or is it.i am absolutely flying. seeing through the universe. cracking jokes before i even start my sentence.

sightly unsettling vibes in my extremities and general heart location

thread's here if you need it :(

the thread of ATRIAL FIBBING

:/

i think i'm okay. but suddenly very emotional

caffeine's a hell of a drug, kids