Life After Coffee – A Journey Quitting Caffeine

Here are a few tips to help you quit caffeine

This one will be more of an essay-style post detailing my experience, but I hope it’ll help you if you're looking to do the same or curious about this experience. I’ll also try and toss in a few tips here for anyone looking to quit caffeine or reduce their intake.

So…. in 2021 I decided to quit drinking caffeine. I’m not sure if I can pinpoint a precise reason for this. There were a few things I could think of.

Some context on where I was at in my life and caffeine journey before quitting:

At the time, I was consuming about 3 caffeinated drinks daily and was definitely addicted. I was primarily a tea drinker, but I also enjoyed Starbucks’ (and other lesser-known chains’) hand-crafted beverages. This was a product of my completing my master’s as a full-time student and working full-time at the same time.

I’d start my day at my day job around 7 am, then log off at 3 pm and make my way to a Starbucks or the school campus to work some more. Once commuting home (these were in the JUST pre-Covid days), I’d sometimes do a little more work at home in the evening if I had any more energy.

I’d have one tea or coffee in the morning at the start of my work, as most people would. I’d usually have one after lunch to get me past the lunch food coma, and then another one after logging off to get through my thesis writing for school.

My day job was a relatively stressful corporate job with tight deadlines and high-quality products expected of me.

I decided to quit caffeine while working from home, during the peak of the pandemic lockdowns in 2021.

Here are a few reasons I can think of why I decided to do this:

• I finished writing my thesis so I didn’t need to do more work after my day job.
• I had more free time now that I was working from home and was less tired after work since I didn’t commute anymore.
• I noticed my teeth were turning yellow… yes I know, vain… but this was actually the inciting factor that made me realize my consumption was getting excessive
• Sometimes my heart would be beating fast and I would feel anxious often.
• I was proud and felt like it would be a huge accomplishment if I could do it (I didn’t know many people who don’t consume caffeine at my age at the time)… I know, also a vanity thing.
• I was bored and needed a challenge I guess.

I more or less went cold turkey…in the sense that I didn’t go about it by cutting out one or two cups per day, but rather stopping drinking caffeine for entire days.

I DID however only cut out a few days a week at first.

My progression of caffeine reduction looked a little something like this:

1. 5-7 days per week with caffeine
2. 2-3 days per week with caffeine
3. 0-1 day per week with caffeine
4. 0-1 day per month with caffeine **I’d say this is about where I’m at now where most months I can barely remember when the last time was that I had any.

It comes and goes in my life in phases though, so there will be periods where I’ll consume more (ex. for social reasons, by accident, just feeling like having it, going to my grandparents’ house).

Some challenges I faced:

• While working a corporate job, you’re in a high-pressure environment where you’re expected to outperform even yourself over time. It was hard to keep up my productivity after quitting without the extra boost of focus I got from caffeine – This is actually something I still struggle with.
• Social settings are tricky because a lot of casual meet-ups (at least for me) are centred around caffeine. “Let’s grab a quick coffee to catch up” is such a common way to keep up with friends in a low-pressure setting.
• Visiting my grandparents was especially tough because my grandma would practically take offence to me refusing tea. Most of the instances when I broke my streaks were because of going to their house and feeling guilty.
• My former morning coffee was a practically spiritual experience – it was so ingrained in me. Even without the caffeine itself, the act of drinking the coffee was a comfort. Especially in the winter.
• Caffeine is a vasoconstrictor (constricts blood vessels), so when you stop having it at a particular time in the day, your blood vessels will overcompensate in the opposite direction and this results in headaches. I did experience that to a degree as well.

Tips for accomplishing this if you’re trying to quit or reduce your caffeine intake:

It can be very hard to quit caffeine because – as much as society tries to shove this fact under the rug – it is society’s most socially accepted drug addiction (**Please note, I don’t think this is even CLOSE to other more severe drug addictions and I’m not trying to compare it, I just wanted to point out that caffeine is a drug and that it’s easy to forget that since it’s so normalized).

