So I am almost 6 day without caffeine. Only decaf. Tomorrow I will cut this down. I have to tackle this habit as this will sooner or later turn the decaf into real coffee. Still don’t sleep well but at least I have no back pain or other pains.
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I’m glad that you aren’t experiencing that horrible back pain with your caffeine reduction! 6 days is fantastic. You are doing awesome.
I think I went about 2 or so months without caffeine earlier this year, but somewhere along the way I jumped headlong back into the circus cycle. I’m trying to consciously pull back on my consumption because I realized I was taking in about 1400-1600mg a day. I don’t know how having this much hasn’t killed me. Honestly, I don’t feel jittery or hyped up as one might expect. I think I just have a naturally high tolerance because I didn’t even really start consuming caffeine until about 6-8 years ago, and I’m not exactly a spring chicken. 
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Next right step. Chai latte with pea milk. Chai is without black tea, so it’s only spices I guess bc I hate black tea .
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I quit two cups of coffee a day in 2011 bc I was having palpitations. It was easy for me to quit, I did not miss it after awhile, and I liked the extra time I had in the mornings not drinking coffee. I woke up just fine. In 2017 I started drinking coffee again. It takes up lots of time, I enjoy it, and do not know how I would wake up without it. Go figure.
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I’ve cut back by about a 1/3, so I’m down to about 1000-1100mg. I tend to take 2-3 caffeine tablets and drink 2 cans of Bang within the first 4 hours of being awake. Even with all that, I’ve been dragging from the cut in amount.
@Alisa it’s interesting how things tend to be different for us at different times of our lives, huh? I miss not using caffeine. It was weirdly effortless to stop earlier this year, I should never have picked it back up.
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Thank you for reminding me. I am more than 12 days sans caffeine. I am doing okay. Not great but good. It’s the habit of drinking coffee that I miss somehow. And I just don’t like tea.
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I was wondering how you were doing!
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I admit that I am pretty proud of myself. There have been tough times. For example when I was in another city wandering through town for some short time just to pass time. I was desperately looking for a coffee. Everything became so expensive that luckily I don’t agree to pay that for a simple coffee latte. After a while I found a small shop with decaf option. Soni still had my coffee latte. But these are hard situations. It might sound stupid as it sounds like I am writing of booze or other drugs. 
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I understand about not liking tea. I’m not a huge fan either. Definitely once you get through, keep going. As I look back, I can see how I picked it up again and a lot had to do with my cat constantly waking me up through the night. It’s hard because she’s over 20 years old with health problems, but not enough health problems that she is ready to pass on. I love her dearly, but I was never prepared to give her this kind of end of life care and it is severely impacting my health. 
I don’t know what to do. At times I shut her out of the room because I have to and then hope she doesn’t need any medical care during that time.
I think people who might “look down” on anyone dealing with issues regarding with caffeine are doing a disservice. Anyone can be addicted in a negative way to something. Everyone’s life and bodies are different. Wanting to stop engaging anything to better one’s life is the whole purpose of a site like this.
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The thing is that I am not necessarily sleeping better. Which was my main goal. But I am not tired which is probably a good thing. I bought some soluble espresso for my friends for Saturday. It’s not very nice thing but honestly I don’t want to buy a whole package of coffee which I then would have in the house. I even thought about packing away all my espresso and coffee mugs. I never really used them anyway. I did it with all my wine glasses back in 2018. Never regretted it. I think I might put them in the cellar after my move on Friday. When I think about it, I have mixed feelings. Honestly. This is stupid.
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I posted a similar thread on this topic months ago.
I quit drinking coffee way before I quit drinking.
I felt caffeine was triggering my debilitation and excruciating anxiety.
It was, I would noticed I felt like crawling out of my skin every morning after I had my coffee but it was also because I had alcohol in my system daily and I wasn’t sleeping enough.
I went through bad withdrawal I would say worse than when I stopped drinking.
Now I just drink decaf as I like the taste of coffee but have none of the effects.
Feels good to not have any mind or mood altering substances in your body.
I still consume sugar but in my opinion normal amounts.
To anyone in the process of quitting caffeine best of luck. It’s tough but not impossible.
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Nah, not stupid! This is for you and you’re not going around lecturing others on it… you’re trying to be the best version of you and you should be stoked on that!! 
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Sometimes it takes the body a while to adjust to a new homeostasis. I know that when I quit earlier this year, I wasn’t sleeping better at first–though I also quit taking Unasom along with the caffeine so my body had a little more to deal with. But I did start slowly sleeping better with some poor sleep nights sprinkled in.
Makes sense to me to have mixed feelings on the mugs. I still have all my glassware in an accessible cupboard. I spent a lot of money on all the wine, martini, etc., glasses and I want to use them…though for what? I don’t know. Sometimes I put water or soda in them. 
