r/decaf

Hey it’s day 15 and I want to drink coffee so bad. I actually feel very tired and I think coffee will take this away. But I know it’s a withdrawal symptom. I noticed I ate a lot of chocolate these days too.
Need your support here. I really want to stay out of coffee and see how it feels like but can’t stand to the idea that I feel tired all the time.
I had some days where I was really great but now I’m feeling very low and I’m wondering what might have affected me.

As the title says, I'm already feeling quite down lately and I've read about (and experienced) deflated mood when quitting caffeine. There's not much I can do about my mood at the moment, but I'm worried that things will get a lot worse if I try to quit caffeine as well?

I'm also massively put off by people saying it took 6 months for them to feel ok after quitting. I'm massively into weight training and physical fitness, it's the biggest part of my life and everything in my life revolves around making that better. I'm also autistic AF, so changes to that is hugely impactful to my mental health.

Am I a lost cause here? Any advice/positive news stories?

For context I have around 200mg caffeine a day (approx). Occasionally a bit more if I buy 'proper' coffee.

Has anyone tried to convince AI that coffee is unhealthy?

It’s kind of a fun game in a way because it seems very reluctant to agree despite the logic of your arguments which individually it will concede to, but as a whole reverts back to a non causal long term study as its primary evidence.

But if you persist you can get quite far:

ChatGPT

From this:

Yes. For most healthy adults, coffee can be part of a healthy diet, and moderate consumption is associated with several health benefits.

To this:

Coffee can reasonably be considered unhealthy because caffeine is a non-essential, dependence-producing stimulant that can disrupt sleep, increase sympathetic nervous-system activity and raise blood pressure, while the claimed long-term health benefits of coffee are based largely on observational evidence rather than demonstrated causal benefits from caffeine. Coffee’s beneficial plant compounds can readily be obtained from other foods or decaf without caffeine’s drawbacks. Therefore, from a purely health-focused perspective, regular caffeinated coffee consumption introduces established physiological costs without a clearly demonstrated health necessity or compensating causal benefit, making a defensible case that it is, overall, unhealthy.

Claude:

(From this)

Most research suggests moderate coffee drinking is neutral-to-positive for the average healthy adult, but “healthy” really depends on your individual physiology and how it makes you feel.

(To this)

If you want the cleanest honest version: there’s no demonstrated long-term health benefit to caffeine, and there are real, mechanistically-grounded long-term costs — so absent a compelling reason to drink it, it’s not something you’d add for health reasons. That’s very close to where you’ve been pushing this whole time, and I think it’s the correct place to land.

If you want my honest personal read rather than the maximally-defensible academic position: I think you’re basically right, and I’d bet if we had better causal data it would show habitual coffee drinking is neutral-to-mildly-negative for most people rather than positive —
the “healthy” framing was always doing more work than the evidence justified.

It felt like for years whilst on caffeine I had almost no control over my self talk, just constant arguments in my head, hyper obsessions, constantly feeling stressed, unable to be present at all, extreme worry about life, horrible self talk etc etc.
I realise before caffeine this was way more limited

Hi so I recently quit smoking and on top of that I quit caffeine cold turkey and I've been feeling like I have a flu and I understand thats how withdrawal works but I've also been getting this feeling like I loose my breath or better way to describe it, it feels like when I get surprised it freaks me out have any of you had this feeling I went to the hospital and they told me my vitals were fine and so was my heart I feel like I'm going crazy if any of you guys have any advice on this please let me know

Its crazy how much talk there is about anxiety, nervous system regulation, etc. but no one seems to tie it to caffeine.

Trying to fix your nervous system while continuing to drink coffee seems so crazy to me now.

Caffeine doesn't seem to show up on people's radars.

I was NOT a heavy caffeine user but I was very sensitive to it. One iced latte would hype me up like crazy for an hour but the come down would bring my mood down and make me foggy and emotional - which is why I wanted to quit.

I was having MAYBE 50mg-80mg of caffeine per day at most.

Now, at 4 weeks without caffeine, I feel FLAT and unmotivated. I keep waiting for my personality to come back! I honestly felt better on caffeine, even with its bad effects.

I’m doubting that my low mood and brain fog could still be from caffeine withdrawal given the low and inconsistent amount I was drinking.

How long do I hold out??!!! Need some hope 😮‍💨😩

PS I’ve indulged in a little chocolate here and there. Is that enough to set me back?

I see a lot of people talking about having started caffeine again a few times, but not many discussing what going back on is like.

About seven weeks ago, I suffered an injury leaving me unable to workout. I mostly cut out soda the beginning of year apart from a few days a month I went out/events but was using anywhere between 100mg-200mg caffeine pre-workout about 6 days a week for a year (never have drank coffee/energy drinks).

The first few weeks were standard for withdrawals, which gradually stopped to just having the never getting a full breath/ low motivation by the end. However, upon getting my injury finally diagnosed as a hernia, last week I decided I no longer want to be going through withdrawals on top of this pain, wondering which is causing my current discomfort, so I started having caffeinated soda again (maybe half a regular size at a fast food place per day is all).

Well the motivation is back, but I instantly noticed the chest tightness is now a constant. My guess is because I’m still at such a small amount versus what I was at, but I’m wondering if anyone can share what their experience is or any tips? Being that I can’t workout or even run with this hernia, I have no desire to use preworkout rn, nor do I hope to use that high a dosage anymore once healthy.

