Today I have gone without coffee for 30 days.
It’s been an interesting experiment.
I started drinking coffee at a pretty late age, probably around 22 or 23.
Since then I’ve consumed three cups or more every day.
Lately I’ve become more interested in my own personal energy. And being hooked on coffee is a bit like the curve above. :)
So I wanted to see how getting rid of the coffee would affect my energy, mood and effectiveness.
I know that some get off coffee by slowly decreasing the amount of coffee they consume each week and perhaps by replacing it with tea or non-caffeinated alternatives.
I took another approach.
30 days ago I came down with a bad cold and pretty much knew that I would spend a few days in bed doing nothing more than reading and watching some TV.
I also knew that going without coffee would make me very sleepy.
So I combined the two things. I stopped drinking coffee and then I was sleeping a lot the next few days.
This made it easier to get through the most unpleasant days of sneezing and having a fever. And since I wasn’t doing anything special anyway it was OK to feel drowsy and sleep a lot.
Towards the end of that week my cold had decreased in power and so had my sleepiness.
Since then it’s been no problem to not drink coffee and I have experienced some positive benefits.
The big one is that my ability to focus has improved. That has affected my life in a few ways:
- It has become easier to focus just on the task in front of me and shut out the rest of the distractions.
- I’m less prone to procrastination. I didn’t really notice it while I was drinking coffee but my mind seemed to wander off in all kinds of ways a lot of the time. Now it’s easier to single-task and focus on one thing and I don’t feel the same need to check email or other distracting stuff.
- I’m calmer. I’m a calm person to begin with but getting off coffee calmed and slowed my brain down. So I feel more relaxed more of the time. And it’s easier to think with clarity.
Getting of coffee has been a positive experience for me. It’s actually had more of a positive effect than I would have expected. I thought I would feel a little less stressed overall but it has made a significant dent in my ability to focus and concentrate. I also used to feel tired after a meal and used coffee immediately after the meal to boost my energy levels. Now I have a much more even energy-curve throughout the day.
So I’ll continue to stay coffee free and perhaps sprinkle in a cup of green tea or two once in while. I would recommend trying to go coffee free for 30 days and see how it affects your mind, body and life.
One way is do it like I did and go cold-turkey (perhaps the next time you’re ill or during some vacation days over the holidays). Another way is the one where you slowly decrease the amount of coffee you consume each week. And perhaps replace some of the coffee with less caffeinated teas or a couple of cups of decaf. If you get bad withdrawal symptoms then the second method may be the most useful one.
Henrik Edberg is the creator of the Positivity Blog and has written weekly articles here since 2006. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Gothenburg and has been featured on Lifehacker, HuffPost and Paulo Coelho’s blog.
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I am your classic coffee addict- here I am online looking for methods of quitting yet I addicted to the negative and positive experiences it gives me.
I have suffered from clinical anxiety yet I still drink the stuff. Its almost a part of my identity- such is my sensitivity and degree of familiarity with it. Unfortunately so to is some degree of anxiousness.
is there some substance you can ingest that makes coffee
taste so foul you would prefer not to drink it?
If so, let me know.
quitting coffee definetely has been well worth it. i am on my 46th day without caffeine, and yes, ive been keeping count, and im finally starting to feel its affects! Finally the confusion and the brain fog are BEGINNING to lift. Gradually, but nonetheless, they are lifting. ive noticed i am paying more attention to life now. For example, every morning i ride my bike 2.5 miles to work, and rather than bitch and moan like i used too, i instead check out all of my surroundings and truly appreciate what has been so freely given to me. yeah….. its neat. im beginning to appreciate life again. the only con that i have with this whole ordeal is that it seems as if since i quit that my memory is toast!!! i can read something, a paragraph or two, and all of a sudden completely draw a blank on what i just read!!! it blows.lol but hey, im actually finding humor in it rather than allowing it to agitate me, which is a miracle in itself. i know that the good times are finally beginning to outweigh the bad, and that my friends is what makes it all worthwhile. (life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we deal with it)Attitude is key to this whole journey. good luck and god bless to all of you. thanks a million.
Hello my name is Coffeeless for 5 days now. I have been drinking coffee since I was 17. I use to drink anywhere between 2-8 cups a day before I was 24 and then cut it back to 2-4 cups a day after a 3-wk headache episode that almost had my aunt drive me to an accupuncurist.
I’m really glad to find this forum because I wanted to know there were other people like myself going through something similar no matter how funny that sounds. My worst symptom was yesterday’s headache that put me to bed at 7:30 to 7am today, but other than that, I’m starting to come out of the fog and into life. I know it sounds corny, but I really do feel a lot less crabby and the concentration has been amazing. I’m sure the results varies for everybody, but I definitely can say quitting coffee has been a positive change for me.
