I Quit Caffeine for Good. Here’s What I Learned
On what was supposed to be my first day of caffeine abstinence, my girlfriend woke me up, as she often does, by telling me she was making coffee and asking if I wanted one. I responded, as I often do, with something along the lines of “Mmmmmmmyes please hhhhhhthannkyou”—before shouting “NO! WAIT! I can’t.”
She turned from the doorway with detectable contempt as I reminded her that it was the first day of the no caffeine thing. She repeated this back to me mockingly (“oooh, the no caffeine thing”). Approximately 15 minutes later, I caved and reached for the moka pot only to find she’d been so confident of my impending failure that she’d made enough coffee for both of us anyway.
Everyone’s into quitting things right now. Grindset culture has encouraged many of us to consider how we can eke out a few extra performance points, whether that’s by taking up new healthy habits or giving up old, unhelpful ones—like that cup (or six) of morning joe.
“When consumed excessively and in large amounts, caffeine can lead to restlessness, heart palpitations, irritability, insomnia, and many other negative side effects,” says Professor Anu Realo, who heads up the Wellbeing, Culture and Personality Research Group at the University of Warwick. I’ve definitely felt some of those unpleasant side effects, so I was intrigued by the possibility of quitting caffeine. Would it be the secret to unlocking Peak Me?
According to scientists, the best way to quit caffeine is to do so gradually, so I needn’t go cold turkey right away. Instead, I weaned myself down from my usual daily intake of two black coffees and one weaker source of caffeine (a tea or a Coke Zero), to one coffee and two teas/Cokes, then one coffee and one tea/Coke (you get the idea here) all the way down to… nada. This would apparently help limit the headaches, fatigue, irritability and difficulty concentrating that could otherwise be coming my way.
The approach might seem a bit serious—like kicking an addiction such as alcohol or heroin—but caffeine is humankind’s favorite drug, and everyone who drinks it regularly—around 80% of us, according to some estimates—are to some extent dependent on it. Breaking said dependence is therefore likely to be accompanied by some sort of withdrawal.
The first signs of mine came on the afternoon of day four, when, having already consumed my allotted single coffee of the day that morning (a huge bowl of a thing from a greasy spoon, whose primary detectable quality was: hot), I found myself really quite seriously hankering for another. I was trying to get some work done, and experiencing a lack of concentration that I would’ve ordinarily amended with a quick Americano and a light “pull yourself together” talk. The talk on its own turned out to be largely ineffectual, and I simply did not get the work done. Ominous.
