You know you’re getting older when you can’t even handle a cup of tea a few hours before bedtime. That’s exactly what has happened to me recently, and there is no easy way out.
If I have a cuppa in the evening, my sleep is awful. I’m thrashing around and overheating, not to mention waking up my fella. I slapped him in the face the other night! Completely by accident of course (no seriously, I was asleep 😴😇), but he understandably wasn’t happy about it.
It’s the caffeine. The caffeine is really starting to affect me now I am getting older.
I remember being in my twenties and feeling literally no impact from a few strong coffees only an hour or so apart. Fast forward to my early 30s, and things changed. When I first started this blog I used to go to a local coffee shop to write. I would spend a few hours there and have a few coffees. Then one day I got a caffeine hit after my second coffee and couldn’t stop fidgeting. My heart rate was up, my body felt full of energy. I thought I had been spiked 😂
A decade later, things are worse. I was down to one coffee a day and a few cups of tea, but even that was interrupting my sleep. So I made the decision. I went caffeine free. A proper detox. I stopped drinking caffeine completely, and oh. My. GOD. The withdrawal effects were brutal.
What Caffeine Withdrawal Feels Like
The thing with me is, that I didn’t consciously make a ‘no caffeine’ decision. I noticed the evening cuppa was impacting my sleep so I went out and bought some decaf tea. Then I started drinking the decaf instead of the regular, and I ended up skipping coffee for a few days too, just coincidentally.
That’s when the withdrawal effects hit.
I woke up in the morning and I was SO tired. I couldn’t work it out, I thought I was coming down with something. My body was aching, my brain felt like it was 50% gravy, and I started getting headaches right at the front of my face.
It wasn’t until day two that I made the connection. I woke up on the second morning and my hamstrings felt as if I had been hill walking. They were tight and sore so I asked Dr. Google what was going wrong, and that eventually led to caffeine withdrawal popping up as a cause of unexplained aching muscles.
I felt atrocious, and was on my way downstairs to make a medicinal coffee when I thought: “Hang on. I’ve accidentally gone cold turkey on caffeine. The withdrawal effects last about a week, and I’m already two days in, which is when they peak. I’ve done the hard bit already.”
So I stuck with it, and by day four I was feeling much better. Mild occasional headaches remained, and my body still ached a bit, but the foggy tiredness had gone. By the end of the week I was fine, and caffeine free.
And a little bit smug too, if I’m honest 😏
How To Cut Down With Fewer Side Effects
If you want to quit caffeine, you don’t need to do it the hard way like I did.
I have a friend who has been caffeine free for ages, so I told her about what I did and she just laughed at me. Apparently, a better idea would have been to cut down gradually over a week or two. So go from 4 cups a day to 3 cups a day, then a few days later drop down to 2 cups a day, and so on.
This gives your body a chance to adapt to the reduced caffeine rather than sending it into panic mode.
At the same time, you need to drink more water than usual to reduce the headaches (although they shouldn’t be as severe anyway if you reduce your intake gradually), and get an extra hour of sleep each night.
There is always paracetamol as well. Thank heavens for paracetamol!
Life After Caffeine
It’s been about a month since my withdrawal week of hell, and I have to say, I don’t feel all that different.
My energy is more evenly balanced, in that I don’t get those spikes I was getting before, and I’m possibly a little calmer, but otherwise, I feel normal. My sleep has certainly improved though.
I’m not a complete caffeine puritan now, I will have a nice coffee if I am out at a posh café or something, but I don’t drink it at home anymore, and I won’t nip into Costa for one just because I’m passing. I notice the caffeine hit more than I used to if I do buy a coffee, but it comes and goes fairly quickly.
I don’t think I will go back to caffeinated tea or coffee. It’s easier to keep track of how I am feeling without it. The body doesn’t need caffeine so I’m not depriving myself of anything, but I feel better regulated, and if nothing else, I will never have to go through those awful withdrawal symptoms again!