Stopping caffeine

[Snap]

Hi. After reading the overview on panic attacks, I have decided I am going to stop drinking tea.

Now I've come to this decision, I would rather just stop. Never have another cup. I don't (knowingly) crave it; I'm actually worried about having any more.

I can't find any information on whether it's OK to stop caffeine quickly. Every source I can find online seems to take it for granted that people will experience withdrawals. The way I'm looking at it, the 'withdrawals' could include less arousal (and anxiety), more drowsiness (and better sleep). The ones that could be an issue are restlessness, irritability and headaches, although I surely get irritable when I'm moderately anxious (so irritability could well be a side-effect of having tea).

I stopped coffee and coke long ago, realising caffeine is not good for my anxiety. I tend to be very sensitive to stimulants. I thought tea had way less. I have just checked, and find it's still got plenty of caffeine.

So I'm taking a drug (caffeine) that causes anxiety. No thanks! I'm off it.

Anyone know whether it can be stopped quickly with (on balance) positive outcomes? Anyone have any experience with this?

Cheers, S

[Jannie2948]

Morning Snap
I too stopped taking caffeine when I first became ill with this dreaded anxiety/panic. I didn't realise how bad caffeine was for you and I can remember one day having a glass of coke in the pub and having a massive panic attack when I got back to the office. I now don't have any caffeine at all, well none that I knowingly have. I do have de-caffeinated tea and coffee and I am fine on those, but only very few cups in a week. I'm exactly the same as you, sensitive to stimulants, I couldn't even take pain killers with caffeine in them. It is amazing how many things contain it!!! I just stopped having caffeine completely without any weaning off, but I never really drank that much tea or coffee at the best of times, but I realised that it's in lots of things so I stopped having anything with caffeine in it. I can't say that I noticed any more headaches than usual, but then I had started on a med for my anxiety so it could have been the side effects and the lack of caffeine that was making me feel unwell. Now that I am caffeine free it is great! I still have the odd cup of de-caffeinated tea and coffee as I said but that's about it. I don't even drink alcohol any more but I really don't miss that either, it's just nice not to have the blooming anxiety/panic like I used to.
I wish you all the best.
Jannie x x

[CrazyCatLady]

I did experience more headaches when I came off of caffeine, but quickly realised that the cause what not withdrawl, but actual dehydration! Turns out that the bulk of my liquid intake were my cups of tea. My advice would be to bear this in mind, and substitute as appropriate.

The second thing I noticed was the affect on my digestion - the tannin in tea really bungs you up! Reversly, my bowel movements were triggered in the morning by my ritual cup.

The benefits of the cut are amazing! I am less irratable, sleep better, and am in better control of my digestion.

Good luck!

[Snap]

I did experience more headaches when I came off of caffeine, but quickly realised that the cause what not withdrawl, but actual dehydration! Turns out that the bulk of my liquid intake were my cups of tea. My advice would be to bear this in mind, and substitute as appropriate.

The second thing I noticed was the affect on my digestion - the tannin in tea really bungs you up! Reversly, my bowel movements were triggered in the morning by my ritual cup.

The benefits of the cut are amazing! I am less irratable, sleep better, and am in better control of my digestion.

Good luck!

Excellent tip on dehydration. For reasons I won't go into right now, I became well-schooled on fluid intake. It turns out the idea that coffee is a diuretic is mostly myth, possibly entirely myth. Perhaps this is the cause of most headaches!

However, too much fluid is also an issue, which many don't appreciate. This is something I know how to balance; and it's a great point.

Thanks for the positive comments. I have been drinking tea daily for a long time, so I'm a bit worried, but then I will worry either way :) See how it goes.

[Snap]

Morning Snap
I too stopped taking caffeine when I first became ill with this dreaded anxiety/panic. I didn't realise how bad caffeine was for you and I can remember one day having a glass of coke in the pub and having a massive panic attack when I got back to the office. I now don't have any caffeine at all, well none that I knowingly have. I do have de-caffeinated tea and coffee and I am fine on those, but only very few cups in a week. I'm exactly the same as you, sensitive to stimulants, I couldn't even take pain killers with caffeine in them. It is amazing how many things contain it!!! I just stopped having caffeine completely without any weaning off, but I never really drank that much tea or coffee at the best of times, but I realised that it's in lots of things so I stopped having anything with caffeine in it. ...

I wish you all the best.
Jannie x x

Thanks very much for sharing that. It's greatly appreciated. I think I'll just have a very small amount for a couple of days, see how that goes first, and take it from there. Thanks for the tips, I'll look out for other stuff with caffeine too. Of course, chocolate is another culprit, and I eat a little of that also.

I'm buoyed by your account, because it resonates so much. I once had a strong coffee near work and was on the verge of panic for the rest of the day. I felt nauseous and hyper-aroused. It was awful.

