How Your Brain Becomes Addicted to Caffeine | Hacker News Reader

How Your Brain Becomes Addicted to Caffeine

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235 pointsLibertatea162 comments

I was hoping that the article would also mention some approximate amounts you have to drink per day to start to get withdrawal effects. Are there no studies of this?

As one personal data point, I drink 2-4 cups daily and a few months ago I decided to suddenly stop just to see what happens. The results were very unexciting: I felt nothing. No headaches, no fogginess, no significant loss of alertness (although I did need more time to "warm up" in the morning from my groggy morning states). Otherwise I felt normal and after a week of unexciting I just went back to drinking coffee because it tastes good and works when you need it.

At least from my personal study then, it seems 2-4 cups daily is not enough to get any adverse effects.

I've seen similar results in terms of no major loss of alertness and no fogginess, but I definitely get frazzled nerves, mild headaches, etc, when I stop drinking tea/coffee/etc.

The problem for me is on the other end. After spending more than a year off, going /back/ to drinking caffeinated drinks caused me far worse issues - complete insomnia, with the accompanying issues related to lack of sleep. My mind simply doesn't shut down at night if I regularly have 1-2 caffeinated drinks a day for the span of a week.

So while breaking myself isn't too bad, going back to drinking caffeine in any regular quantity is TOUGH, and not something I care to try again (after three trys).

You need to add a workout regimen in then, at leat 90mins of good working out. The problem is most tech people tire their brains out but not their body. My mind will be shot and i can get up and run for 60mins at a slow 6/6.5 miles an hr, it doesn't need to be crazy. I sleep like a baby when i workout.

This. Also, individuals react to and metabolize caffeine differently. YMMV.

On related note, 23andme users can see which kind of caffeine metabolizers they are from the Drug Response section.

I used to use 360mg before exercise (equivalent to ca 5 cups coffee), and would often add 100-200mg later in the day.

"Cold turkey" for me at that level results in a week of massive headaches (too strong for just paracetamol (acetaminophen for you crazy americans)) and night sweats and shaking that is strong enough that if I don't take paracetamol or ibuprofen early enough in the evening, I have problems opening the pack of painkillers or pouring a glass of water to swallow it down without a lot of effort, and it will also generally come with diarrhea.

Not at all pleasant.

Thankfully it can be counteracted very easily by stepping down gradually. Even just 100mg-150mg a day for a week or so, combined with paracetamol reduces the withdrawals enough to cut it out fully afterwards for me.

I still use huge daily doses of caffeine a lot, but go off it for a couple of weeks regularly to increase my sensitivity to it again.

> I used to use 360mg before exercise

Being of a moderate calibre when it comes to ultra-endurance types of events, I'm curious as to why you would consume so much caffeine before exercise.

High doses of caffeine are commonly used in pre-workout formulas for weight lifting and power lifting for increased focus and perceived energy.

It does not increase your lifting capacity per se, but a lot of people feel it makes it at least subjectively easier to take out your max potential as so much of heavy lifts is down to mental focus - if you go into a heavy set not thinking you'll make it, you almost certainly won't because the slightest little hesitation at the wrong moment or lack of that extra little push will get you stuck.

It's perfectly possible it's placebo - it's hard to double blind test this as the effect of high caffeine doses is extremely noticeable. But if is placebo, I'm ok with that.

Incidentally the benefits of caffeine (at much more moderate levels) for endurance exercise is a lot better established than for high intensity weight lifting, as far as I know.

360mg is a lot

I think this in terms of Red Bulls, a can is around 80mg, so this is 4.5 RBs

I wouldn't drink more than one RB per day (but I can get caffeine elsewhere)

For me going cold turkey is bad as well, sometimes (usually in trips) I forget drinking coffee and the lack of energy and headache is visible

I accidentally got cold turkey the other day, by not knowing how "decaffeinated" is written in the language of the country I'm in, not very nice!

The medium size (grande) Starbucks coffee contains nearly that much caffeine. I'm not saying that 360mg isn't a lot, but it is not uncommon for people to drink that amount in a single drink. You can see this amount in Starbuck's nutrition facts (http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/brewed-coffee/bold-pick...).

For my anecdote, I drink 1 cup a day, and then possibly a soda or tea at a meal. It hits me hard after 24 hours without any.

I'm in a similar place. I drink 1-2 cups of coffee a day, one in the morning and one in the early afternoon. I find it very valuable for increasing my attention and focus during those periods of the day when I'm generally unfocused or tired. If I miss coffee for the day I will get very groggy and likely have a headache by the mid-afternoon the next day.

So definitely one more for variance.

One thing that's always frustrated me is that I have friends who will drink a coffee after dessert to stay awake for the drive home, then get to sleep two hours later. If I drink a cup of coffee I am effectively guaranteed to be up for the next six hours, even if I'm tired and unproductive for all of them.

I don't know about coffee, but I've figured out when tea becomes a problem. There have been times when I drank 4-6 liters of tea per day. If I'd quit cold turkey, the next day I'd get a growing, eventually stabbing headache, nausea, and eventually vomiting.

But it's very easy to kick: one or two days of drinking 1 or 2 liters and I'm fine. Even less might probably work; I've had times when I was worried that I didn't reduce my tea consumption in time, and I just drank some cola and was usually fine. (I don't like cola. I just drink it to ease down my addiction.)

I never actually noticed any significant fogginess as far as I remember.

I've heard that our British friends across the pond drink a lot of tea. Is 2 liters normal? That comes to over 8 cups in the US.

I ask because I drink a lot of tea (10+ cups a day). No ill effects on me except some jitteriness. This seems to be an atypical amount of tea consumption in the US. Is there a good reason to rein this in?

2 liters of fluid is about the minimum per day (you need more if it's very hot). It doesn't have to be tea, of course, but I have a tendency to drink nothing but tea.

Tea is often assumed to be utterly harmless and just as good as water, but I have my doubts that's still true at the volumes I used to drink it. Nowadays I drink just 2 or 3 liters.

