I Quit Caffeine For 30 Days and Here’s What Happened
That’s right — CAFFEINE, not just coffee.
If you’re reading this now, I bet you’re doing it begrudgingly…
You’ve been thinking about quitting the bean for a while but you just can’t stomach the thought of it!
How will you work?
What will comfort you throughout your day?
That first coffee in the morning, the little coffee breaks and lunch…
Those are your special moments…
The moments you look forward to…
It’s like saying goodbye to a loved one.
Well, let me just say I know how you feel because that above ☝️ was me for the past 15 years, and after mulling over the idea for a few weeks during my recent spurts of self improvement, I decided to bite the bullet…
… and I’ve never looked back since.
(Okay maybe I take a quick glance, but not for long)
First, I’m going to share with you a little background on me, my history and why I decided to quit…
Next, I’m going to share with you the positives and negatives I experienced quitting…
And finally, I’m going to provide you with some top tips and additional support if you decide this is the way you want to move forward.
Who am I, and why did I quit?
Hi!
I’m Ryan.
I’m a full time freelance video editor from Wales, UK, and have been running my business full time since I quit my corporate role in April 2019.
Prior to this, I hopped from call centre to call centre, office to office, going nowhere particularly fulfilling.
My days were typically started out in a rush for the train, with a coffee on the way, a coffee on break, a coffee on lunch…
After a few years of zero promotions, pathetic pay increases and just generally being talked down to, I decided to commit my life to escaping the rat race and starting a better life for myself.
In December 2017 I quit alcohol, and I’m still going strong today (there was a brief few months in the middle I relapsed due to badly handling a breakup).
When I quit the booze I started looking for new things to do on the weekend, namely — making money online and quitting my job.
It was a revelation to me after quitting alcohol;
- How much I had a kind of weekend addiction to it
- How if I carried on drinking alcohol, losing my Saturdays and spending money I would NEVER be in the situation I’m in now
- How it’s clearly a well advertised trap, to keep people stuck in the rat race!
Booze keeps you stuck. And when I realised the benefits of ridding myself of such weekend afflictions, I started to look for other ways to improve my life.
Side note — I once upon a time had a terrible gambling addiction too. Possibly ten years of it. I couldn’t go a single day without gambling and would never have money in the bank. I quit booze and gambling the same weekend — and never looked back. Now I have money coming in and going out, and I’m completely detached from it.
Anyway — back to the caffeine…
So nearly two years in to business, I realised something.
I worked so hard to quit the 9–5 to live that abundant life, working on my own terms, yet now I felt like I had no structure in my life, my work was never done and I probably spent more time working or thinking about work, than actually relaxing.
One of the huge factors for this was the lack of sleep.
I’d become an insomniac.
I’d sleep late in to the day, then work later in to the evenings.
Sometimes drinking coffee at 10pm, and working through until 3 or 4am.
I’d read about the benefits of quitting coffee, but I couldn’t imagine it.
It was my life force.
I stumbled across a guy on Facebook heavily condemning coffee, and in my naivety I made several jokes about it and never really thought about what I was saying.
He’s say things like “coffee is your worst life in a mug”
Dropping my ego — I started to ponder the idea that he might be right…
Things weren’t great at home.
I had a girlfriend at the time and we were arguing a lot due to lack of sleep and stress.
I was pretty flippant and irritable, my emotions were up and down.
I have also suffered with panic attacks as long as I can remember, since I was around 15 years old (I’m 30 at the time of writing this)
I get palpitations frequently, and have always written them of as anxiety. No doctor has ever questioned me on my caffeine usage (which is covered in detail in a book I’m going to recommend shortly)
The list goes on, and the more articles I read, the more I realised coffee / caffeine may actually be the root cause of so many issues in my life.
I’m not sure exactly when the penny dropped, but eventually I decided to quit and also picked up a book that was recommended which I can share a link for HERE
I think the book arrived around day 2 of my detox, so I would read the book each day to support the transition off the bean.
Quitting — the first five days.
Headaches!
I’d heard that you get headaches with caffeine withdrawal, but I wasn’t expecting this level of headache!
I’m talking — full blown migraine.
