Slashdot Mirror
Beware the Perils of Caffeine Withdrawal
palegray.net writes "CNN is running an article on the notorious effects of caffeine withdrawal, a problem that seems to be affecting an increasing number of people. Citing numerous reasons why people might need to cut back on their caffeine intake (pregnancy, pre-surgery requirements, etc), the story notes a significant number of people who are simply unable to quit. I drink around eight cups of coffee a day, along with a soda or two, and I definitely suffer from nasty withdrawal symptoms without my fix."
Compared to both of you I am a complete lightweight, but I still experience headaches, depression, etc, when I go without.
I'm definitely going with "Not news." Caffeine is a drug, we're addicted.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Seriously dude, slow down. My wife used to drink about four Starbucks espresso drinks a day, and she noticed she was visibly trembling. Her doctors told her her heartbeat was erratic and racing, so she cut down to one or two coffee drinks a day. She's much more normal now.
The "geek chic" lifestyle, massive amounts of caffiene and Red Bulls, pulling all nighters to punch out code, scarfing down whole pizzas and gaming until all hours, it's not really good for you. Moderate. Get some exercise. Take multivitamins and get a good nights sleep. You can actually be as productive with healthy living and one cup of coffee as you are in stimulant and sugar overload, and you won't be burning the candle at both ends.
Plus, you really won't have to worry about withdrawal when you're stuck on an island with no WiFi, no coffee, but plenty of hot native girls.
I used to consume a couple liters of caffeinated beverages daily. 4 or 5 years ago my wife and I decided to switch completely to bottled water. There weren't really any health reasons to our decision - we just wanted to try it. I remember having headaches for a few days, and feeling lethargic, but the withdrawal wasn't too bad.
We still primarily drink bottled water, but when eating out I'll drink a tea or soft drink. The nice thing is that if I have extra work to do, or am driving on a long trip, I can drink a bottle of pop and it actually is a stimulant for me, as opposed to something my body relies on just to maintain the status quo.
Better known as 318230.
I stopped drinking caffeine in high school when the perma-shakes set in. I was having somewhere near the equivalent of 30-40 cups over the course of a 19-20 hour day and getting about 4 hours of sleep in order to keep full time school, full time job, and a very active social life all going.
The shakes quit after about 3 days. The headache after about 2 weeks. And somewhere about 2 years later I no longer felt permanently exhausted.
The nice thing now is that I find I can stay awake as long as I need to as long as I don't have high-sugar foods or have any alcohol. I just catch up the next day with little or no problem. I can't imagine going back to caffeine. As a computer-geek, I think it would be hard to do it just in moderation. Everyone else around me has the perpetual can of Coke next to their mouse.
Wow.
So many addicts to such an awful tasting substance.
Addiction + Marketing can do amazing things.
8 cups, really?
You are part of study of the health effects of overconsumption of caffeine substances. The study is relatively new, and very popular.
Thanks for participating.
well, to make caffeine useful again, for example.
i dring two cups of tea a day at most (no coffee at all because i don't like the taste) and when i really need a push, a cup of coffee or gyokuro is absolutely sufficient to awake me.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I must be one of the few that just doesn't touch the stuff. I don't even generally like the smell. Never drank it -- coffee that is. And I only drink soda for lack of better fruit juice.
I believe half of /. needs to check themselves into a clinic.
Drugs are bad, m-kay?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
During most of the year I have 18-24oz of coffee every morning, and sometimes another 6-8oz or a caffeinated soda/energy drink after lunch. So about 3-6 "cups" a day.
But during Lent I go cold turkey. Just stop on Ash Wednesday. (I give up alcohol at the same time, FWIW.)
The only side effect I ever experience is becoming a zombie from 1p-3p every day for the second week I'm off the stuff. The first week I'm fine. The second week I'm a zombie and completely unproductive for two hours in the afternoon. Weeks three to six I'm fine, though I start earnestly looking forward to resuming my morning ritual by week six. My sleep patterns don't change. My personality doesn't change. I don't experience physical pain.
I really recommend everyone try this. Give up something you love for six weeks. Detach. When you get back together your relationship will be healthier. You will have a new appreciation for what you gave up.
Of course, this requires sacrifice and introspection. Good luck with that, seriously.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
p.s., a software engineer is a machine that takes caffeine as its input, and produces computer programs as its output.
In wartime... truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. (Churchill)
Because it's bad for you?
donÃ(TM)t
thatÃ(TM)s
donÃ(TM)t
theyÃ(TM)re
sheÃ(TM)s
FolgerÃ(TM)s
For fucks sake...
And they were hyping a study about Modafinil being addictive because it affects dopamine receptors. I bet it would make an excellent OTC replacement for caffeine!
BTW Advil knocks out withdrawals for me if I want to quit!
