quitting caffeine?

Headaches for 3 days followed by not being productive for a whole month. I was a grad student at the time so that was an option. I probably would have somehow gotten my ass into gear if I was at risk of losing my paycheck. But the plan is to keep consuming caffeine for the rest of my life.

Yeah, a bunch of times. I did five years in the coffee shop mines where excess consumption was encouraged. Switching to halfcaf or decaf when ordering coffee and switching to black tea as my morning drink helped a lot. I cut back because I was getting stomach indigestion, anxiety, loss of appetite, that kind of stuff. And upon reflection, I was actually more tired the more I drank caffeine; I was basically slug energy anytime I wasn't actively consuming caffeine. Cutting it out has helped my energy levels a lot. I'm overall better off cutting it out and encourage you to give it a try.

I have quit caffeine a couple of times. I’m such a fiend for it but it definitely increases my anxiety and makes my sleep less regular too. I taper off because I drink astronomical amounts. I usually halve my intake week over week until im down to just a cup of tea or something light, at which point I start taking odd days off of caffeine and then none at all. Normally my caffeine free streaks last a couple of months, until some late night project or early morning meeting ruins my energy levels and I start the cycle all over again.

Quitting cold turkey is really rough. I take a week off several times a year to reset my tolerance. I usually have 2 to 5 days of bad headaches and severe lethargy. It really makes a huge difference on my mood and sleep schedule for the next couple of months, but its not easy

I've been dependent on it for a decade plus and I heard it takes 6 months or more to get over the withdrawals so I'm just never gonna quit. i spend enough energy not being reliant on much more harmful substances that i have problems with. coffee is fine in comparison. i don't take nearly as much as I used to though, like a couple espressos a day

Here's my experience (recently diagnosed ADHD, suspect maybe AuDHD):

Starting about 6 years ago, I started having fairly large amounts of caffeine (300-400mg/day), probably as a way of self medicating ADHD and compensating for too little sleep). At this point, I realized I was physically addicted to caffeine, and if any day went by where I didn't have caffeine by say 3pm, I'd get a bad headache. For the next ~3 years after starting this, I didn't go a single day without coffee.

Starting about 2-3 years ago, I decided that I really didn't like the idea of having to have a coffee every day, so I decided to try to stop my addiction. I stopped abruptly and didn't have any caffeine for a month (for me, I knew a gradual stopping wouldn't work, I had to fully commit to it to get it to stick). It was miserable, especially for the first 3-4 days. The first week as a whole was pretty rough, then week 2 was marginally better, week 3 a bit better still, and week 4 felt good, finally.

Since then, because I really like the taste of coffee, I've been consuming 2-3 coffees per week, but I try to avoid having them on consecutive days. I think it works pretty well for me, and I have managed to hold off the physical addiction like that (except for one time where I compensated for jetlag with lots of coffee, and got re-addicted and had to do the same miserable process as above).

Also, I recently started stimulant meds for my ADHD (Vyvanse in particular), and for a while I couldn't have caffeine because it made me too anxious. Now, I'm used to the meds and can have caffeine, but it's much easier to resist the temptation.

All in all, I'm happy that I'm not addicted anymore, and for me it was a painful process but worth it. I find that caffeine messes with my sleep even many hours after consumption, and I don't feel as rested on days when I have it. I've mostly switched to drinking tea or decaf coffee, and I think it's made me feel less anxious too.

Let me know if you have any questions!

I've gone through multiple periods in the past few years where I would cut out caffeine.

If you are able to consistently limit yourself to a rough amount my current answer is no, it's not really worth it. A month or so ago I accidentally missed a cup of coffee in the morning so I decided to just cold turkey it. After the withdrawal symptoms went away there were a few days where I felt a lot more energetic than usual but that went away and I returned to my norm where I pretty much have to take a nap or two to comfortably function. After restarting caffeine it's pretty much the same thing except I felt more energetic due to taking caffeine with a reset tolerance. Once it starts building up again, I return to the same thing where I need to take a nap.

I've had energy issues my entire life and I limit myself to ~100mg I think in the morning and at noon. I'm also shorter than average and I think my weight just above underweight so I might not need as much.

I've only ever gotten slight anxiety from caffeinated milkshakes sometimes.

I have no intention of quitting, but I do limit myself to a single normal-sized cup of coffee with breakfast. I feel that's a good balance. Always black, because I make damn good coffee, and truly good coffee can be enjoyed black. Good beans roasted within the past 1-2 weeks, ground with a Baratza Encore, and brewed with a Chemex setup. Quality over quantity.

I have a few times. Only for a few months at most though. The process of quitting sucks. Even after tapering my consumption of the course of a few weeks, when the time to stop came I felt like a helpless wet noodle of a human being for about two weeks until things kind of normalized. It did make the workday exceptionally tough to get through at first, especially since I was in a customer facing role at the time.

On the upside, it actually made mornings far better in terms of my energy level surprisingly enough. A lot of the grogginess of waiting until you've had a cup of coffee before you can function in the morning disappears and you can just wake up and start your day. Losing the ritual of drinking a cup of coffee was bittersweet though and I had to find other ways to start my day off on my terms.