How to quit caffeine.

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How many caffeinated drinks do you drink everyday?

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Hospital lab tech with shift rotations and 3/4th time college student here.

My job as a lab tech working both nights and days has really gotten me addicted to caffeine. To boot, I have a very high caffeine tolerance genetically thanks to being half Scandi. Basically FML.

Those caffeine withdrawal headaches that do not respond to pain relievers, depression, suicidal thoughts, lethargy, and brain fog ain't no picnic. When I go through these symptoms, I try to drink enough caffeine to get rid of these symptoms and nothing more or nothing less. Keeping busy helps with energy levels. I try to drink the coffee only in the morning and then suffer through the day. I will try to cut my caffeine intake down every couple of days.

For example, I am going back on the night shift tomorrow. During these past couple of days, I only try to consume caffeine later in the day to keep myself awake. When trying to transition back to day shift, I might just have a little bit of coffee (read three cups to get through lectures) after waking up and just letting my jet-lagged ass sleep as much as possible. When back on dayshift, I will increase my caffeine consumption then tapper it off again.

TL;DR: Shift rotations suck which is why I am a caffeine addict.
 
lurk_moar said:
Hospital lab tech with shift rotations and 3/4th time college student here.

My job as a lab tech working both nights and days has really gotten me addicted to caffeine. To boot, I have a very high caffeine tolerance genetically thanks to being half Scandi. Basically FML.

Those caffeine withdrawal headaches that do not respond to pain relievers, depression, suicidal thoughts, lethargy, and brain fog ain't no picnic. When I go through these symptoms, I try to drink enough caffeine to get rid of these symptoms and nothing more or nothing less. Keeping busy helps with energy levels. I try to drink the coffee only in the morning and then suffer through the day. I will try to cut my caffeine intake down every couple of days.

For example, I am going back on the night shift tomorrow. During these past couple of days, I only try to consume caffeine later in the day to keep myself awake. When trying to transition back to day shift, I might just have a little bit of coffee (read three cups to get through lectures) after waking up and just letting my jet-lagged ass sleep as much as possible. When back on dayshift, I will increase my caffeine consumption then tapper it off again.

TL;DR: Shift rotations suck which is why I am a caffeine addict.
Click to expand...
Treating caffeine withdrawl with caffeine? Wow thats crazy. Take care of yourself bro.
 
lurk_moar said:
TL;DR: Shift rotations suck which is why I am a caffeine addict.
Click to expand...
well just drink and go hang over to university- its udeless anyway and you can learn while th PCR is humming.

Ophelia Jones said:
Treating caffeine withdrawl with caffeine? Wow thats crazy. Take care of yourself bro.
Click to expand...
nahh thats called college... vodka redbull is so trendy because it takes away the withdrawl brainfog...
 
Cold showers. It doesn't have to be cold the whole time, just make sure to squeeze in a good 30 seconds to a minute at the end. You'll be 100% awake.

You can also try drinking shitloads of water. You should be drinking water throughout the day anyway. Get a large container so you don't have to plan out refills.

Good luck!
 
When I start drinking too much coffee I will go down to 1 cup and then move to tea. I recommend just any old green tea with honey and some turmeric.
 
Bumping ur old thread. I always thought I never really felt caffeine and I didn't have any problems I thought, I did have some sleep problems but I didn't think related to caffeine cause I always quit by 6pm.

I read something or other about high caffeine intake and also about how even a daily cup of coffee/100mg can quickly build dependency, I estimated what mine was, 600-1100mg/day with cheap fountain energy drinks, pills and iced tea. I also started playing with online drug half-life plotters and realized I'm never without around a full cup of coffee-worth pumping through me at any time including sleep. That was a big realization for me, overshadowing the 600-1100mg number in my mind a lot.

One saturday I woke up and tried cold turkey, it sucked I had no energy I couldn't go to gym, couldn't ride my bike which are things I really like to do daily and was in a grumpy shitty mood all day so I went back to everything.