I basically drink per pot, and one pot is about 1 liter (depending on size). Always one for breakfast, one or two at work, and maybe one in the evening. Okay, so I guess it's 4 liters. Still better than the 6 it was.

I drink 1.5-2 liters of tea per day and I'm getting headache if I skip the day. It seems that dose is very individual.

Thanks for cola hint, never thought about that. Should be useful when travelling :)

4-6 liters per day ... don't you get http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_polydipsia ?

Polydipsia would explain why he drinks that much. He would get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyuria as a result from the volume he is drinking.

No idea. Though I do get a dry mouth quite easily.

I drink 2-4 cups of espresso per day (that's 4-8 shots) and would periodically switch from coffee to tea with no major ill-effects, and similarly would just not drink coffee some days, again with no major ill-effects.

Good point. I drink about 1-3 cups a day, and wonder sometimes how dependent my energy and mood is on caffeine. I _think_ I feel groggy without a morning cup, but I'm too lazy or unconcerned to track how I feel, how much I drink and factors like sleep very closely.

I'd love to read more about studies on this, I'm sure they're out there.

Instant coffee will give you roughly 12mg of caffeine, an espresso will give you ~150mg , a regular size cup of brewed coffee from somewhere like Starbucks is around ~200mg of caffeine.

The strength of your coffee is in the brewing method and beans used. So, I guess, the effect of a cup would vary greatly depending on where you got it.

> Instant coffee will give you roughly 12mg of caffeine

I just looked it up and this seems to be inaccurate. The instant coffee I have has about 74mg per cup according to the Folgers website. This of course varies depending on how you make it. I, like many people I suspect, like to put in more powder to make it darker.

Honestly, I think if people sold instant coffee with only 12mg of caffeine per cup, people would find that coffee disappointing, as they wouldn't quite get the buzz they're used to, and they'd stop buying it. I can tell you that I once drank some vegan energy drink and I could immediately tell, before reading the ingredients, that it contained no caffeine, I felt like I'd just thrown money away.

I 200mg caffeine table before morning workout. Then a total of 3 to 4 cups of coffee. I can drop the coffee and move to tea, go without coffee(especially on weekend get ways) and still have no withdrawals.

Tea is just as caffeinated, if not more caffienated than coffee. So what you're doing is no different than quitting Red Bull and switching to Monster without withdrawal.

Some teas are decaf but in general the most common teas are caffienated. Even most decaf things are low or almost free of caffeine but not totally.

I suggest you try quitting coffee and tea together and seeing how you feel.

This is so, so wrong.

First, your comparison is opposite. The highest caffeinated teas have about 80mg per 8oz, while the lowest caffeinated coffees have at least 80mg per 8oz. Coffee will always be more caffeinated than tea.

Second, teas have tons of vitamins, catechins, phenolics and tannins, which your coffee does not. This is like quitting Red Bull and switching to a multi-vitamin that contains small amounts of caffeine.

All tea is made from one single plant: Camellia Sinensis. (Yes, one single plant!) The only difference between teas is how they are processed. Here is a flowchart of the different types of tea processing: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Teaproces...

The healthiest tea to drink is "young tea" with partial sun, steamed instead of pan-fried (so Japanese instead of Chinese) and picked by hand, to reduce old pickings, inferior lower leafs and possible introduction of aluminum by machine sorters and fluoride by fermentation. For the most caffeine (and more traditional Chinese medicinal use), get pu-erh. http://theteaspot.com/about-tea.html

If you wanted to quit caffeine using tea, go from pu-erh to black, green, white teas and steep each a little less each time (or re-infuse the leaves for less potency and continued use). You can also drink herbal tea, which isn't actually tea at all.

> and more traditional Chinese medicinal use), get pu-erh. http://theteaspot.com/about-tea.html

Oh man I found it by accident, someone brought it in to work because someone else gave it to them and they hated. I tried and really liked it. But I also liked pickled and fermented things usually. I liked tea before but pu-erh is just its own category.

The other favorite is matcha. You get the tea leaves with the tea extract together.

Yes, tea has less caffeine per ml compared to coffee, but you drink much more tea. At least I do. Here in Europe the standard cup used for serving tea is much larger than a cup used for serving coffee (might be different in other parts of the world though), and you usually don't drink one cup, but one tea pot, which has around 3-5 cups. I personally drink around 1l of black tea every day.

I believe tea leaves have more cafeine than coffe beans, but coffee tends to be made far stronger than tea.

From what I understand, steeping your tea very short won't help much in reducing the cafeine in it; cafeine enters the hot water in the first half minute. You'd barely have any flavour if you steep that short.

There are a couple shortcuts here.

You can use the 4th or 5th leaf pickings, which have reduced flavor, antioxidants and caffeine. These elements are highest in concentration at the bud and reduce in content as you go down the plant, so don't get a bud-heavy tea picking like Silver Needles (an atypical high-caffeine-content White tea). The steep time and water temperature also dramatically impact flavor and the infusion of chemicals from the leaf into the water, which includes caffeine content.

And keep in mind that loose leafs transfer less content than broken-up or fine pieces. Also, between 2% and 30% of the caffeine content may transfer in the first 30 seconds of steeping - caffeine actually transfers slower than the antioxidants and vitamins, and never completely in 30 seconds (unless your water was still boiling, which is too hot for any tea!)

Another tip: don't disturb the water or tea infuser while steeping, remove it swiftly, and don't let the last drops from the kettle into your cup - they contain the most concentrated part of the tea.

While black tea has roughly same amount of caffeine as coffee, it's not completely the same for whatever reason. For me double-espresso is more "spiky", has higher kick and wears off quicker, black tea has slower ramp up, has longer steady effect, overall leads to better productivity because highs are not as high and tail is longer. Both if taken too late in the day affect sleep.

So over time I developed next schedule: double espresso or two in the morning, one or two black teas after lunch/later, decaf black tea or camomile in the the evening.