If you replace the word "caffeine" in your entire post with "sugar" or "sweets" that would accurately describe me. Unfortunately I have fallen off the wagon and am seriously addicted to it again. Time to go cold turkey as the weight is starting to creep back up.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
I can smoke a bag of weed every week for 3 months and then stop. ZERO withdrawal symptoms. Maybe you should change your vice to something less addictive with smaller side effects.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Caffeine should be regulated because your a weak willed moron? Piss off.
I think we should ban soda too... because that's bad for you as well, and it would solve your delima. Actually, lets just ban fast food, because that's bad for you too.
Grow up and take responsiblity for yourself, and don't tell others what they should be doing with their kids.
I'm not exactly sure why I tried to quit, because I enjoy coffee quite a bit. Today I've had 3 cups of coffee and a Starbucks Double Shot.
I love this statement. I hear it all the time.. They say the enjoy coffee a lot yet drink utter swill. ANYTHING from starbucks is raging crap. You need to get some good FRESH coffee roasted and them make it yourself. You will never be able to drink the toilet water they sell at Starbucks or other places that sell what they call coffee. Start with a simple one... a Jamaican Blue Mountain, it's a over commercialized popular one that is good, then upgrade to some real stuff, fine a coffee supply house that actually roasts it there instead of these fake trendy places that buy it roasted.. Then you will truely enjoy a cup of coffee.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Like everything else cut back slowly. Instead of 8 go 6 for a week, and then push lower and lower, eventually you'll be down to 1-2 cups and home free. I went from drinking all kinds of pop(coke,pepsi) by downgrading to mineral water (yes it sucks) and then abandoning that for actual water. glad I got of that stuff.
did you forget to take your meds?
Oh, gee, I drink 8 cups of strong coffee per day and 2 huge servings of soft drinks. Unbelievably, after several years of doing this, I have problems!
Uhh, yea, dumb-dumb. At what point in your life did you think it was a good idea to drink that fourth cup of coffee in the same day, much less four more? I think this condition is known as: epic brainpower fail.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
There is the concept of "maintenance dose" in addiction. I find that just one soda, small cup of coffee / Nescafe, or one No-Doz are enough to forestall the headaches. One or two days of this "maintenence dose" and I can go cold turkey.
Really, cut down on the sodas. The coffee is fine, but as soon as I started working at a place without free sodas, I lost ten pounds and my blood sugar went down 20 points.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Bullshit, caffeine has been much more thoroughly studied than marijuana has. Suggesting that because of this that you can state that the side effects are smaller is utter bullshit.
It is definitely possible that you are correct, but without the data, it's hardly a fair statement to make. A lot of things like the link to psychosis aren't easy to study and take a long time to prove or disprove. It gets even more fuzzy when you start to consider the other things that get put into the pot and the effects of varying strengths out there.
Sure it's possible that marijuana is safer, but you can't state that without somebody having done research on it to a similar extent.
What makes you think he didn't take aspirin? It's a perfectly reasonable drug to take for a headache. There's a big jar in my medicine cabinet, right next to the ibuprofen...
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Assuming people don't know what they're taking shows you as a noob. Yes, there are pain remedies out there other than aspirin (ASA for you non-US folks), and some of them like Excedrin contain caffeine. But many of us grew up with old-fashioned aspirin, and when we want it we buy bottles that say "Aspirin" on them; if we mean Acetaminophen we'd probably say Tylenol. It's particularly important to people who have high blood pressure because aspirin helps reduce risk of strokes and heart attacks (and low-dose aspirin is generally recommended for old people even if they don't have high blood pressure, so get off my lawn, punk!) On the other hand, hospitals primarily use acetaminophen (aka paracetamol) because many people have aspirin allergies or stomach irritations, so the risks of aspirin are usually higher than the risks of liver and kidney damage from acetaminophen.
Aspirin developed by Bayer in Germany, and after the War To End All Wars, the US, France, Russia, and a few other countries ripped off their patents and trademarks as part of war reparations, so Aspirin and Heroin are not trademarks of Bayer in the US. Bayer's still the best-known brand here.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
By that logic, why do we have laws against cocaine and heroin?
Good question.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Seek professional help. Seriously, you exemplify the O in OCD.
Doctors are horrified of everything you do.
Everything will kill you, given enough time. If your neurologist was freaked out about 6 cups of coffee, then you need to stop using doctors fresh out of med school, or probably still in school that haven't been in the real world long enough to know that all the shit they were told in school is generally made out to be a lot worse than it really is.
I am not a doctor, but my wife is. She almost spit her coffee out as she laughed at your neurologist comment.
If you continue to listen to your scare mongering neurologist, you'll end up dead from a heart attack because she will make sure your brain and nervous system are fine, but in the process she'll destroy your heart, liver, kidneys, and most of the rest of your body with medication or stupidity or both.
If you think drinking that much coffee is committing suicide, then you should go talk to some rheumatoidologist's and see how bad your typing is killing you.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
How many people have you heard about using medical caffeine? How about using medical marijuana? There's nothing "obviously false" about the previous poster's statement.