My experience with caffeine

[Guest guest]

I know there are some anti-coffee people in this crowd, some

pro-coffee, some reluctant users, and some people who believe

coffee-friendliness depends on metabolic type... I thought I'd throw

my experience out there and see if any thoughts bounce back.

From everything I've heard, coffee should be really easy to give up.

Unlike cigarettes, the physical withdrawals only, supposedly, last 3-5

days. But for whatever reason I've always found cigarettes pretty

easy to give up, and coffee to have a powerful grip on me.

I don't remember when I started drinking coffee, but when I was a

teenager I used to start the day with about 24 ounces of Coca-cola and

a 12 oz glass of iced tea from the powdered mix, which together

probably has a good amount of caffeine. I remember that I drank a lot

of coffee in college, in large part because I liked coffee, plus I

went to poetry readings at coffee shops and stuff, but also because I

had a problem where if I went to a lecture class after work I would

get total brain fog and be unable to keep my eyes open unless I had

coffee.

When I did the NT thing, I quit coffee for a long time. I still drank

it, but less frequently, and never a full cup of caffeinated-- decaf

or half decaf (water-processed) or something like that. And I recall

this period having a lot of brain fog type symptoms that I interpreted

as hypoglycemia, although I never associated it with lack of caffeine.

My brain fog problems went away when after a few weeks on the Warrior

Diet, but, come to think of it, I was using caffeine-- green tea,

black tea, sometimes coffee-- during my undereating phase, and I

wonder if that had something to do with it.

When I was doing the concrete thing, I got hooked on way too much

coffee. I was probably drinking about six servings per day. A mug

(about 2 cups) in the morning, some with lunch, and some after work

before I hit the gym. I needed it to keep me going, because the work

load was enormous and I was really doing overkill by hitting the gym

afterwards!

I also noticed that this was having health drawbacks. I was getting

twitchy-- eye twitches, other muscle twitches, etc. I was also

clearly becoming very dependent on the coffee. And I think it

contributed to a chronic low-level anxiety or elevated tension or

something subtle but nevertheless there like that. Plus an intuitive

feeling like in a caffeinated state my bones and teeth were being

drained.

So I tried quitting coffee. First week I drank a little black tea and

I took an herbal non-caffeine energy booster. Second week I dropped

caffeine. I just started zoning out in the morning. My boss said,

" Hey, are you ok? " " Yeah, why? " " Well, you're not moving. "

After a while I just gave up because I felt like I was letting my

co-workers down by not being able to keep up with the workload.

I quit coffee for my VCO fast 3 months ago when I had the teaching

job, and I did allright, and actually felt better bodily in the second

week, more at peace. I was underperforming mentally, somewhat,

probably from the fasting. But I tried my first cup of coffee soon

after as a mood booster and then it was no time till I was drinking

four servings a day again. I would start to crave coffee at lunch

time but have no access to it, and then get a medium coffee at Dunkin

Donuts once I left work. Sometimes I would drink a medium coffee

(which I think is 16 oz?) and then go to bed a couple hours later.

I'm surprised at how quickly I went from having a little in the

morning to full-blown back into the habit. Cigarettes were never like

this for me. After I quit for years there were a couple times where I

smoked just a little bit a day for periods, or could not smoke every

day, etc, so coffee's grip is much stronger.

I quit again this past week, and on the first day I couldn't even

move. I just slept all day long. I took a couple 2-hour naps during

the day, and laid on the couch watching tv while I was awake. That

got better over a couple days, but over a week I've gotten this

feeling like something's gripping my head, etc. And I do get prone to

fatigue without the coffee.

It seems at 23 I'm way too young to have such a powerful need for

caffeine. I'm wondering whether it's normal to have this intense an

addiction to that amount of coffee, why I can't seem to have a

moderate relationship with caffeine, and I'm wondering if there's

something about my system that has given me a predeliction for coffee.

Could it be that there's something messed up with me metabolically

that makes me need caffeine for a fix? In other words, did I go for

the coffee habit as a form of self-medication, rather than the coffee

itself creating the need for coffee (the addiction theory, if you

will)?

Chris