Not quite. While there are variances, most places I've looked coffee usually exceeds tea in caffeine content. Starbucks Pike Place 16oz coffee has 330mg caffeine. http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/brewed-coffee/pike-plac... Starbucks Earl Grey 16oz tea has 65mg caffeine. http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/tea/earl-grey Those are just two popular examples.

edit: Black Tea near 100mg per 16oz.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/caffeine/AN01211

From a tea site, not sure of its validity.

http://www.veetea.com/site/articles/caffeine-and-tea

Go to Caffeine in Tea: How It Works.

It looks like tea should not affect you as much.

Depends on the kind of tea. Higher the oxidation level, the longer you steep it, and various ingredients can alter the caffeine level.

Not 100% accurate, but it goes something like:

black → green → white → chamomile (which is naturally caffeine free if chamomile is the only ingredient)

Green tea in many cases has nearly the same caffeine content as black tea though.

“Tea is just as caffeinated” — Citation needed

I personally don't drink coffee. From my observation I don't think I'm any less alert than other coworkers, but I just need to have standard 7-8 hours of sleep.

I tried the same thing with the same results. Me: 1–3 cups coffee and/or tea.

I quit Coffee/Caffeine around twice a year for the amount of around 3 - 5 weeks for some sort of cleaning of the system. It is always awful, I get bad headaches, I feel tired, I can't concentrate, I basically loose 1-2 days of productivity. However, after that, I start slowly, only with one espresso per day, and then gradually move back up until I hit the 5 cups a day again, and that's when I quit cold turkey again.

I do agree that my body feels great when I'm not drinking coffee, however I like the taste of it so much, that I always have to fall back to it. Still going cold turkey twice a year feels good.

> I like the taste of it so much, that I always have to fall back to it

I find decaf actually helps with this. I like both the taste and the ritual of coffee, but don't like the jitters it gives me if I have more than one or two cups a day. So I typically switch to decaf after the first cup, and still enjoy the rest.

Unfortunately this was easier to do before I moved from California to Denmark. Here it's easier to find nonalcoholic beer (every supermarket carries it) than decaf coffee (fewer than half do), and it seems to be regarded with a degree of cultural suspicion.

I'm also having decaf every couple of days out of the same reason. For what it's worth, the Nespresso from Nestle has really good decaf espressos. They taste very close to a normal espresso. Half the time I'm using my Nespresso only for decaf (my normal coffee is usually handpicked local-roasted that I prepare in a french press). Nespresso also has three different decaf variants.

Where do you get ones that you like? Do you check expiration or something like it so as to get fresher ones? I've only ever found them awful. We have a machine at work that I avoid, but I'd experiment if I had hope.

Yep, i am drinking mostly Nespresso decaf for the same reason, they almost taste like the real deal and let me avoid too much caffeine.

Try getting www.hasbean.co.uk to ship you their decaf.

I think they ship to Europe, and their decaf coffee is the best I've found anywhere in the world. (I'm a serious coffee snob, as the PID-controlled kettle currently reaching 92C in my kitchen will attest.)

Thanks! They do indeed seem to ship to the continent. Found this blog post about one of their decafs: http://www.hasblog.co.uk/imparting-taste-and-decaf-process

I've been drinking the decaf they talk about in that article today, and it's absolutely ace - it's pretty good for a coffee, and stunning for a decaf. Give it a go!

Did you try Illy coffee? It's believed to be among the best coffees in the world. The best, if you ask me.

Yes, I'm familiar with Illy. It's one of the better mass-market coffee brands, but it can't compete with a fresh roast from a speciality roaster. The freshness alone makes a huge difference.

Having said that, if you like the coffee that it produces, that's all that matters!

Agree. Decaf allows you to get the taste without the caffeine. Although I read a study said that the taste of beer alone can release a bunch of dopamine because of the memory of what's about to come next (alcohol). I think the same thing happens with taste of coffee and caffeine because when I started drinking decaf I noticed my appreciation of the taste of coffee went down a little.

It's interesting to consider what the enjoyment would be like if I only drank decaf. I typically drink decaf after caffeinated coffee; for example, if I'm at a coffee shop working for some hours, I'll have a caffeinated coffee or two to start, then switch to decaf. If I drank only decaf, it's quite possible the experience could change. For me its main use is to allow me to keep up a habit of sipping periodically on coffee for hours, which I enjoy, without getting really jittery from 5-6 cups of coffee, which I don't.

Fun fact: decaf actually has some caffeine in it [1], and is probably the factor in how it helps the transition from a caffeine fueled lifestyle to general normalcy.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17132260

I start slowly, only with one espresso per day, and then gradually move back up until I hit the 5 cups a day again

Sometimes it's not the substance itself, but the amount; have you tried differing amounts, or limiting to only certain times of day? What you describe sounds like a roller coaster to me (albeit not as severe as some I've seen).

EDIT: My personal story: used to drink tons of coffee in hight school; had heart palpitations, quit; used to drink tons of Dr. Pepper through college; decided to quit due to sugar and phosphoric acid; used to drink tons of tea late in college and after; stopped when I stopped working from home. Nowadays, it's one cup (perhaps 16 floz at most) of coffee and one cup of tea per day, always before noon - it has to be fresh ground coffee and good loose tea, though. Has health benefits and doesn't make me jittery, can quit or take a hiatus any time I want, or double down on a slow day. Moderation, with the occasional variation.

Yeah, I should really try that, to force myself to just one or two cups a day and fill up the rest with decaf or tea. I switched over to chai with soy milk for some time, but somehow that didn't last. I also tried some substitutes like more soy milk, but nothing in that area really felt as satisfactory as a good old cup of joe.

Multivitamins and Piracetam for you, my friend. No headaches, only a bit of dullness/tiredness.

Headaches is a common side effect with racetams unless you get a decent amount of choline; most people who supplement with piracetam etc. tends to supplement choline in some form such as alpha-gpc as well to avoid it.