I hope I can stay coffee free because it’s always so tempting when it’s everywhere and so accessible. Hahaha…yes, the words of an ex-coffee drinker coming “alive”.
Randy lee,
How long had you been drinking coffee?
You mentioned that you draw a blank while reading…I find that too while being ON coffee. But yet I find it off as well, it’s odd. It is as if some thoughts operate better on caffeine, and some thoughts worse, and likewise with abstinence.
I think this could shed some light on caffeine’s effects: heart palpitations cause thoughts to occur more frequently, and so drinking caffeine/coffee chronically and especially at certain times of the day, we have a tendency to think certain thoughts. Since caffeine affects the rate of our thoughts, we become accustomed to thinking certain thoughts at a faster rate, and therefore when we’re off caffeine we can’t think the same thought paths at the same rate, for the thoughts we could leisurely have before at a fast pace, we find ourselves running into a brick wall of thought, and having to step back and recollect, which requires actual thinking for thoughts that we normally would have instantly.
I think this is a serious problem, and since I personally am caffeinated 50% of the day and have been for the past 3 or 4 years, I find half the time I can’t think thoughts that I could easily think caffeinated, and when I try to bring myself up to speed,…wait it just happened again. See what I mean? Lol.
I’ve become a bit of a scatterbrain. It’s sad because I hold intelligence in such high regard and I don’t think caffeine has really effected my knowledge base, just the way I deliver it, which makes me look like I don’t know what I’m talking about when in reality I have gotten used to thinking too slow or too fast and I can’t keep up with the rate of thought that I’m discussing.
Anyone else find this?
Please read the benefits of coffee.
Thanks for the post! I didn’t really start drinking coffee on a regular basis until I was around 45(5 years ago)because prior to that I used to drink 1 cup and have trouble sleeping. I usually drink around 2-3 cups a day and didn’t notice any problems until I had a job change which required meeting lots of deadlines. I thought this constant background anxiety, nervousness, short temper, and poor sleep was just due to the job but I noticed even on vacations and weekends I just couldn’t relax and enjoy things like I used to. I also noticed I could get lots of little things done but for projects which require alot of focused attention I would become very uncomfortable because too many outside thoughts would come racing in. Last month I just gave up all caffeine and I’m amazed at how calm and focused I am. I didn’t get the headaches like others here have mentioned. Maybe I just got lucky and stopped it before I became addicted. Anyway, for anyone who is having trouble with emotional/focus issues, maybe you have this same caffeine sensitivity that I do. Isn’t worth at least quitting for awhile to see if there is a change?
i used to drink 1-2 cups of coffee a day depending on the strength of the brew and then add in a coke in the afternoon to get me through the crash.
then i switched to one coke per day, which was very hard as i was being hit with withdrawals that one coke didn’t seem to fully cure.
but i kept going through it, then i ran out of coke, and just went without it for about 5 days, now i feel like i don’t need it, but i still want coffee.
the benefits are that if i somehow cannot have my caffeine, i can still function normally. and I feel much more relaxed. also i can empathize with others better because i am not so wired on caffeine all the time now.
I agree with the writer Henrik – there are benefits to quitting coffee. I am trying to quit coffee right now. It’s hard. The extra kick in the morning gets me going. But it is short-term. I know it effects the quality of my sleep and contributes to mood swings.
Weaning off coffee is just a tease and has never worked for me. Any suggestions on quitting cold turkey?????
I quit coffee a week ago after years of 2 big cups a day. Second time quitting.
First I quit the sugar – just drank it black. I initially did this for my teeth, but this made the drug nature inescapable since I don’t particularly enjoy the taste w/o the sugar. I no longer looked forward to the coffee in the AM, but I still needed it. It became a chore- medicating myself with this black, bitter stuff.
When I did quit the black coffee after having no sugar or milk for a month, for some reason my headache symptoms were very mild compared to the time I went cold turkey from sugar coffee. I had a hot chocolate in the am to wean me off for a few days. Then I just didn’t buy it anymore.
It’s been about a week w/ no caffeine at all and I’m am SLEEPING TONS. All the time. I had only been able to sleep about 5-6 hours a night unless I took an Advil PM. Now I’m sleeping 8-9 easy and maybe a nap later. And I feel as if I did take an Advil PM in the morning – though it’s just the lack of caffeine.
It’s a little unnerving. It’s the reason I found your blog – I was searching to see if this was normal. I want the alert energy back but I AM enjoying the sleep. It’ll probably even out in a few weeks. I did have a lot of catching up to do. Also mindless repetitive internet interaction that was tons of fun on coffee, just isn’t anymore. That’s good in the long run.
