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Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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...).

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