There’s nothing quite like drinking an energy drink from a champagne glass. 
Though I’m sure I will eventually pack them away or sell them. I also have mixed feelings on them. so I get it.
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Thank you for the link. Especially the alcohol and caffeine comparison, I could relate a lot to the author. Great article.
Good luck for cutting down. You can do it. For me the problem with cutting down like alcohol, it slowly crept back to initial level or more. I’ll see. Today is day 13. 
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Best of luck in your efforts! I’ve lived a life without caffeine and I remember how natural it was to simply go to bed when I was tired and get out of bed once I woke up. This slipped away from me without real understanding in my 30s when I started to have caffeine in the morning. At the time I suddenly was unable to sleep at night and started taking over the counter sleep aids. I mean… Seriously duh, but at the time I had so much else going on that it didn’t click for me.
I also remember the uphill battle to go hard core keto, before it was cool, and how amazing I felt after the sugar and carbohydrate withdrawals had run their course. There is so much in life that we simply accept as part of life, but without them we could feel so much better.
I’ve been called crazy by lots of people over the years, but I still stand by my assertion that sugar is a drug, and caffeine doesn’t actually make our lives better when taken on a regular basis. Like many things, selectively applied caffeine definitely could be a positive, but that doesn’t help the addict who maybe isn’t able to do that.
Be sure to let us know how things go for you!
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So I’ve absolutely committed to 1,000mg of caffeine today. Tomorrow, I will reduce by another 100 unless I’m feeling as though I’m not suffering enough, in which case I will reduce by more. 
This is half joking, half truth.
For those who have not tried to quickly reduce from astronomically high levels of caffeine intake, basically it just sucks as much as you might imagine–however, what goes up must always come down so I am operating with the understanding that I am simply paying my dues and that is simply life.
I’m really trying to go down more quickly because I have an extended weekend to suffer in privacy (minus my cat, who doesn’t care about my suffering as long as I feed her and take care of all her needs while I dwell in agony ). I’m also going to be somewhat busy for a couple of weeks which would make dealing with all of this pretty inconvenient. I’m not sure I’ll get to 0% by Tuesday, but I’m definitely giving it a go. The one thing that stops me from just throwing the turkey in the freezer is that I don’t really feel like it’s all that safe; and, even if it is, I know that my ability to handle suffering, when I have the ability to easily roll it back, is limited.
I’m also reducing my sugar intake (because I like suffering? 
), and the combination is enough to almost cause vomiting at its worst. I am trying to focus on my difficult GI issues as motivation, as I did earlier this year. Both caffeine and sugar reduction/elimination have been suggested to me to midigate my suffering in this other area, so…yeah. 
I am down by about 600mg from the start and I feel comfortable dropping down by 400mg/day as far as safety goes. I draw the line at vomiting though. I’ve been through that when withdrawing from other substances in the past and I’m just not willing to cross that line for caffeine and/or sugar. This is why I’m still having a bit of sugar per day, but will probably join the “no added sugar” thread once I’m ready to completely commit, though I haven’t been all that good at being on TS of late.
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I know there’s not a ton of tea fans on here but figured I’d share my success with cutting back caffeine intake via more tea/less cold brew
I used to drink several cold brews all day until 5 pm, I then moved my cut off time by a few hours. That seemed to be fine so I switched one coffee a day to tea in the form of a Celsius drink (200 mg). That helped but I drank those too fast so I just wanted more (yeah, I have a literal drinking problem 
). I found “zest tea” which is high caffeine green tea (135 mg per bag/8oz). I have used that the past couple of days and made a spritzer with a la croix… it’s making it last longer and it seems to be helping. I’m going to test the theory through the weekend though since my kid has been sick this week and I’m a little tired from being up all hours. Fingers crossed this is the thing I needed!!
Edit: I like my coffee black so I am not also quitting sugar… god bless you for doing those two at once!
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I wish you both all the best @Chiron and @fl_flower_grl . Once again to tea. I think at least there is a bit of confusion here in wording. Not sure though. But in German we say tea to whatever kind of thing is put in a bag. I know in French thé is black tea and infusion is all the rest, herbal and fruit. I despise black tea. I drink infusion but add too much sweetener to it. I should give it a try again.
Anyway woooohooow, 2 weeks down. 
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I think I have some bags somewhere but only because I read you can use them for cleaning windows. 
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Believe it or not I just had a coffee to go. I was feeling awful and had real cravings. I gave in. Damnit. The moving company will arrive in some minutes and I am a bit stressed. Well, reset.
Oooooooommmmm.
We need to change the thread title into something successful.
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