I'm kind of glad about that right now because I am really hopeful that cutting out tea is going to really help. Thanks again.

[heavenly]

I am a de-caffer too! :yesyes: As soon as I started getting these awful attacks I cut out Diet Coke and cigarettes, the 2 things I love. :wacko:

But I have wanted to give up smoking for years so am so pleased I have done it. Also, I switched to Caffeine Free Diet Coke for a while but have now knocked that on the head as I know that asparthme stuff isn't good for you.

I only drink one cup of tea a day but have switched to decaff tea, I don't notice the difference.

I don't drink coffee.

I know all these changes will benefit me and I am drinking so much more water now, which I never really liked before, but I do now!

[Hazel B]

Hi, I stopped smoking and caffeine after April when my anxiety started, I just wanted to help my body as much as possible. I love coffee, that was harder than giving up smoking, but I can't honestly say what withdrawal I had as I was anxious at the same time. I only had 2 really strong cups a day, but I was shaky with headaches and think that was mostly anxiety.

Coffee and tea also upset my bladder, so for now I'm staying off them. If you have a lot of tea, I would advise slowly reducing each day and remember that decaff still has traces as they can't get rid of all the caffeine yet.

[Snap]

I'm following up with how I'm going with stopping caffeine. For the past two days, I've dropped to three very weak cups of tea per day. I would guess I've cut the caffeine to at least a third of what I was having, if not less.

I have a virus, which makes it tough to know what's going on.

However, two days ago, I felt a real 'crash' toward the evening--that kind of descending feeling of tiredness. Strangely, though, I found it difficult to get to sleep and I didn't sleep all that well.

Yesterday, I struggled during the day. I felt weird, but got through the day. I had my third cup of weak tea at about 4:30 pm. At about 8 pm, I had the same crashing experience, probably stronger. Last night, I slept. I went to sleep, woke once (normal) and found it hard to get up. Then I felt groggy and strange.

I had a weak tea at 9 am. I felt really weird afterward and ended up feeling like I was going to panic. I had a small amount of diazepam. It was strangely effective, calming down much more than I would have expected (good thing). I wonder whether I am already becoming more sensitive to caffeine, but it's hard to say.

I've had no headaches, although I am taking pain medication, having a virus anyway.

That's where I am now. See how it goes from here. All in all, so far it's a bit of a rollercoaster but I remain very optimistic that eradicating caffeine is going to help, at this point. Indeed, I think there is a realistic chance that caffeine is what has, over the years, taken my social anxiety to generalized anxiety. Once upon a time, my anxiety was clearly restricted to social situations/triggers. It began 'floating' over the years.

I'm beginning to realise I shouldn't underestimate withdrawal: I've been a moderate-high and consistent caffeine user for more than 20 years (moderate in recent months). See what the rest of today brings. Take care everyone.

Edit: This third day ended up being a very difficult one through the middle of the day. I felt really unsettled and easily irritated around noon. I just couldn't get myself into a calm state of mind. Visual distrurbances were troubling me greatly. I had to have more diazepam, which worked. By the afternoon, I was feeling more normal.

[CrazyCatLady]

Well done Snap, I'm glad you can still see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Having caffeine after 12noon can affect your sleep as it can hang around in your system for 8 hours (i know it can in mine!)

It's difficult to guage the amount of caffeine, but i would also warn against so called de-caf because it's a load of lies.

I laughed when you mentioned caffeine in chocolate, i never used to bother with chocolate, but as soon as i quit cups of tea and coffee i started to crave chocolate!

[ditzygirl]

I have to be very careful about caffine too - I can manage about 3 cups of weak tea a day but thats all.

I am not sure if I am allowed to do this but I have recently discovered Clipper herbal teas. I've tried loads in the past but this company make a nice chamomile tea. it's an acquired taste to start with but I'm enjoying it now.

[natalier]

hey, I stopped taking caffeine too and i felt a lot better afterwards and had no side effects so hopefully you will be okay.I was told by my CBT therapist though that you shouldn't avoid things cause they give you anxiety cause then you will never overcome things, if its cause you don't really want to do it then thats fine, but if its only to avoid making you get an attack or w/e then you should face up to it. i avoided alcohol you see but now started drinking it here or there and enjoy it and when i feel like i did sick or w/e i say, its nothing, just anxiety, not the drink and then im normally fine.

[Snap]

Well done Snap, I'm glad you can still see the light at the end of the tunnel!



Thanks for the encouragement, it is hugely appreciated I can tell you.

Last night was awful. I experienced awful withdrawal. I was extremely unsettled and irritable. I was tired but I suspect I fought against it rather than going with it, and that made things worse. I felt really quite unwell -- a kind of malaise. Well, I guess I've been on caffeine a long while.

