by Gaz
How To Break Caffeine Addiction
5:34 pm in Personal Growth by Gaz
In a previous incarnation, my place of work had all their coffee machines on free vend. A big part of my job was to deliver internal training to our applications teams and show them how best to use the new API’s coming out of the core functionality team. I spent a good portion of every day moving back and forth between my desk, the core functionality guys’ desks, and meeting rooms scattered across the site… passing the free coffee machine at least half a dozen times. By the time I’d been doing that job for a few months, I was drinking at least half a dozen espresso coffees every day, plus a mug of coffee in the morning to wake up, and another mug or two in the evening at home. In total, almost half a gallon of coffee every day; more than 3 gallons of coffee per week.
It wasn’t something I really gave much thought to, since everyone around me was just the same. I then went for a long 4 day weekend away at my folks, and unbeknownst to me all the coffee I drank there was decaff. I went to bed on Friday with a dreadful headache, and woke up groggy and irritable, and (surprise surprise) my morning pick-me-up coffee didn’t make me feel any better. My headache came and went throughout the day, and I felt terrible. I had an early night, but slept badly, waking up early in a bad mood. I decided to take a walk to the corner shop for a newspaper to get some fresh air, and on a whim bought a can of cola to drink on the way back. Within half an hour, my mood lifted, my headache subsided, and I felt normal again. Not much later, I noticed the coffee jar was empty, and when I went to refill it, I saw the label: Decaffeinated!
The penny dropped, and I realised that I was physiologically addicted to caffeine, and had been suffering withdrawal symptoms since my last morning coffee on Friday. The caffeine in the cola had fed my body’s craving for caffeine, and that was why I felt so much better. I thought about how much free vend coffee I’d been consuming recently, and decided that I needed to break that addiction. Being stubborn and naive, I simply stopped drinking tea and coffee altogether and put up with a painful week of withdrawal symptoms.
Since then, I haven’t given up caffeine entirely, as it has a beneficial effect just before training. When I have time before setting off to Tae Kwon-Do, I’ll sometimes drink a single mug of black coffee to “zoom me up” for the session. Only once or twice a week though. The rest of the time, I avoid (non-decaff) coffee entirely, and stick to just one or two mugs of tea per day.
If you want to break your own addiction to caffeine, here is a much gentler method that will make it much easier on you. And your family:
For 1 week, replace half of your daily caffeine beverages with an equivalent caffeine free drink. Decaffeinated coffee might be a good option for you, as long as you’re careful not to slip back into regular coffee. Alternatively, switch to half-caffeine/half-decaff coffee. If your main caffeine intake is through cola (diet cola is just as bad!), switch to a caffeine free brand for half of your normal daily drinks, or mix up a bottle of half-caffeine/half-decaff cola and use that.
Since caffeine is actually reduces the net amount of water in your body, you could soon find yourself wanting fewer drinks per day. Unless you also drank other fluids while you were addicted to caffeine, your body was probably permanently low on water. I bought a set of scales to monitor my body water percentage, which should be close to 60% for a healthy adult male, and found that I was rarely above 55%. Since I weigh around 80kg, that equates to 4kgs of water missing from my body. After a week of half caffeine, the next stage is to gradually replace the caffeine drinks with water to bring your body back to a healthy water percentage. If you dislike plain cold water, try adding lemon and/or honey to hot water for a more interesting drink.
After a couple of weeks of gradual replacement, you should find yourself feeling normal with little to no caffeine in your system. Be aware, however, that all cocoa based products contain a small dose of caffeine, so eating chocolate bars, or chocolate cake, or even hot chocolate can easily lead back to physiological dependence on caffeine, so you should try to reserve those things for occasional treats, and not use them as part of your routine diet. More frightening is Red Bull and similar soda drinks, which contain about the same amount of caffeine as eight cups of cappuccino! I stopped drinking those entirely when I found that out.
On the subject of low body hydration, I still find myself between 57% and 58% body water content even now. When I figure out how to keep myself close to 60% most of the time, I’ll be sure to post about it.
I’ll be interested to hear how anyone else has suffered from and/or broken their own addiction to caffeine in the comments…
Hi Kacey,
Thanks for stopping by. I think the only real positive (as compared to a mere lack of negatives) that I can identify is that I am now totally in control of my sleep patterns. No struggling to get to sleep before 2am while the caffeine effects wear off, and no need for a coffee hit in the morning to get me going.