I couldn't handle doing that again, this is literally the busiest year of my life with all sorts of shit going on and I really can't lose even a day. Tapering seems to be working for me, a little later after that cold turkey sat I cut out the 200mg pill in the morning and didn't really notice much, still having 60-90floz of the fountain energy drink est 600-900mg

A little later I cut out the energy drinks, and started tapering with iced tea + adding pills back in, morning and lunch. I started at 350mg/day pills + regular iced tea, crushed up some of the caffeine pills and made 25 and 50mg doses that I loaded into capsules of some old worthless supp, then loaded the capsules into my weekly sorters with my weekly supps. Dropping by 25-50mg a day and also replacing a tea bag a day with a decaf one. Today I've been totally decaf tea for a week and my capsule dose today was just 25mg and I've not felt a bit of shittiness the past couple weeks.

I'm feeling mostly calmer. I was on 50mg for a week up to yesterday because of especially big amounts of work and personal business going on that I didn't want to risk another bad day in the middle of so I paused tapering. I still consider 50mg to be a "stimulating dose" for me so today's kinda my first real day of getting into close to what it feels like to be caffeine free.

I'm not quitting totally though, now that I know a bit about how much caff is in what know about dependency and withdrawal and know about the half-lives I'm hoping that after a few weeks/month off I can enjoy a typical 100mg intake once a week or so and feel pretty good from it.
 
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Easiest way for me to stop drinking 4 cups a day was stop going into the office and work from home instead.

Now I only have 1 each weekend day while I'm out for a walk and chores.
 
Replace it as a habit with something positive. I used to drink 6 coffees a day, then I decided to replace it with a good habit, so I put on a batman costume every night and go out onto the mean streets and kill crack whores and hookers. Gives me the same rush that coffee does.
 
And here I was feeling paranoid for having 2-3 servings of coffee each day. I have coffee because I do enjoy the taste of it. It's almost like a morning treat for me. I could get off of it, but I don't because all I really drink otherwise is water and milk, everything else I avoid because it has sugar or caffeine anyways.

I used to drink more, like twice as much, but I cut back by having just a little less each day over the span of a few weeks.
 
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Shoot, I have to start my morning (I wake up at 3 for work) with a cup of coffee, an occasional monster rehab, a couple bottles of coke zero, and maybe some tea. My job is pretty demanding and it keeps me going and I'm working to slowly wean myself off the monster.

Bang (the energy drink) was a terrible addiction of mine for a time and getting off that was such a bitch.
 
I can drink something like 300mg of tea/coffee in the morning and so long as I don't consume any in the afternoon/evenings I can sleep fine, but if I have a single 16/24oz can of monster or similar energy drink, even at the crack of dawn only, I have trouble sleeping at night. I just stay away from energy drinks unless there's a real dire need to stay awake. Must be the taurine or something. My general rule is I drink as much caffeine as I want in the first six hours of the day, but nothing after that. Otherwise I'll have trouble sleeping.

I've quit a lot of addictive things, and I find it's usually been effective to set a limited time frame per day in which you're 'allowed' to do the thing, and then keep tapering back until you're not using it at all. The way I quit cigarettes was to only allow myself to smoke one after doing 30 mins of moderately intense cardio exercise. After a while I didn't want cigarettes because they made the exercise harder. Exercise in general is a great replacement for most addictions, although it can become a kind of addiction of its own sort.
 
I've tried, but I get blinding light sensitive migraines whenever I do so I rarely make it more than a day.

I've been thinking of switching to caffeine pills or powder and break at least the emotional connection to hot coffee which I really enjoy and find comforting. I drink it black now mainly but even so it's such a part of my routine that I think that's half the addiction more than the caffeine kick itself.

Probably drink 10-15 espressos or equivalent longer cups of filter through the day
 
god damn, i had Monster energy drink yesterday for the first time in months and the caffeine rush was real. i spent almost 2 hours walking around during the day but still had enough energy to have trouble sleeping.

i need to stay away from the stuff but some of those flavors taste so good.
 
Undiagnosed ADHD in adults is usually framed by high stimulant usage via caffeine (and nicotine) because it helps to focus and calm your brain (ironically lol, normal people feel energized). Worth investigating if you have other signs and your life is heavily affected by them.
 
Caffeine helps with liver disease prevention as well as alzheimer's, to me the risks do not outweight the benefits.
 
Haven't had caffiene in ages, if anything eating fruit has helped me control my sweet tooth. Maybe it's a lack of experience, but I genuinely don't know how people get addicted to that stuff. Maybe have larger, amino acid-rich meals at the start of the day?
 
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