Constantly quitting and going back
I'm so glad to have found this community, because I feel like a crazy person when I talk about wanting to stop or even reduce caffeine intake, even by my own family sometimes. I finally feel vindicated to hear of others' similar experiences.
Anyway, here is my story so far:
I've tried for the last 12 months to quit caffeine. I came to realise that both my short term and long term memory are better OFF caffeine. Side note, these 'studies' that claim caffeine increases memory seriously have to be shonky. As someone having meddled with statistics research, I know how easy it is to incorporate bias into these studies, but I digress...
Last year, I needed to memorise word-for-word a whole bunch of rules and applications for my job. It's boring stuff but it was important for the job itself. I noticed I felt so dumb and slow on caffeine. I couldn't speak clearly, I'd forget names and places, it sucks. This has always been the case on caffeine, I just denied that it was the case. I decided I needed to knuckle down and had a few days off caffeine (with insane headaches) and my recall rate was noticably better off caffeine, so I finally (for the first time in 10 years) went 21 days off caffeine and nailed my exams. After that, sure enough, I fell back into addiction.
It's actually incredible the tricks our mind play when we are in caffeine withdrawals, I can be so motivated to quit then come day 2 or 3 it makes absolute perfect sense to just have coffee that day, which turns into everyday.
After that, my daughter was born and I told myself I'd stop so that I can be a better father. Feel less anxiety towards our newborn, react better in stressful situations, and have better memory recall. All things that happen when I'm off caffeine. But I just can't do it.
Somehow I keep convincing myself that I need it again, when I actually just want that temporarily elevated mood and increased physical energy, even though it dimishes with every subsequent day.
This month, I've made some progress (albeit small progress). I've had 10 caffeine-free days in 4 weeks. It's embarrassing to say I'm proud of that, but it's something.
Incredibly, I no longer get crazy headaches on my days off. I used to get insane headaches and nothing worked to fix them. Now I just feel tired, low mood and in a constant state of convincing myself to drink coffee.
My question is, does anyone have any advice?
I'm sorry for the ramble, I've followed this sub for so long and have so many thoughts on the topic.
Thanks everyone!