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Comment by crispinb | Hacker News Reader

Coffee has no subjective effect on my energy or arousal or alertness. I just really enjoy the taste and aroma. Every year or two I wonder if I'm getting addicted or inured to caffeine's effects, so take a few experimental weeks off. Sure enough, nothing happens - no withdrawal effects or subjective reduction in alerness/arousal/energy. I return eventually because I miss the taste with my morning toast. I haven't quite generated the curiosity to to read up on it, but I idly wonder if caffeine just doesn't have much effect on some people.

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For what it's worth, I did the same self-experiment at various times in my 20s and early 30s. I got the same result: none of the headaches, grumpiness, lack of focus, etc., which I'd heard people experience going through caffeine withdrawal.

I came to the same conclusion as you: in the same way that I don't notice a significant uptick in energy when I drink coffee, maybe I also don't get the withdrawal when I stop. Maybe some people are just weird like that?

Then I did the same thing in my early 40s, and the headaches started on the second day. It was pretty bad actually, and I understood what people meant when they talked about an actual, physical withdrawal period. So, now I think it's just metabolism (or some other characteristic that changes with age), rather than a blanket immunity to the effects.

I'm in my 50's so don't quite fit your pattern. But who knows - we are complex beings and no doubt undergo metabolic changes as long as we're alive.

For a very long time in my life, I used to have a cup of coffee before going to bed on cold days. Over time, people convinced me this was bad for me, and I stopped doing that. But sometimes, I can't resist and drink coffee at night. I sleep like an angel, as if I just drank some milk.

Hilarious. If I ever attempted to train an AI to produce bright and funny prose I’d make sure to include your comment in the training data!

I'm kinda the same way. While I still do a daily one to prevent the withdrawal headaches, most of my coffee drinking is for the experience, with more energy than necessary put into making it fancy with the techniques and ratios and such. The caffeine only really hits when I'm dialing in a new espresso recipe and go through like 3 or 4 shots within a short window

I've never experienced a withdrawal headache. Though thinking about it the only headaches I've ever had have been the result of hangovers, so maybe I'm just not prone to headaches in general.

Part of the joy of coffee is the ritual around its preparation. I imagine the same is true for matcha tea drinkers in Japan, which has quite a ritual.

Yup this is me. For so long I've thought people were only exaggerating about not being able to get anything done without a coffee in the morning.

I love coffee, some days I drink 3 cups, some days I forget to drink any at all.

When people "can't get things done" without their morning coffee, is it general haziness/fogginess or are they experiencing headaches?

Both for me. I try not to drink that much (one 12oz mug a day usually) but it’s still enough that I _really_ feel the days I don’t. The first morning isn’t terrible, but I won’t be as alert as normal (kind of a “just got out of bed” grogginess). Around lunchtime and for the next couple days I’ll be much more tired than normal, have a very difficult time focusing, and a moderate headache.

For sure - I went through a period of having a couple of single espressos every day, and if I stopped cold without a day or two of tea drinking to taper off, I'd get a day of really strong headaches. If you can start and stop without noticing anything you clearly have a different metabolism (or you're drinking very weak coffee!)

I'm strictly strong espresso/macchiato, self-ground fresh beans, and drink 3 or 4 doubles most mornings. Last time I stopped was for 6 weeks mid last year as an experiment. No effects whatsoever that I could discern. Nothing you'd really call cravings either. I did want coffee in the first few mornings, but missed it less than I did apples when floods disrupted supply of most fresh goods here last year.

So I guess there really must be individual differences.

Same, I drink two to three doubles every day and regularly have to stop while traveling and I have yet to see any adverse effect. I also don't really get the whole energy boost thing. Coffee doesn't really seem to be doing anything to me. I just enjoy the taste.

I recently quit caffeine. Like you, I never noticed a difference...until I took my workouts more seriously. Recently I noticed that caffeine makes it more difficult to go hard at the gym. My heart rate spikes more readily.

Right. I run 5 days a week, but I don't attend to performance enough to be really aware of any difference there. I suspect differences due to caffeine, if any, would be swamped by the already pretty significant day to day variations. But that's just a guess.

Odd, most pre workouts supplements include caffeine.

I use a pre-workout from a very famous supplement brand which includes 175 mg of caffeine and I can definitely tell the difference. I can't tell how much of that is because of the caffeine, because it has more stuff like creatine and L-carnitine among other things, but I cant I feel like I last more doing this and I have more energy.

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