I know the effects vary considerably, in my case it just happened to help me get rid of any headaches - travel, stress, caffeine withdrawal, lack of sleep, everything that used to give me a headache now doesn't (except for a hammer to the head :-). It's pretty weird, and it didn't make me any smarter, but I like the effects. I take 2.4 grams a day - any more is a waste, any less is not enough.

Try decaf.

Caffeine has been found to have beneficial effects in fighting diseases like Alzheimer's:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20182037

...and for Parkinson's:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23879665

It's hard to believe, but caffeine withdrawal is classified as a mental illness in the recently updated DSM, the bible of psychiatry.

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/blogs/daily-dose/2013...

I'm guessing that the pressure to put it in the DSM had something to do with being able to bill health insurers for drugs which help with the withdrawal symptoms...

You're probably very right.

Unlike what GP posted, the DSM isn't the bible of psychology. In Basic Psychology in college, I learned that the DSM only exists to help insurance companies classify and bill the practices of psychologists.

Which is pretty much backwards, it's written by the American Psychiatric Association, not the insurance industry; certainly it is relevant to insurance, but not it's not written to help insurance companies do anything; it's written to document the accepted clinical practice of the psychiatric community in order to (among other things) help the psychiatric community secure full reimbursement for clinically-appropriate care from insurance companies.

So you're saying it's a guide for psychiatrists to push bills to insurers, not pull bills from them?

Hmm, that at least sounds plausible.

Usually when institutions appear to behave stupidly, the reasons are not so much stupid as non-obvious.

Why is everyone calling it the "bible of psychiatry" now? I had never, ever heard that name until this year when the media ran a bunch of slam articles on the DSM V.

Because it's much shorter than "standard diagnostic manual" and means about the same thing.

To say "the media ran a bunch of slam articles" gives the wrong impression, in my view. There is a wide and serious critique. When one of the loudest critics of DSM V is the chairman of DSM IV, that's more than a smear campaign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Frances

Not terribly comforting to know this. But I can attest that quitting coffee was one of the more painful things I've attempted.

And failed at : http://eksith.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/quitting-coffee-cold-...

I've done it several times. It takes me about 8 days to shake caffeine dependency. The first time was pretty hard, the next ones have been easier.

I plan it a few weeks in advance usually starting a thursday so I get through the worst of it over a weekend. If I'm not taking vacation the following week I reduce it down to just work, food and lots of sleep.

I've tried a few times, lasted a few months, and relapsed. Ive noticed the psychological triggers are far more powerful than the chemical, at least in my case. E.g., cold weather and the smell of it in my local store is harder to resist when Im in my normal workday routine than a weekend stop in same said store.

I've quit on two or three occasions for a year at a time. What worked was to gradually lower the dose until you're close enough to zero that zero isn't hard. I did that over a couple weeks, and it was so much easier than cold turkey that I don't know why more people don't try it.

I'll also add: this works best for me when I switch to decaf and take caffeine pills. Then I can start to decrease the caffeine dose independent of the tasty hot drink.

Ah, those headaches. I vomited, struggled to see and couldn't talk or move properly. If someone had told me they were about to kill me I'd have vomited a thank you to them. I get migraines occasionally, but coffee removal seems a trigger.

Fascinating. I drink a lot of caffeinated soda, and yes when I stop for an extended time I can feel the effects, the headache, the foggines. But in general in 48hrs its gone, I vacationed at a place in Hawaii that had no caffeine available left on Friday stayed for a week. By Nonday all "withdrawal symptoms" were gone. I subsequently went back a couple of times and 'prepped' by stopping caffeine intake two days before departure and felt fine for the whole trip.

Long way of saying I suspect it would be challenging to apply for long term disability if you couldn't afford to buy/ingest caffeine :-)

Possibly, they put this in the DSM because people often consult with many symptoms due to caffeine withdrawal, rather than any medical or psychiatric condition. They want to make sure that psychiatrists are aware of this and at least ask the patients about their caffeine consumption before making the wrong diagnosis.

That's so drugs can be prescribed for it. When you're addicted, you need a drug. When you kick the addiction, you'll need another drug.

What I would like to know is, is caffeine consumption a zero-sum game? I.e. assuming you consume a constant amount of the stuff (let's say two cups of coffee a day), once your brain has adapted to this intake, is there any advantage in the habit compared to me never drinking any? Or does it effectively make your now adapted mind work just like if you had never consumed any caffeine at all?

I've gone clean a few times now, and the effects and time-frame given in the article seem head-on. I have a feeling that I function no worse without any caffeine than when i was drinking regular doses, except my mental performance is more even throughout the day (no spikes after a cup of latte and no tiredness in the evening after I stop drinking). Also, I sleep a lot better.

Additionally, being completely off caffeine gives me a powerful tool strictly for emergency use - if I really need to drive all night without falling asleep at the wheel or push out a new release before going away for a week, one cup of coffee works like magic. I do reserve it for really important cases only, and made it a rule to not drink any for at least two weeks after that to clear up again.

There is definitely a phenomenon of caffeine tolerance, but it seems complex and varies a lot with the individual.

Caffeine is largely self-administered, so there is also situational tolerance. Even if you have some effect, you're conditioned to expect it.

The two combined means perceived tolerance varies quite a lot.

is there any advantage in the habit compared to me never drinking any?

There is the enjoyment of it.

It would also be interesting to see research on coffee's effect on a wide range of personality types. I've quit and haven't used in ~19months. Back then I'd drink 3-4 espresso's a day. Quitting was one of the most unpleasant and unbalancing experiences of my life. I kept a log of headaches, moods and fatigue before and after going cold turkey; and it was a long while (months) before the fogginess, tiredness, muscle spasms and irritability became manageable.

The rush and withdrawal effects of coffee on individuals seems to me to differ widely. I have friends that only got a slight barely notable buzz from it, but for me, I got the buzz, pleasure and motivation from my morning espresso. It was my on switch.

I think when I began to realise my psychological dependency was a bit unusual, was when I noticed how jittery and restless I was before my morning espresso. The first sip would correct that and bring with it a strange zen-like calm; the hustle and bustle of the day would dim to a dull hum and I would regain my presence of mind and I could function again. I promptly decided to quit.

