4 Ways to Quit Caffeine

The cycle of caffeine addiction can be vicious. Just like any other drug.

The cycle goes like this:

Caffeine causes a variety of pains and withdrawal symptoms. > You use caffeine to relieve these pains and withdrawal symptoms. > Caffeine causes pains and withdrawal symptoms.

Unless you can break this pattern. You will be trapped in this cycle forever. How do you break the cycle?

Here are 4 options for breaking the cycle. Along with the benefits and drawbacks for each.

1. Cold turkey - dealing with the pains and withdrawal symptoms. (Suck it up!)

This options requires mental toughness and discipline. If you take this path. You are fed up with caffeine and are all in on quitting. You may have had an event that pushed you over the edge. You’ve had enough.

You may also realize that trying to wean off may be harder because you are feeding the addiction cycle.

You are immediately stepping out of the cycle. This is the fastest way to quit. But many relapse when the pressure is too great to continue.

2. Tapering - slowly lower your dose so that the cycle fades away without noticing. (Easy does it!)

This option lets you continue to live a normal life. If you have to function at work or at home (or both), this may be a good option. You pick a time frame. Whether it be a few days, or 6 months. Pick an option that you think you can stick with.

This option may, however, lead to “serial tapering”.

This is where you do a good job weaning for a week or a few days or whatever. But then, due to normal life circumstances, you have a stressful day, a short deadline, a bad night of sleep, or a combo of many different things. And you default to solving this problem with caffeine.

Your dose ends up being reset to where you started, or worse, higher.

3. Replacing routines - finding other ways to resolve the pain. (Now we are talking!)

In the book “Atomic Habits”, the author explains the cycle of cue, craving, routine, reward. The cue is the thing that triggers the craving, which leads to performing a routine, which is what gets you the reward. For caffeine, this could look like:

Cue = You are tired, but you need to get stuff done at work.

Craving = You start to crave caffeine.

Routine = You take caffeine.

Reward = You feel “Energy” and get your work done.

With replacement theory, you replace the routine, to get the exact same reward.

Cue = You are tired, but you need to get stuff done at work.

Craving = You crave caffeine.

Routine = You go on a run.

Reward = You feel “Energy” and get your work done.

The trick is, finding a routine to replace caffeine can be difficult. Because there are actually so many factors in the cue to begin with.

In my experience, a caffeine-cycle withdrawal cue looks more like this:

Cue = You have anxiety, are slightly down, have brain fog, you feel pressure to get work done, or chores, dealing with back pain, lack motivation, etc.

Craving = You crave caffeine.

Routine = You take caffeine.

Reward = All of the cues, which are just a myriad of withdrawal symptoms, paired with normal life stress, are temporarily resolved.

Which leads me to the best option..

4. A combination of all three (Super Saiyan!)

How can you combine cold turkey AND tapering? Well, by definition you can’t. But if you merge the two, you dramatically shorten the time frame of your taper. I believe this could give you some serious momentum. Let’s break down this combo, as well as adding routine replacement:

1. Meet in the middle of cold turkey and tapering to do a short, two week taper.

2. Find new replacements for all of your cues.

During your two week taper, write down a list of all of your cues. Then write 2-3 ideas on how to solve them.

Here are some examples:

These may be different for you. But the point is, relentless pursuit of actually solving your problems, and living a fulfilling life. Instead of masking issues with caffeine.

I think this option is the best bang for your buck. As you are not negating the impact that withdrawal has on your life, but still dealing with any underlying problems you may face when fully caffeine free.

Notes on the half life of caffeine.

The average half life of caffeine is 5 hours. This means, if you consume 500 mg of caffeine, in 5 hours you will still have 250mg of caffeine in your system. 5 hours after that, you will have 125mg. Screw it, i’ll make a chart:

The half life of drugs can be misleading. Just because the half life is 5 hours, doesn’t mean that the drug will be clear in 10 hours. As you can see, a single dose of caffeine can technically still be in your system more than 40 hours later. And that’s just accounting for the average half life.

The high end can be up to 9.5 hours. This means, it can take more than 72 hours for caffeine to fully leave your system after a single dose.

But wait, there’s more..

Each subsequent dose adds to the amount of caffeine in your blood system. You are likely going to start some form of mild withdrawals at the 24 hour mark. And most of us have a daily caffeine habit. This means at 24 hours, if you take another 500mg of caffeine, your new starting point is 515mg.

If you take caffeine daily, you ALWAYS have caffeine in your system.

I don’t want to do anymore math, but as you can see, your caffeine levels will drop more rapidly the higher the dose. So your tapering, in theory, could get faster without feeling the same withdrawals from lowering a higher dose.

Keep that in mind.