I quit caffeine and ended up regretting it. I felt tired a lot more, even a year later. Staying awake after lunch became a real challenge for me. I'm just saying this to temper the confirmation bias here - I think people who quit caffeine and got nothing out of it probably don't feel any particular need to share their stories.
Especially when you are not working in a very structured environment caffeine helps (me) with keeping moving forward. The older I get the more important I feel energy management becomes. But then again I usually drink one in the morning and one in the afternoon to not get kicked out of various coffee shops...
Ditto – (also commenting to temper the confirmation bias). I give up caffeine now and then, usually have a day or two of headaches but after that my life becomes no different without caffeine compared to how it was with caffeine. Except I enjoy the taste of both coffee and tea, so I resume drinking it.
I will say I avoid having any caffeine after about mid-afternoon; perhaps this would help other commenters who find it affects their sleep patterns.
I was up to 4 cans of rockstar a day and quit cold turkey a month ago. The withdrawal symptoms are gone, but the low energy levels persist. I'm more interested in finding out why than going back to the caffeine. I wonder if it's the increased number of adenosine receptors, combined with lower amounts of dopamine. Some days, I take 1g of L-Tyrosine (which gets converted into dopamine) and that helps me energetic and, in a word, normal. On the days I don't, I sleep 9 hours at night and take a 3 hour nap in the middle of the day. I don't have a lot of answers right now, but I hope my low energy levels don't persist for a whole year.
Hmm, I quite caffeine for a bit more than a year. I didn't feel like I had more energy per se, but I definitely felt better overall. It did take a long time to get through withdrawal.
This overlapped a period of two springs where I had terrible, terrible allergies, which claritin/etc barely helped with. As a test I drank coffee for one week, and the allergies completely vanished. :(
I've firmly stuck with 1 cup a day, though, drinking decaf after that. I think only drinking coffee right after I wake up probably helps.
As sad as this is going to sound, it may be more natural, but it's less socially acceptable in the US. I used to take a nap during lunch, but I was told by my co-workers that it freaked them out to see me sleeping under my desk. ;)
Those are the same types who will keel over at 55 of heart failure. Don't join the club. My parents are anti-nap also... always found it odd. I just don't bother to listen to such complaints.
However, a better location might be in order, or perhaps a change of jobs. E.g. Occasionally I conked-out in the car, though it was a relatively dark parking garage.
I've never been a caffeine addict but I often get tired around lunch-time or before that. In cases like that I'll drink a cup of coffee - not out of an urge, but out of necessity.