Voltaire famously drank something like 50 cups of coffee a day. When someone told him it was a slow poison, he replied, "It must be very slow."

That's the story at least. Don't know if it's true.

Sounds exaggerated, unless he had insane tolerance levels or the coffee was very weak. Typically you count ca. 70mg for a cup of coffee, though of course it varies a lot with type. If we assume 50mg, that's 2500mg...

For comparison, weight lifting supplements tends to max out at about 400mg, and from experience if you take those amounts and then don't do a hard workout, you're bouncing off the walls and it's horrible. I find it hard to imagine effectively spacing out 2500mg in a way that'd leave me focused rather than jittery as hell, despite a very high tolerance level, and without wrecking any hope of decent sleep....

Then again, tolerance levels for caffeine varies greatly - at one point I'd often drink a red bull right before sleep.

I think the assumption has been that their cups were much smaller or weaker than ours.

30 not 50 but yea, still a crazy amount.

"Voltaire was also known to have been an advocate for coffee, as he was purported to have drunk it at least 30 times per day. It has been suggested that high amounts of caffeine acted as a mental stimulant to his creativity." - wikipedia

If you follow Wikipedia's source for that, here is what it actually says:

In France, meanwhile, Voltaire was reputedly downing between 50 and 72 cups of coffee a day

Encyclopedia authors shouldn't cut numbers in half. In any case, the reported number varies wildly and I've never been able to track down a source for it. They're probably all made up.

It seems to me that the measurement here comes into question. What is a cup now vs what is a cup then? At what brew strength? etc.

When I first heard this claim, it was about the French author Honoré de Balzac. This claim about Voltaire makes me doubt both. I'm not saying that it's impossible to have two famous French writers habitually drinking an atypically obscene amount of coffee, just that it makes the claim seem more dubious.

What's life without a little addiction ? ;)

Coffee is small dosages is not bad for you, many studies say that in fact it's healthy in a long term.

In my case, I drink my morning black coffee, and one espresso after lunch and another after dinner. It fixes my daily "addiction" and I don't see it interfering in my life like an actual drug would, say cigars/alcohol/etc..

It's really hard to separate if it's small amounts of coffee that's useful or the brain chemistry / lifestyle of people who drink small amounts of coffee regularly.

""actual drug""

I had a massive caffeine addiction (think 2 large cans of redbull a day) about a year ago until I quit cold turkey. It may be in my head, but after about a month off the stuff I felt like I had more energy than ever.

I quit caffeine and ended up regretting it. I felt tired a lot more, even a year later. Staying awake after lunch became a real challenge for me. I'm just saying this to temper the confirmation bias here - I think people who quit caffeine and got nothing out of it probably don't feel any particular need to share their stories.

Especially when you are not working in a very structured environment caffeine helps (me) with keeping moving forward. The older I get the more important I feel energy management becomes. But then again I usually drink one in the morning and one in the afternoon to not get kicked out of various coffee shops...

By that do you mean that you try to conserve your energy expenditure over the course of the day, so you don't burn out too quickly?

Ditto – (also commenting to temper the confirmation bias). I give up caffeine now and then, usually have a day or two of headaches but after that my life becomes no different without caffeine compared to how it was with caffeine. Except I enjoy the taste of both coffee and tea, so I resume drinking it.

I will say I avoid having any caffeine after about mid-afternoon; perhaps this would help other commenters who find it affects their sleep patterns.

I was up to 4 cans of rockstar a day and quit cold turkey a month ago. The withdrawal symptoms are gone, but the low energy levels persist. I'm more interested in finding out why than going back to the caffeine. I wonder if it's the increased number of adenosine receptors, combined with lower amounts of dopamine. Some days, I take 1g of L-Tyrosine (which gets converted into dopamine) and that helps me energetic and, in a word, normal. On the days I don't, I sleep 9 hours at night and take a 3 hour nap in the middle of the day. I don't have a lot of answers right now, but I hope my low energy levels don't persist for a whole year.

Hmm, I quite caffeine for a bit more than a year. I didn't feel like I had more energy per se, but I definitely felt better overall. It did take a long time to get through withdrawal.

This overlapped a period of two springs where I had terrible, terrible allergies, which claritin/etc barely helped with. As a test I drank coffee for one week, and the allergies completely vanished. :(

I've firmly stuck with 1 cup a day, though, drinking decaf after that. I think only drinking coffee right after I wake up probably helps.

For the post lunch blues, try eating a much smaller lunch. You might have tiredness resulting from your body's digestive system kicking in.

The siesta is a more natural alternative to drugs. ;)

As sad as this is going to sound, it may be more natural, but it's less socially acceptable in the US. I used to take a nap during lunch, but I was told by my co-workers that it freaked them out to see me sleeping under my desk. ;)

Those are the same types who will keel over at 55 of heart failure. Don't join the club. My parents are anti-nap also... always found it odd. I just don't bother to listen to such complaints.

However, a better location might be in order, or perhaps a change of jobs. E.g. Occasionally I conked-out in the car, though it was a relatively dark parking garage.

I've never been a caffeine addict but I often get tired around lunch-time or before that. In cases like that I'll drink a cup of coffee - not out of an urge, but out of necessity.

It doesn't always seem to work, though.

I read once that the level of energy you feel from caffeine is actually your normal energy level, and that the 'boost' you feel is actually the caffeine dragging you out of a low.

Or something like that. And I can only presume this is after you've been consuming it for a while.

Up until recently I would drink about a pot of coffee a day. I've also gone cold turkey and while I have fallen off the wagon a couple of times, I've felt more energised (especially in the morning) and definitely less irritable.

I'm also finding that my sleep these days is amazing!