• I was in a place with my job where I was very used to it and could practically do it in my sleep even though it was stressful. This was an ideal place to be in to quit caffeine because I was comfortable enough to take small risks. I could always go back to it if I needed to as well. I’d recommend against trying to break a big habit like caffeine if you’re in a transitional phase in your life because it’ll be harder.
• As you can imagine, removing caffeine from your life’s equation will make you feel tired. However, I found you can use that to your advantage while going through the withdrawal effects. I would stay awake for as long as I could during the day on willpower, but then would take afternoon naps for a few weeks in the beginning and that helped a lot with not experiencing withdrawal symptoms. It also prevented me from turning to alternative energy sources like sugar out of desperation.
• I was fortunate to be working from home at the time, but I found it really helped to be away from a ‘triggering’ environment like a workplace or library. At home, I didn’t have AS strong associations with caffeine, so it was easier to give up compared to if I was at my office. The environment you’re in can be a powerful tool!
• Before the Covid lockdowns, I started attending personal training sessions before work some days. It gave me such an energy boost that I didn’t need caffeine those mornings. When I decided to cut caffeine from my life, I used this strategy to my advantage. I started to jog or do other morning exercises, which gave me the boost I needed to get through the morning. I found that this was actually a better “artificial” boost in a way too because it was more sustainable. It resulted in less of a crash the way you get from caffeine or sugar.

How I feel now that I’ve quit:

It has now been over a year since I stopped consuming caffeine and I have a lot of thoughts about it now that I’m out of it.

It sometimes feels awkward and it’s a surprisingly socially charged change to make. With people who don’t consume caffeine, I feel a sort of kinship, but also a disdain for when I do slip an odd drink into my life. With people who do consume it, I feel a bit embarrassed when I refuse it and a bit pretentious for doing so. It’s crazy to me how inextricable it has become in society for people our age.

I was in India recently and my cousin didn’t even realize there was caffeine in tea. They customarily have multiple small teas per day. I didn’t want to be rude, so I had some there on a regular basis and am struggling a bit to recover now that I’m back (but it’s difficult to parse the caffeine withdrawal from the jet lag and the fall lack of sunlight).

Overall, I feel great from a mental perspective. My anxiety levels are relatively low. On the other hand, my excitability and enthusiasm are also relatively low. I feel boring when engaging in conversation sometimes. I notice this especially on the odd weekend when I will indulge in a mocha or something and then find myself much more interesting to talk to – switched on if you will.

I surprisingly don’t feel especially drained all the time. Just (what feels like) a normal level. I think you just become reliant and tolerant to the caffeine when you’re addicted to it (and THINK you need it to stay awake), but you’re not necessarily inherently dependent on it if that makes sense.

I have had coffee now and again in the past few months and I find the effects to be almost terrifying when I have a full dose. It feels fun and animated at first. Highly focused and all, but I find that once you’ve quit, the effects are especially amplified. After a few hours, I feel my heart beating out of my chest and my anxiety soars. I have a very hard time sleeping too. The effects are as if I consumed like 4-5 cups when I just have one. If I were to reintroduce it into my life, I’d take it very slowly with minimal doses and maybe just tea at the start.

Possibly the biggest downside for me has been the dip in motivation and productivity. I’m already someone who leans toward depression, so motivation has never been my forte.

This has been the most chaotic and inconsistent work year of my life. I’ve been in 3 separate corporate jobs now since Nov 2021 (and it’s Nov 2022 at the time of writing this post) with long gaps in between each one. I can’t help but wonder if this has something to do with not consuming caffeine. My actions are far less focused now. At the same time, I feel free and not trapped by artificial constructs (like the compulsion to stay on the grind if you don’t have to temporarily).

For the past couple of months, I’ve been strongly considering reintroducing caffeine into my life. I feel I have so many ambitions and ideas, but I struggle to translate them into action. I feel like I’ve given myself a bit of a disadvantage that I don’t want at this stage of my life. I want to be in a growth phase and I’m starting to think that being caffeine-free is better for a sustenance phase of life later on, once I’ve achieved more of my goals.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve voluntarily put myself in an unfair position. It’s very possible to live without it, but it’s much harder to get ahead and I think that’s what I want to do now. There’s only limited time to get things done in life, so early on may not be the smartest time to apply the breaks (even though theoretically, caffeine-free should be the natural state… it’s clearly not in developed modern society).

I’m glad for having undergone this experiment. It’s cool viewing the world through an alternative lens when you’re pushed (even if voluntarily) outside of the mainstream. I’m not sure if it was the right decision to make.

I will post an update if I do resume caffeine consumption.

Hope you learned something from my story. Let me know if you decide to do the same. I’d love to hear about your experiences too.

-Cara

P.S. This blog post was written without caffeine and it took me like 5 hours (including procrastination and breaks). I feel like it was a lot more effort than it could’ve been, but once I got into a flow, it also wasn’t that hard.

P.P.S Maybe part of caffeine’s job is to just lower the barrier to getting into that “flow state”. I think so based on experiences off, on, and then off again caffeine.

P.P.P.S (Congrats on making it this far!) I wonder if I would’ve had a better shot at getting into med school if I started caffeine before my master’s.