I found out that I was addicted to caffine when I had to have a mamogram! I was told not to have any caffine for 3 days prior to the exam, and that’s when the headaches began. Horrible. Sadly, I didn’t make the connection and began drinking it again.
Now, I have a new situation. I was diagnosed with ADD as an adult and have recently began taking a mild dosage of Ritalin. Without thinking, I took a pill and had my morning coffee. Well, if I tell you I was bouncing off the walls….
So now I’m trying to kick the habit. I’ve been told that I can have a coffee later in the day after the medication has worn off, which is what I’m doing today ONLY because of this MAJOR headache.
How long do these headaches last? I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but I’m interested to see what other people have gone through.
I wrote in here on Feb. when I was quitting coffee. I think I was caffeine free for about 10 days total, then a stressful event occurred and I had a cup of black tea since I was up very early and felt I needed energy. I then proceeded to one mug of brewed white tea per day for a month or two, then one mug of black tea last month, and two mugs black tea per day now. And I allowed myself to get a Starbucks coffee on the days I work (3 days a week). So coffee three days a week and black and white tea on days off. But I’m not happy about it, because the level of caffeine is steadily increasing. I am glad that I cut down from 4+ cups of coffee a day; I got rid of my coffee maker at home, so that has helped. When I drink the Starbucks coffee at work, it seriously tastes like the best thing in the world- the first sip and my mind is jumping for joy. But I can tell that on the coffee days, I am much more irritable, hyper and not as calm, and I don’t sleep as well. So,, I was searching the internet tonight again, to look at benefits of quitting caffeine, and I am off for three days this week, so I am just going to quit cold turkey, and hopefully the withdrawal won’t be as bad as in February. My sleep was better the 10 + days I was caffeine free, and I definitely felt mellower. I did feel a bit dazed, but I’m sure that would of improved if I would of stayed off of caffeine longer. Thanks for all your experiences.
Thanks for the blog! This information is great! I had quite caffeine for 7 years because anything that constricts the blood vessels in my brain and makes me believe that I have more energy, (but the truth is that coffee stimulates the secretion of adrenaline which makes a person believe they have more energy)can not possibly be healthy. If I need antioxidants I can have a tasty bowl of blueberries. Howver, I started drinking coffee again 3 years ago and it has definately been a self-imposed burden.
Who ever said that coffee is good for you? It’s has a chemical in it called caffeine which is a mood changing substance. A drug!
Caffeine, destroys my concentartion, makes me live like I have ADD, dehydrates me, stains my teeth, dries out my skin, gives me bad breath, gets me so unfocused and most of all it turns me into a grumpy, irritable person. My wife and my son have pratically begged me to quite coffee again because they see how unhealthy it is.I’m so encouraged to see all of these people quitting caffeine. HOORAY! I will quite RIGHT NOW and go cold turkey. When I do quite, I only get headaches for 1 day and then I’m fine. However, my ability to stay focused takes about 1 month to return to normal.
Thanks again everyone for your encouraging experiences.
Hello Everybody,
Ive been drinking Coffee for about 15 years, thats 2-4 cups a day. If i did not have coffee by 9:00Am I would have a very bad headache the rest of the day. Even when I would be sick with the flu or whatever I still had to have 2-4 cups a day. At times having to drink coffee would be such a burden. I always knew I was addicted to caffine but never did anything about it, until today! I did not drink coffee all day and I have a bad headache, the morning was tough and by noon I felt I was in a fog. Tonight I feel totally out of it, almost like being in a dream like state. Any ways, I am quiting and I am done with coffee. I’ll post more later this week. Wish me luck guys!
Todd
Hello again,
Its been 7 days clean of caffine, and i feel much better. the first 4 days were tough! bad headaches, sleepy, and my head was in a fog. its getting much easier now and my energy level feel good. ill post more when i hit my 30 day mark….
Todd
Hey guys, I have a senseo coffee maker which makes an amazing cup of coffee, just like you’d have from a coffee shop. I was drinking at least 6 mugs a day, I think I was addicted to the stuff because I would make a coffee even though I wasn’t really thirsty. Beacause I want to lose a few lbs I was searching the net looking for helpfull tips and came across how WATER can help towards shredding some lbs. I know Water is good for you but didn’t realise how GOOD. So the last 3 days I have been drinking nothing but water. water flushes out all the bad toxins in your body and I decided I’d give up on the caffine intake and so far so good. too early to say the benefits of going without coffee but I feel a lot better in myself from drinking just water. I am lucky I have not suffered from headaches maybe the water Im consuming is taking care of it!