I used to drink two cans of Mountain Dew per day. I was 100% dependent upon it -- without my Mountain Dew I couldn't function at all. Anyway, I recently took a few weeks off between jobs, and during that time, I decided to quit caffeine cold turkey as well. I feel great! Some benefits include:

  -Sleeping better

  -Being awake and functional in the morning, even before the caffeine kicks in

  -Having a consistent energy level throughout the day

  -24oz of soda/day is not healthy, so getting that out of my diet was definitely a good thing

The only downside is that the startup I work for now has a tab with a number of local coffee shops that I can't take advantage of :(

I think you are confusing quitting caffeine with reducing intake of HFCS.

I used to (a long time ago) drink 2 liters+ of Coke at work. I switched to diet, but still caffeinated, and within two weeks, I felt like a new human being.

Among everything you listed, I'll also add that I went from needing 8 hours of sleep at night to needing only 6.

Decaf?

Depending on the place you get it, the label decaf often doesn't mean much. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17132260

That is still at least a rediction by an order of magnitude. For normal consumers thats good enough

> massive caffeine addiction (think 2 large cans of redbull a day)

Son, that is not a massive caffeine addiction.

I'm sorry to say to you but, Red Bull and such is not coffee lol. What you are addicted is to sugar, not coffee.

It's amazing how so many people in IT which by default are very smart, can be so ignorant about what they drink/eat.

considering the smallest can of red bull has as much caffeine as a cup of coffee (80mg) and a can of rockstar has twice that (160mg) I would say you're off base. Especially since both come in sugar free versions (which I used to enjoy more than the HFCS laden stuff, before I quit).

I only drank the sugar free versions. It was very much so the caffeine (and possibly the 1000% of b vitamins they pack in.)

I can do without caffeine, but I actually enjoy drinking coffee. I love the taste, the smell and the ceremony of preparing it. I like to make turkish coffee and espresso in my moka pot. I've also recently bought a french press. I don't smoke, so making coffee gives me a reason to take a break from the computer. Maybe I could switch to tea, but tea isn't as exciting for me.

As I read this article and thought to myself, "hmm maybe I should go cold-turkey for a couple weeks" since I certainly have been building up a tolerance, I got an alert for this email (I can't make this up):

From: My Starbucks Rewards <Starbucks@e.starbucks.com>

Subj: The next one's on us. In fact, it's already on your Starbucks Card.

No need to go cold turkey. Progressively substitute decaf for regular. If you have you own espresso machine, this is pretty easy to do over the course of a few weeks.

This raises a very interesting question: what is an optimal stimulant (or stimulant enabler) dosage routine? I think it's clear that in the short term something like caffeine is a net positive. But how do we mitigate negative longer-term effects like tolerance and dependency?

Every week I take a "detox day" - typically Sunday. I cut out caffeine and generally add a fair bit of exercise (preferably 45 mins of cardio). I find this helps cleanse and reset my system. I also free-run my sleep on the weekends, further helping to "reset" everything. My logic here is that I can be stimulated for most of the week while taking a day to undo any longer-term effects that may be done (such as the increase in adenosine receptors). As a result I try not too schedule anything too important on detox day, as I'm a bit less sharp mentally. I actually don't mind working then - the only effect is that it takes longer to "warm up". It's the social obligations where I want to make sure I have that extra little kick ;)

I've been interested in supplementing with modafinil for a while, but I refuse to do so just yet on the grounds that we don't understand how it works well enough. That, and since the drug is relatively new we don't have studies on long-term effects. As much as I love stimulant-enablers and mental optimization, I refuse to do so at the risk of my health.

Recently I woke up no more able to hear anything from my left ear.

My hearing has always been higher than most people's.

Long story short, as part of the cure, the otolaryngologist prohibited me to even smell caffeinated coffee for like forever.

I instantly switched to decaffeinated coffee. The one I drink has half the caffeine it must have to be legally said to be decaffeinated.

I didn't experience a single effect of caffeine deprivation. Not a single time.

All in all, I don't think caffeine is a drug like others. I think is a drug to someone, and it isn't to someone else.

Ugh, did your hearing recover ?

It did, fortunately. Thanks for asking :)

It was a mini-stroke to a tiny blood vessel in the internal ear, that's why no more caffeine...

Now, when I get the rare glass (250ml) of coke like once per month with pizza, I also get some minutes of pain to the ears and feel very very stupid XD

I quit drinking any caffeine for a week once, an experience I won't forget any time soon. I think some have varying degree of withdrawal symptoms but I recall a couple of days in having one of the worse migraines I have ever experienced, if I moved my head it hurt, blinked or even chewed my head would ache. I got hand tremors, I became incredibly fatigued and somewhat antisocial as well. After a week I returned to normal but have since started drinking coffee and tea again as it is hard to not drink any of those (especially client meetings). So it's definitely an addiction, one that your body is quite dependent on.

Although even though I tried to stop drinking, I never once had the urge to make a tea or coffee, it's weird in that caffeine addiction seems to be one of those things we don't feel like we need and more of just a habitual need if anything. I never got to the point in my week detox where I felt like killing people for a caffeine fix or stealing from loved ones.

It's surprisingly hard to avoid caffeine, it's in more things than most people realise. It's in soft drink, it's in chocolate, a lot of decaf coffee still has low levels of caffeine. While if you want to live a life without, tea, coffee and chocolate you might mostly avoid ingesting caffeine, lets be realistic, it's unavoidable...

When I have coffee or tea on a regular schedule and it's interrupted I get mild but irritating headaches. This was happening a lot a while ago and I got sick of it and quit. I was only drinking that much of it at the time so my withdrawal wasn't too bad, although I'm sure there's individual variation as well.

Now that I don't have it on a regular basis, I'll have a small cup of weak tea if I'm tired and have a lot of work. The effect of even a small amount is immense when you don't use it regularly. I can have it at about two in the afternoon and I'll still be alert way past my bedtime.

The only problem with is tea or coffee smells so good when someone else is having some ...

That is why I created this http://www.getjumpstart.me/

We had our baby girl earlier this year, which led to sleepless nights and several cups of coffee during the day. My dad who has been practicing yoga for decades recommended a different route, which involved a 10 minute session involving deep breathing.

One thing led to the other and we built this app to help everyone who may have this problem.