In the end, I crashed quite early last night, and slept quite well.

For anyone reading this in the future, from my experience as an anxiety sufferer getting off caffeine, I would recommend tapering a bit. Yesterday was very difficult, with quite a bit of anxiety at times. Mostly, it was just from feeling 'weird', unsettled and a kind of malaise with it. I'm not going back from where I am though, so I'll stick with the plan.

It's noon, on my fourth day of vastly reduced caffeine, now. I've had one very weak tea, very slowly. It's like I'm on a very slow, low caffeine 'drip'. So far, this is working better than drinking a weak tea quickly in the morning. (I just took 3 hours to drink a weak cup today). I am drowsy/tired. I'm never drowsy during the day! So often, I'd kill to be drowsy during the day so I could just get a bit of a nap. So I think it's positive. After all, what is usually keeping me wide awake all day is lots of tea, and the caffeine and its CNS stimulating effects.

See how this afternoon goes. I plan to have one more very weak tea. I'm aiming for 10-15 mg caffeine very slowly throughout the afternoon. Of course, I really don't know how much I'm getting, but I'm just dipping a teabag, getting a brief burst of tea into the water, then taking it out in less than 5 seconds.

[Snap]

Another update: hope people don't mind.

Yesterday night went OK. I crashed again.

A really weird think happened that I find very positive. I went to bed just after 10 pm and closed my eyes a few mins later. I woke with a startle when my wife coughed. It was 10:17 pm.

Why is this weird? I simply cannot recall the last time I fell asleep so fast. It shows clearly how much caffeine has been affecting my sleep, particularly given that research has shown it delays the onset of sleep. And getting sleep has been one of my biggest problems for years.

I woke up feeling like I'd overslept, again. This was difficult. Then I had a very annoying work-related situtation in the morning. I struggled during the day and went into fairly acute anxiety mid-afternoon. I was broken, and had a moderate does of diazepam. It worked well, at least. Soon I was wondering what all that was about.

I'm struggling to remind myself this is day 5 of caffeine withdrawal, after 20+ years of use. My system is going through quite a lot. I still hope it's going to be worth it in the end.

[Anxious_gal]

wow some people do drink a lot of coffee.
I ended up in hospital with heart palpitations (routine tests since i was so young)
turns out i had a calcium deficiency but had also been drinking 6 cups of tea per day.

I have one coffee in the morning with milk and sugar, it's the highlight of my day. :-)

[Aubrey]

I LOVE coca cola, and used to drink it all the time, but i was determined to get rid of my high caffeine intake. I'd stopped drinking coffee earlier because of it!

Recently, after not drinking ANY coke for months and months, i had some for a few nights (we bought a multipack) and afterwards, i was shakey all over, and i felt incredibly instable. It was horrible.

Also, Ditzygirl, i've just discovered Clippers herbal teas and i love them! Great substitution to normal tea for me :)

[Snap]

Another update. This is my ninth day basically off caffeine (very low dose) and my seventh day of withdrawal symptoms. The withdrawal has been really awful. I have had irritability, muscle tension and general feeling of being unsettled. These have caused a lot of anxiety.

The withdrawal symptoms are less today than yesterday, and generally seem to be getting better, though time is dragging on horribly: a good portion of every day is a serious struggle.

On the positive side, I feel natural drowsiness/sleepiness at night that I would have killed for a few weeks ago. For a long time I have really struggled to get to sleep. It seems that it changing fast. My sleep patterns have been thrown about a bit, but I am feeling a lot more natural tiredness and feel almost certain this will mean better sleep in the long-term. And poor sleep is one of the biggest factors for me where it comes to anxiety.

I found out today that caffeine attaches to adenosine receptors, tending to block them. The effect is thought to be a decrease in sleepiness and increase in arousal/alertness (anxiety for some of us). That is, this is what caffeine causes.

Administration of adenosine can cause feeling of impending doom. Given we become much more sensitive to adenosine when withdrawing from caffeine, I wonder whether this is a cause of anxiety. There doesn't seem to be research specifically on this.

Again, as an anxiety sufferer, if I could do it again, I would definitely not go cold turkey. It is too much. However, a definitive source says that withdrawal lasts up to nine days in people who experience it. With two days left, I'm now becoming optimistic. I may soon stop having bad side effects and start to see benefits. It certainly seems reasonable to expect benefits given how severe the withdrawal has been: clearly, caffeine has been affecting me a lot. It's a stimulant. That means anxiety.

For the record, one person claimed that for as many as 50% of people who suffer anxiety disorders, the anxiety resolves with elimination of caffeine. Other studies have shown that among those with panic disorder, large doses of caffeine induce panic in a high proportion.