Having said that, my main motivation to remove erstwhile large quantities of caffeine from my daily routine continues to be the freedom to enjoy an occasional cup of coffee, and not having any withdrawal problems if I go without for days or weeks at a time. I expect that to be motivation enough for most people: even with huge reserves of discipline and will-power, just the physiological addiction to any substance is no fun at all. Even if it is “normal” to be dosed up on caffeine all day in modern society, just as smoking heavily was the norm 100 years ago, the bottom line is that caffeine is a psycho-active drug that adversely affects many users’ sleep patterns, with all the negative effects on mental and physical health that brings.
I hope that doesn’t come across as preachy. If someone is aware of the consequences of what they are doing to themselves, and chooses to go ahead anyway, that’s none of my business. It would be great if we were empowered to make that conscious choice though, and not blindly throw ourselves into addiction with no idea of the inevitable long-term consequences.
Cheers, Gary
I’m doing a persuasive essay on Caffeine Addiction in America, and I was wondering if you could tell me how you felt after breaking your addiction, after the headaches and fatigue. Are there positive after effects, like saving money, feeling better etc.?
Hi Teresa and Melanie,
It’s nice to see that almost 2 years after I wrote this article people are still finding it useful.
As an addendum, I was recently shocked to discover that the standard way to measure how effectively US sewage treatment and dispersal into the coastal waters is to check the parts-per-million caffeine pollution in the sea. The entire nation is addicted to the stuff, and it only gets into the sea via our effluent. Scary.
Cheers, Gary
Thanks for this post. I found it while doing research for a client. It is helpful to have a first hand account of what has worked for one person. I will share your story and suggestions with my client. Thanks Melanie
A great way to break the caffeine habit, I agree is to cut back, go half regular (dark roast has less caffeine) and half decaf, and then I discovered a caffeine free and cold-pressed “healthy chocolate”. It’s delicious! A great way to break a bad habit and replacing it with a healthy one! Check out my website http://TeresasChocolate.com and call me with questions if you want to know more. Glad I found this site. More people want to get healthy and there are ways out of addiction! Have a hopeful overcoming day! Teresa (smile)
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for dropping by. It’s great to know that my experiences are proving helpful to others one way or another. I hope your presentation went well!
Cheers, Gary
Thank you so much for writing this information. I am a 5th grader who’s been creating a Powerpoint on this topic, and your website article helped me bring it to a good close. Thanks a lot!!
I think I’m another person who is very sensitive to caffeine, the other day I had a medium Costa coffee at around noon – normally I’m tired by 11.30pm – I couldn’t get to sleep till around 2.30am that night!
Ordinarily I only drink 4-5 mugs of tea a day, however, I’m thinking I might try cutting caffeine drinks out and see how it goes since I’m sure I get a real caffeine low the day after having a number of coffees/colas in a day.
I used to be sensitive to caffeine, until I dosed up on Pro-Plus (concentrated caffeine tablets) during my university finals, cutting my sleep from 6 hours or so a night to a 1 or 2 hour nap each night over a period of almost 2 weeks. It didn’t particularly help my exam results, and the day after the exams were over and I ran out of tablets, I remember collapsing in bed exhausted early in the evening to wake up what I though was 10 hours later. My clock read 7:00 and it was dusky and overcast outside the window.
It was extremely disorienting to discover that I’d actually slept for 22 hours straight, right through to 7pm the following evening!! :-) I have friends that sometimes miss a night’s sleep after a sociable evening of drinking vodka-redbull. Not to be recommended!
Reading this article was refreshing! I began getting migraine headaches this year and know that ending my caffeine addiction is the only way out. I only drink about 4 cups of coffee and tea a day, but I’m a fairly small person and very affected by caffeine AND I really do love the rush. I talked to my doctor about this the other day and she said (I’m assuming as a motivation technique) that I came across in this conversation as having an anxiety disorder!
I’m going to take the advice in this article (going 1/2 and 1/2) to ween myself off. Also, I’m going to up my water intake as suggested.
I read that the body will process herbal teas like water. I went to the store today and bought 4 different kinds of herbal teas and hope I like at least one of them. I know it sounds crazy, but the idea of drinking decaf coffee just depresses me. I’m going to try Yerba Matte as a daily substitute to coffee, although I hold little hope that It will be a satisfying substitute.
Thanks for your thoughts! It’s helpful to hear that others have successfully broken the addiction. Kim
Hi Kim,
I must admit that I’ve never been able to get into herbal teas, but the good news is, that since I gave up caffeine, I still indulge in an occasional cup of real coffee, and drink regular tea from time to time without any of the ill effects that I used to get when I was drinking caffeine every day.
Having said that, my bodies water percentage is still hovering within one point of 56%, so I still have a little way to go before I’m drinking enough water to keep my hydration at the right level.
Do drop by and let us know how you get on with the herbal teas, and kicking the caffeine addiction in general!