Sorry for the shameless plug but seemed very topical.

Currently the app works with FB login. Rookie mistake on my part. Update is in the works to enable email only option

Interestingly, I've found that a significant part of my own addiction is behavioural. If (for whatever reason), I know I'm not going to be able to drink tea for a few days, as long as I have something to replace it with that has an appropriate amount of ceremony to it I don't really exhibit the withdrawal symptoms the article mentions.

On the other hand, if I just try and stop I feel useless for about a week (possibly longer, I've only stopped for that long once).

I'm surprised to see the caffeine withdrawal horror stories:

I drink what I think is a lot of caffeine. I just counted what I've had today, a normal day in terms of caffeine: 1 cup of aeropress coffee in the morning, which I make very dark/thick, so it might count as 2 cups, perhaps more, of "normal" coffee... And since the morning, another 9 shots of espresso, and a couple of cans of coke zero.

When I go off of caffeine, I get a mild headache for a few days to a week, and that's it.

One mildly interesting story: I used to play a lot of counterstrike, at relatively high levels, but below 'pro'.

Once, I went off of caffeine, and went through the withdrawal. During withdrawal, my counterstrike ability worsened. After withdrawal, I was noticeably better than I had been when on caffeine. But, when I finally went back on caffeine, I was on a whole new level. Opponents that I had trouble with before were almost comically easy to beat. I can definitely see why caffeine is consider a PED for certain Olympic sports.

I never used to drink coffee it made me feel very jittery and short of breath with just a sip, the guys where I worked as a kid (14) went on coffee runs, make that I went on coffee runs, and once I got a coffee and whoa jittery! Although a Lebanese store owner used to give make Lebanese coffee for me when I was a 14 or 15 plus some nice pistachio baklava, the coffee didn't bother me as much, weird.

Anyway 20 years later I started shift work and when installing equipment when the building I was working at was being built we had coffee breaks more to keep warm in an unheated concrete box during a Canadian spring. Now I like coffee (?) but most often it's a latte, cappuccino, espresso or some coffee flavoured drink but sometimes I get four shots of espresso.

Now I have GERD and caffeine is a trigger, at worst I am vomiting up stomach acid and my throat feels like there is a golfball stuck halfway down it. Yet I still drink coffee :(

I have GERD (hiatal hernia) and I stayed away from Caffeine for years because I was told it would trigger it. They also said to avoid spicy foods and exercise regularly. I started taking Prilosac and exercising regularly about 5 years ago. Now I can pretty much eat what I want (I go through a bottle of Sriracha every 3 months, it goes on everything :D). I think the key to managing GERD is the exercise and medicine. When I don't exercise I have more reflux. If you are not exercising regularly (which means exercising long enough to get super hungry), then you might want to try it to see if it improves your symptoms. Anecdotally, I think the GERD diet is total bullshit, I've tried it (with out meds) and I still experienced enough discomfort to convince me to take medication.

Edit: I forgot to mention I drink coffee every morning.

Hello fellow GERD-er, I've never heard of the GERD diet my doctor just throws pills at me.

Exercise for sure, when I started shift work my gym trips started to suffer until a few years later I stopped going. I had gone to the gym since just after high school, almost 20 years, and biking in the summer.

My undiagnosed GERD grew worse a few years later but wasn't discovered until my dentist put two-and-two together about why my teeth were so sensitive. I unknowingly discovered it years earlier when having bad coughing fits I discovered an antacid helped calm my coughing.

Unfortunately the Prevacid I took (lansoprazole) I think was causing my terrible pain in my back in the morning. I was diagnosed with fatty liver which I am sure was caused by the Prevacid since it's the only drug I take, I don't drink, don't smoke, pretty much no drugs other than caffeine. Doctor put me on dexalansoprazole but that makes my guts hurt, then Tectra (pantoprazole magnesium) which also hurts.

So I'm back to square one which is I eat small meals and exercise like a normal human should be doing anyway :/

addiction or not, my code is more composed and creative under the influence of coffee

Have you taken two week breaks without any coffee to compare? If the article is correct, after two weeks you should have kicked off the addiction. If you're comparing day 1 with coffee vs day 2 without coffee, you might be falling into a trap.

I was not drinking coffee until half a year ago. I completed my assignments, but it was slow process, i had trouble concentrating, got often distracted from the task. Staying awake during most of the days was the hardest "work". Then, after reading some articles on tea and coffee effects decided to try it out. The result was impressive. I was like 4x more productive, could solve complicated tasks and not get distracted by anything during whole day, only drinking 1 cup in the morning. Then I thought maybe I just got better, and tried it without coffee again. Result - similar performance as before coffee, except some improvements in the fields I was able to make while under the influence of coffee.

This works for a period but eventually fades to the point where you take in caffeine just to reach the level of performance you had before you used it.

The quality of work is often different as well, in my case it's more of a pushing to get things done at any costs, without refinement or nuance.

BTW- If you google "caffiene brain blood flow" you'll find out that it reduces blood flow to the brain by 20%. That can't be good...

> you'll find out that it reduces blood flow to the brain by 20%

... if you're a preterm infant

Actually it applies to everyone who consumes it, and the body has a limited ability to compensate for it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19219847

Firstly: One personal anecdote means nothing.

But what I really want to say is that what you're saying doesn't work in the long run. If you never drink coffee, it can be used as drug to help concentrate. But when drinking it daily, as the article states, your body will adjust and now you need coffee just to get to the old level without coffee.

>Firstly: One personal anecdote means nothing

It's the only thing that matters to the person in question.

If you mean "matters" as in allows them to share their emotional experience then sure, of course.

If you mean "matters" as in allows you to gain knowledge about what actually happened to you? Then it means nothing, from whichever perspective you care to choose.

I've noticed similar but more subdued effects when going on and off coffee. I don't feel any physical effects from coffee (as long as I stay below about 3 cups), so I often take long breaks from it when it simply isn't convenient for me to drink it. I've noticed that when I don't drink coffee, not only do I have trouble focusing, but I'm less likely to exert the effort to try new things or put the effort into understanding difficult subjects. I also feel the same trouble even staying awake that you noted. I get significantly more done when I incorporate coffee into my day.