Don’t let this put you off, think about this:
If coffee isn’t addictive, or a drug, or bad for you — explain five days of migraines when you stop using such a thing!
The headaches went on for around five days, and then started to subside.
Concentrating on work was difficult.
I found myself reaching for a coffee automatically out of habit.
I would have moments of despair when I sat down to work on a big project just to realise the only thing I had to get through this was ME.
My natural energy will have to do.
When you think about it, if you cannot get through a day without coffee, you are essentially addicted to a drug or stimulant.
I’ll let you read the book for the full blown science on how bad it is for your heart, sleep and stress etc. but essentially — you borrow energy, which you need to pay back hence — the coffee crash (when you feel lethargic after a coffee)
The interesting thing to note though, is that with a half life of 7 hours, a quarter of your cups worth is still in your body 14 hours later.
That would mean if you have a coffee at 2pm, you still have caffeine in your system at 3am, which is when you should be getting the much needed REM sleep.
Not only that, most people drink past 2pm, and then first thing in the morning. And the caffeine in your system compounds…
So essentially, I’ve been compounding caffeine in my body for 15 years!
No wonder the headaches.
2 Weeks In
Within 2 weeks I was essentially “over it” (by over it I just mean I wasn’t thinking about it every waking moment)…
I found I was very tired, and despite finding it hard to concentrate on work and feeling lethargic, I was LOVING the sleep.
Even if it was random, all over the shop, frequent naps in the day.
I felt like I was catching up on 15 years of sleep.
It was amazing.
By 2 weeks the headaches had gone, I was sleeping more, I just found it hard to stay motivated and productive throughout the day.
I knew this was an uphill battle so I persisted.
It’s probably a good time to mention, although I quit coffee, the book is about quitting caffeine altogether.
That includes tea, green tea, sweets and chocolate with caffeine in.
It’s not the coffee that’s the problem, it’s the caffeine. And when you’re truly honest with yourself, these drinks are for comfort and to get you through the day. A harsh truth here is that if you need that to get through the day, you’re better off looking to improve your lifestyle, rather than artificially boosting your energy just to “survive” the day.
One Month In
No more head fog.
Sleeping back to normal (ish).
I realise that I just am a bit of a night owl, but staying up until 3am is way more difficult for me now, and when I lie down — I’m out like a light!
No more palpitations or anxiety.
More grounded, centred, less emotional, less mood swings / up and down.
I feel like I maintain energy throughout the day, I don’t have peaks and troughs.
I imagine if my energy was written on a line graph before, it would have been like and up and down wave.
Like the heart beat monitor on an alive person — that was my mood and energy before…
Up and down
Now it’s more like a flat line of energy… like a dead person… but in a good way. (There was probably a better way of explaining this but you catch my drift)
I’ve actually managed to set my alarms and stick to a somewhat rigid 9–5 program (although it’s still a challenge to hold myself accountable)
I still crave a hot drink, and I’m not going to lie — I’ve had a few cups of tea recently-namely when I visit my Mum (never thought I’d be holding my hands up, confessing to drinking a cup of tea), but I’ve found hot water with lemon and honey to be a great substitute.
The Verdict
I wish I could tell you exactly what day I’m on now, but to be honest — it’s in the past.
After reading what I read in the book I recommended above (Caffeine Blues), even in my weakest moments I couldn’t bring myself to purposefully damage my body in such ways.
More recently I’ve realised everything we think is “normal” (sweets, smoking, chocolate, booze, coffee) is put in front of our faces — and keeps us sick and trapped.
It doesn’t surprise me to read how the facts and information around coffee / caffeine are presented in such a way that deems it “okay”, or “not enough evidence to suggest it’s bad”, when you consider it’s one of the largest and most profitable industries in the world.
But — at the end of the day it’s down to you to decide.
Caffeine Blues is 400 pages long, it’s packed with shocking facts, evidence and scientific data to back it’s claims, so I’m not going to try and argue the case here.
All I can tell you is after 15 years of caffeine abuse I finally feel clear headed, I sleep well and feel more focussed than ever.
If you made it this far — thanks for reading and feel free to comment — tell me where you from, where you are in your journey and whether you too are going to say goodbye to caffeine and live your best life!
Thanks for reading,
Ryan
