Now that I have experienced quitting cold turkey, I know that was the best, most efficient route for me. There have been many times in my 13 years of drinking coffee when I scaled back my coffee consumption. So, to have the most accurate dataset, cold turkey was my only option.Įither way, if you are wondering what is the best way to quit caffeine, my recommendation is to do it all at once. Second, I wanted to study how quitting coffee affected my sleep.
So, why prolong the headaches, especially when there’s a chance that they’re not intense anyways?Įven before knowing this, I decided to go cold turkey for two reasons.įirst, I wanted to record the timeline and effects. From our research, weaning may make the headaches less intense, but they’ll still be there.Īs we share in the below story of our caffeine withdrawal timeline when we cut out coffee cold turkey, Alex experienced intense headaches, but I never did. No matter what, you’ll get headaches either way. Wouldn’t it be easier to slowly wean yourself off caffeine? Actually, no, and we’ll tell you why. It’s my fault that she needs this god-awful cup of instant coffee while we enjoy a sunrise above the clouds. Since then we’ve cherished our daily coffee routine together.Ĭome to think of it, it’s my fault that Alex drinks coffee at all. She was always a light tea drinker until we started traveling South America in 2018. If not, caffeine withdrawal anxiety and fatigue hits and you’ll sink like a rock.Īlex, on the other hand, has never been a coffee addict. If you get to Starbucks in time, you’ll stay above water. My point being, I know what it feels like to be a caffeine addict. That’s a lot of coffee, and this wasn’t including my daily pre-workout supplement and weekly 5-hour energy (I’d chug one before big meetings). In my last month on the job, I spent $205 at Starbucks. Separate from the damage all this coffee was wreaking on my body, to this day, I still feel guilty about the Starbucks tab I hit my company with monthly. My Ford Fusion needed 91 octane gasoline to keep it going and I needed Starbucks americanos to keep it on the road. Covering this kind of ground meant a lot of late nights and early mornings. When I moved from my engineering position into a sales role in Texas, I often drove 1,500 miles a week going to accounts. I used to have a serious coffee addiction.
So while I’m no “coffee addict,” my withdrawal symptoms (mainly the horrible caffeine withdrawal headache) indicated otherwise. We drank coffee because we enjoyed the morning ritual and the taste.Īpparently, even this leisurely cup or two a day was enough to make us dependent on caffeine. With a flexible work-from-home schedule, I woke up whenever I wanted and napped anytime I wanted.
Plus, it’s not like we needed the caffeine. So, look! We were below average! Could we still be dependent? cups a day, equivalent to 300 mg of caffeine. The average coffee drinker consumes three 9 oz. So, neither of us are considered coffee addicts.Ĭoffee is the second most popular beverage after water in the United States. On a typical day, we only drank 1-2 cups of coffee. But really, I’m not, and I know from experience.īefore quitting, I was a daily coffee drinker for 13 years, while Alex had been drinking coffee daily for three years. At least this is what I was telling myself while hiking through Colombia’s pristine páramo trying to forget about my headache.
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