Another thing that works for me is formulating a plan of action before I have any coffee, and then drinking it when I start. The caffeine and the ritual put me in the right mindset to get real work done.

How interesting! I don't drink coffee but the few times I've tried it, I perform much worse than otherwise. The results are often like the stay-up-late-and-code results. I have to correct and redo loads of work when I come off the coffee.

Interesting. Probably the effect differs from person to person.

Up until you start to phosphoresce...then it's time to cut back.

Perhaps your addiction is influencing your perception of your coding performance. The best way to test this is to find an impartial third party to compare your caffeine-code to code you wrote before you started drinking coffee (as in, not the code on day you DIDN'T drink coffee).

When I drink caffeine, I got really upset stomach, end up with diarrhea, racing thoughts, loops, frequently inability to concentrate on the come down.

I have a 250g bag of anhydrous caffeine powder. I always take some out with me in a plastic tube. If I can recommend something, it is not to swallow it. It quickly absorbs from the mouth and I perceive it to be much cleaner experience. Also, the duration is much shorter which makes it ideal to wake yourself up for the long way back home at night, but still does not prevent you falling asleep in an hour or so.

I read this as I sip my daily coffee.

And I'm lying in bed waiting for the machine to warm up. Best part of the day arrives early on.

I drink 2-4 cups of caffeinated coffee each day and I really don't have any problems. I drink Red Bull every now and then, too. On days that I don't have caffeine I do feel "sluggish" but it's not awful. I enjoy the ritual of drinking coffee plus the taste.

I don't have any problems sleeping unless I have caffeine very late in the day. I get a solid 7-8 hours of sleep each day without any problems. So, I don't really see the reason to quit caffeine.

I generally don't drink coffee because it makes your breath smell. It is really awful when you're talking to colleagues or clients with "coffee breathe".

Recently I cut my normal coffee intake (2 very strong 16oz cups per day) to a single mild 8oz cup in the morning.

Suddenly I was depressed, like meaning had been swept out from under me, not to mention a 2 day headache.

On the 3rd day the clouds broke and I started to feel much better, better than the best of days high as a kite on caffeine.

Have more energy, less irritable, sleep better, etc.

I'll be surprised if I go back to previous levels, seems incredibly unhealthy from the less is more side of the fence.

I don't like coffee, but when I need a kick I use caffeine pills. I only use them sparingly, they're very useful, and I don't find any drawback!

I've always maintained a strict rule that I don't drink any caffeine after midday, preferably not after about 11am. The theory being, this leaves my brain without caffeine for at least half of its time, which should thus prevent the brain modifications from setting in. However I've never had anyone confirm this is a valid approach, but it seems to work ok as far as I can tell.

I don't think this would stop it. However, the caffeine would be out of your system by the time you are going to sleep, so you would be able to sleep well.

quitting caffeine was way harder than i thought it was going to be. i still have doubts if i'll ever be as productive

Who would want to quit drinking coffee? Can anyone give me some negative health outcomes of drinking coffee? Other than the coffee breath which is awful.

Among others it can lead to heart problems, as experienced by a relative of mine after 20 years of drinking coffee. So good luck with that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_coffee#Risks

Neat article. I'd like to hear about the next step in the process. Why Aspirin cures the caffeine headache, but something like Tylenol will not.

Why quit cold turkey and invite suffering, when all you have to do is reduce your intake over time?

Because it's quicker. You trade the mental effort of remembering to dose down over a longer period against physical discomfort for a day or so.

Personally I don't find cold turkey too bad. The second day after I stop I'll have a headachey, nauseous afternoon (which is almost entirely handled with paracetamol as long as I stay hydrated), but after that it's more a matter of habit.

If your withdrawal is over after a day or two, your withdrawals are mild. You're lucky...

Caffeine withdrawal can get really nasty. Think a full week of evening shakes so strong you can have a hard time ingesting anything, fevers, headaches that paracetamol won't make go away, diarrhea.

I may not be the best example because i try to quit every now and then... But i feel rthat quitting in steps does absolutely nothing. I would keep reducing and not noting any change in body behavior. Until i go past some threshold (2 espressos) them i get the same as fully quitting

For me at least, I'm at one cup, but still get withdrawal symptoms if I don't have it. Is there any way to meter this down? Maybe just dump out half the cup?

Progressively replace regular with decaf.

As an opiate addict in recovery, and having experienced caffeine withdrawal: taper, taper, taper. There is no excuse not to.

Going cold turkey is an ego-motivated action, in my opinion. It's the 'If I can endure this acute suffering and beat it, then I'm stronger for it' attitude, and gives a false sense of inflated accomplishment. The reality is that you put yourself through needless torment so you could feel better about yourself, while a rational person whose goal is to actually beat the addiction realizes that their chance of returning to the substance increases substantially with how bad the withdrawal symptoms are.

If you want to quit, do everything you can so that you don't go back to ingesting the substance in question. That means reducing the chances you'll relapse because withdrawal fucking sucks and the only thing that will fix it is either waiting or using again. Guess which one your brain will try to convince you to do (hint: its the one with the least amount of immediate suffering)?

With cafeine, going cold turkey is more likely to be accidental. You don't realize how addicted you are, go somewhere where you don't have access to cafeine (a weekend of sailing, for example), and on the second day the withdrawal hits you.

Next time: bring a few cans of cola to drink during the first day, and you're okay.

That is why I always travel with caffeine pills. Yes, I feel like an addict, but it beats the alternative of withdrawal.

The article doesn't seem to mention whether coffee is healthy or not. One thing is if it is addictive, but if it is healthy (or even if it just isn't unhealthy), I've got to ask... so what if it is addictive?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTVE5iPMKLg

I am sure that it is dependent on the individual. I know some people who can't have caffeine due to various health reasons and others can't tolorrate the effects.

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