I don't regret getting off it, but again, from my experience, I would taper it and avoid cold turkey. If my experience helps one other anxiety sufferer in the process, it's worth it! Take care all. S

[Snap]

Probably my last update. I've gone 10 full days since Caffeine withdrawal started.

I'm still suffering a lot of anxiety, but I have little idea what the reason is. One possibility is that my sleeping patterns have changed a lot and haven't settled. Howeve,r after 20 years of pretty much constant caffeine use, who knows? I've gone to decaf tea, in case the theanine was helping the anxiety as some research suggests it does. However, I don't really think this has made any difference.

Adding to all this, I had quite a serious virus, and I can't shake it. This has undoubtedly contributed.

I'm not at all convinced that caffeine withdrawal only lasts up to 9 days. The more I think about it, the more I realise how little data there is likely to be about what happens in the long-term. The classic symptoms like irritability, drowsiness and feeling generally unwell seem to have stopped being acute (I never got headaches). However, everything is different now. I get drowsy during the day, which never used to happen. I feel quite different, and I may have to re-learn to read my reactions to things. The weird thing is that I feel apprehensive/anxious a lot when my heart rate is either low or raised very little.

I'm about ready to give up! This is just too much for too long. I'm in limbo -- I don't want to go back onto caffeine but this is an awful daily struggle. There is a reasoanble amount of research and information on how caffeine affects anxiety in different people. There is very little on how caffeine withdrawal affects anxiety in different people.

On that note, I would just say to anyone considering giving up caffeine that it still seems a no-brainer that it should be avoided for those of us suffering anxiety. However, if I could do it again, I would proceed slowly, tapering it down bit by bit. I would have firstly established a 'minimum' amount of tea that caused no noticeable change, set that as a baseline, then gradually reduced by a certain percentage every week or two. Withdrawal has really thrown my system into disarray in many ways.

:(

[Snap]

I thought I'd update because things finally became rather positive.

It turned out that I had not replaced the fluid I used to consume in tea. So I had become quite dehydrated. Someone gave this tip above. Follow it!! If your body loses too much volume, eventually it will begin to preserve the volume of water (mostly in our blood) at the expense of electolyte balance and homeostasis.

For me, that means awful feelings, including cramps, on an ongoing basis that lead to anxiety. However, once I'd replenished my fluid, and kept doing so, I was fine.

Secondly, with that fixed, I had a new perspective on things. I realised something else. After 3 weeks, I was being overwhelmed by tiredness, had mood swings and periods of irritability/distractability. These symptoms were in a form that is highly unusual to me. Interestingly, overwhelming tiredness was causing a great deal of anxiety -- to the point that adrenaline seemed to kick in so that I could not tell I was tired unless I became sedated with meds.

I had not finished my withdrawal after three weeks. Indeed, I don't think I am even close. Sure, the severe symptoms have gone and what remains can be 'written off' as 'too vague'.

What I did was re-introduce just a single cup of moderate tea per day in the form of many decafs throughout the day. This means I'm not getting a big shot of caffeine, in case I'm sensitive to it now. However, it has swiftly taken away the peristent symptoms and elevated my mood immensely. So I'm still not quite off caffeine. I now want to stabilise to give myself much-needed breathing space. Then I'll start to reduce from 10 or so decafs (1 regular tea) per day to nothing.

I am now sleeping immensely better than ever before. I cannot believe how drowsy I am. I feel far better, albeit this is early days after having resolved the issues.

I am very optimistic it will be worth it from here. Now I think back, I believe there have been many occasions on which I have experienced anxiety either due to (a) too much tea in a short space of time (e.g. 3 cups in the morning at meetings and with lunch) or (b) withdrawal from caffeine when I didn't drink tea for some reason.

I am absolutely certain that caffeine has caused me sleeping difficulties for decades!

Again, from my experience, go slow getting of caffeine, particularly if you've used quite a lot (3+ cups) for quite a while. Don't go cold turkey. Replace fluids. Standard advice that I wish I'd listened to.

I'm pretty happy I made it through 3 weeks of cold turkey, now I can look back on it. Still, I wouldn't recommend it.

Take care, S

[Hazel B]

Well done!

I stopped caffeine and nicotine at the same time as my anxiety was bad, I decided mind over matter and went for it. The anxiety was so awful that I can't really say if I had withdrawal, I had headaches anyway from stress. Four months later, I have one decaff coffee a day, as I really missed coffee.

[Tero]

Have not been able to stop caffeine completely, even though I see a direct effect on the anxiety. The reason is I also have been more sleepy the last two months. I have to balance not feeling too tired to drive and getting panic attacks. I eat a small snack before driving just so blood sugar is not really low.

My panic attacks are all strictly while driving.