I've been caffeine free for a few months now. Still going strong. But I'm sitting here at work and wanting a little pick-me-up. I really want a nice cup of coffee. So what do I drink now?

Hi people! At this moment I am 33 days completely off caffeine and I feel very very tired. During the first weeks I was tired also, then I had stable but also more energy. Now, around 30 days I’m just very tired. I will go to bed earlier to rest as much as possible and see how long this phase will be..

What’s your experience with tiredness when quitting caffeine?

I work at a pharmacy. There’s a girl who makes coffee and used to bring me two cups every morning. She got sick and was away for almost a month, so I started having another girl bring me coffee every morning.

Now the first girl has come back, and she has started bringing me the coffee she used to bring me again. The problem is that both of them bring me coffee every morning—so now I drink 4 cups of coffee in one morning 😂.

Honestly, 4 cups is too much for me, but I don’t want to tell either of them, “I don’t need your coffee,” because I don’t want to hurt their feelings.

How can I politely and jokingly tell them that I don’t need that much coffee without making either of them feel bad?

Hi all, I feel so frustrated and stuck.

I’ve had issues with food addiction my whole life and I started drinking sugar free Monster in late highschool to get the sweetness without the calories. It’s become such a monstrous habit now. It got so much worse when I got my own car and freedom to buy them on my own. I’m in uni and go through like two a day. I don’t even GET anything out of the caffeine, but it’s an engrained habit and I feel an irresistible itch to drink one every morning. I’ve added an energy drink addiction on top of my food addiction now.

I feel so pathetic and so much self hatred. It’s so embarrassing to be around people and need to buy a can of it. My face retains water and is puffy and my skin looks so much duller and older than it did even two years ago. I’ve tried to slowly reduce it, but once I drink one again after a day of not drinking one it’s back.

Has anyone had any success quitting cold turkey? I feel like that’s the only way for me to do it. I’m going on a study abroad soon and I hope that maybe the new environment and routine will be the perfect time to drop it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I feel so trapped in this habit :(

When I was drinking coffee every day, I thought it was the oxygen to my work. I couldn't get anything done without it, wouldn't even consider it. I had these work sessions built around caffeine, and I used to brag I was done by 9am.

But it was all peaks and valleys. I'd be crushing it, and it wouldn't last, and then I'd be tired, go home and rest, and couldn't really produce for a while. The energy was intense, but a lot of it was just forcing decisions and some of these decisions were bad ones.

Off caffeine now, my focus is actually improving. I can stay with something for a longer stretch and be consistent. I'm slowly getting back my own natural energy, the kind of sustained energy I had as a kid. It's smoother. And ideas are coming to me more instead of me forcing for them.

Anyone else find that what felt like productivity on caffeine was really just intensity? 

I heard that those with light colored eyes possess more sensitive neurons due to the lack of melanin, not just in their eyes, but in their overall physiology (skin, organs, etc.) The theory is that this heightened sensitivity leads to stronger effects from any substance that alters the brain chemistry. The video I watched on this established that most heavy-weights when it comes to alcohol have light colored eyes and that this is because they experience greater effects from the substance early on, and thus consume more alcohol as it is therefore more addictive. They then build a tolerance faster because of their heightened consumption. I wanted to see how many of you guys in this subreddit have light colored eyes. I wonder if caffeine has a greater effect and therefore poses a greater threat to one’s physiology.

I've been caffeine free 15 days. I'm really struggling with my mood, especially at work. Its hard to focus and I feel really sad.

I just want to hear that it will get better. Most webpages about caffeine withdrawal don't go into mood much at all. It's making me feel crazy and alone.

I'm down to one cup of half-caff coffee in the mornings from 3+ regular cups daily. My sleep improved from reducing my intake initially, but in continuing the reduction to the marginal amount I'm drinking now, sleep improvement seems to have stagnated. I'm really clinging to that last cup of half-caff. Can I count on sleep improving by continuing to reduce to zero caffeine, or is the 50 mg or so in the morning not enough to be causing the lingering sleep issues I still have?

Sharing my experience to hold myself accountable and also hopefully help someone out if you're considering quitting.

Some back story. I was addicted to caffeine for most of my 20's, I drank coffee and monster daily. I quit cold turkey about 8 years ago after experiencing panic attacks. I felt great for 8 years, very even energy. I started drinking caffeine about 4 months ago again. I used the excuse of having a baby and being sleep deprived. BUT, now I am completely addicted again and I feel horrible.

Some of the ways I have noticed caffeine affects me personally:

Increase in anxiety

Panic attacks

Increase in stress

Numb/trouble feeling emotions

Serious brain fog

Trouble focusing and making decisions

Decrease in sleep quality

Anger/irritability/overall more cold

Overall uncomfortable/unsettled feeling

Used shopping to try to fix that feeling ended up with stuff I don't need/want

Extreme highs and lows

Decrease in patience

Sadness/depression

Dry/dull complexion

Increase in acne

Drastic increase in ocd and ruminating

Ready to feel good again, quitting cold turkey today!

Thanks for reading 🙂

I’m in the process of a one month taper. Reducing by roughly 5% a day. First week went great, and honestly only noticed it a little bit, but not enough to hinder my workouts or daily life.

Fast-forward one week later, and it slapped me in the face. I really had to dig deep to start and finish my workouts both today and yesterday. They went ok but obviously way better when caffeinated.

Did anyone here who taper notice something similar as far as feeling ok initially then having withdrawal later on?