Instead of cold turkey, switch out your Starbucks habit with a Nescafe habit.
It won’t take you too long to be disgusted enough by the taste to just quit it entirely.
I quit and I sleep much better now, so I don’t need anything in the morning to wake up and be functional. And I am saving money since I just drink water and the rare beer now and then.
That’s what I do, and I get the benefits of a tasty drink at just the right time of the morning, and no real drawbacks. No other caffeine through the day, though, it makes me feel sick and shaky in excess.
I have a few cups in the morning and then I generally don’t bother the rest of the day. I love the taste of coffee in the morning so it makes my morning computing and TV watching a nice smooth ride.
A colleague of mine did that until recently. He relapsed about a week ago, and can often be found in the kitchen area licking the coffee grains off the worktop.
He has a coffee bean pencil case.
Could you give a 5 second explanation on why this is true? It is just because the filter traps out some of the nasties or something? I do like my french press.
In 5 seconds:
French Press allows a certain substance (cafestrol) through from the ground coffee beans that has been shown to increase the “bad” LDL cholesterol by significant amounts.
If you can make it to someplace which gives you scientific journal access, the original research is here.
I don’t drink coffee. However, I did quite caffeine once, and it’s not so bad. You get headaches, yeah, and general fatigue. But the worst of it is over in a couple of days, and tylenol or whatever you prefer will help. I am still a very light caffeine user. I sometimes drink a diet coke if I need a pick me up (maybe 5 times a month, at lunch). I have chocolate after lunch every day, which gives me a touch of caffeine, but it’s not nearly as much as coffee or soda.
But if it’s just coffee itself, then yeah, substitute tea.
Man, and I thought I was bad drinking one small mug from the coffeemaker in the mornings. Two giant 20 ounces a day? Whew.
I say, just cut back and replace that ritual of getting the actual coffee with tea or something. The ritual is the fun part, anyway.
On the otherhand, if everyone drank MORE coffee, perhaps we could convince more Columbians to grow coffee plants instead of coca plants.
Going cold turkey is hard: start by drinking less and/or switching to decaf (or tea, soda - whatever’s got less caffeine than coffee that you still like to drink). [Avoid stuff with lots of sugar, for obvious reasons.] I actually blend regular & decaf coffee together. Set a daily limit for yourself, stick to it, and lower it each week. As Angie suggested, getting more sleep can reduce or eliminate the urge to get that morning boost. I also avoid drinking caffeine after mid-day: can make staying awake at my desk after lunch a bit tougher, but I think it helps me sleep better.
Interesting, thanks. I actually recently started using an Aeropress at home, but I have a metal mesh filter in my drip coffee pot! Confusing!
Caffeine withdrawal for me is excruciating. I went two years, always on a Sunday, where I had these headaches/nausea where I couldn’t even stand up. I slept / moaned for the entire day. I couldn’t figure it out…it was always a Sunday. I finally read something somewhere on caffeine withdrawal and it clicked.
I drink coffee every day during the week - but many times I wouldn’t on Saturday b/c I’d sleep in and didn’t need it. Hence, the Sunday withdrawal.
It will vary by individuals, but for me, I can’t conceive of a more debilitating pain than the headache that accompanies caffeine withdrawal.
The weird thing is I don’t drink that much - 16 oz (2 cups) every day. I started doing 1/2 decaf, 1/2 regular and it still didn’t help, so I’ve pretty much resolved to drink coffee every day.
Good luck, but to stay off the wagon, you’ll need to avoid caffeinated soda and chocolate as well if you really want to kick the habit.
A lot of love in this thread, and it warms me. Not as much as a cup of coffee would warm me, but still, it’s appreciated.
Why am I quitting? We had a baby in April, and I increased my coffee intake to survive the late night feedings. Actually, if I’m being honest with myself I think I used the baby as an excuse to drink more coffee. Regardless, my goal is to eliminate both coffee and caffeine from my life.
I have this constant coffee taste in my mouth and I’m eating fistfuls of mints to mask it. Also, my teeth are yellowing. As for the caffeine – I think it’s long since stopped working for me and its sole purpose now is to ward off headaches. Oddly, I’ve gained the ability to fall asleep nearly instantly, which I will miss, but I’d much rather get into a deep sleep at night than at my office desk.
Only a minor headache thus far, which is much better than I was expecting.
I had real bad caffeine withdrawal headaches when I quit. They were honestly the second most painful headaches I have ever had. The worst part? Tylenol/Ibuprofen did not work at all, I was stuck for a week of pain. Would I go back? No. I drank too many cups a day. I switched to diet sodas instead. I now have 2 cans or so of diet soda a day for my caffiene needs.
I loved coffee, I drank it straight black because I loved the taste.
Also nothing beats the awesomeness of a nice cup of coffee and a cigarette after a hard days work. But, now I have neither, and it turns out… I didn’t need them.
What if you put a paper filter on the plunger? Is it that the metal screens let too much stuff through, or that the plunging forces too much through, and no amount of filtering will stop it?
I don’t drink coffee, but I drink a fair amount of caffeine in tea and diet cola. Maybe the equivalent of 2 coffee cups a day, say.
I don’t think that 2 cups a day is a health risk, and in reasonable doses, I think caffeine has more health benefits than problems (retards colon cancer, apparently) unless you are at special risk to stimulants for some reason.
On the other hand, from time to time, I go cold turkey for a week, for no logical reason except I don’t like the thought of being addicted, and other people report something much like addiction. I may possibly get a minor headache the first day, but it’s not a sure thing, and I don’t find myself craving caffeine at all during the period, so it seems there is really little addictive effect for me, anyway.
On the other other hand, it does seem like many of the drinks I naturally prefer have some caffeine, so maybe it’s not that simple…
When I quit caffeine, I switched to decaf and have just recently switched to just water. I found that getting up for a short but brisk walk helped with a lot of the headaches, at least to get them back to manageable. Other than that, it’s just willpower for a week. I don’t miss it.
According to the researchers, paper filters reduce the amounts of the harmful substances to negligible quantities, so I think you’ll be pretty safe doing that.
So wrap it up!