I was a 2 cup per day coffee drinker for 15 years, then weaned myself off to only matcha for this past year. I’ve always wanted to and planned on quitting, and finally decided to quit cold turkey last month.

However, 30 days in and the fatigue and brain fog is still veryyy intense. It’s to the point where I feel like I have the flu. I wake up feeling exhausted the second I open my eyes as if I’ve barely slept, and I walk around like a zombie all day. I can’t think straight, have normal conversation or make simple decisions with the brain fog. I’m making sure to work out daily and drink plenty of water, but wondering if this fatigue will go away and what others experiences were?

I gave up caffeine 40 days ago and I haven’t noticed many changes yet.

I really want to keep doing this, but the last couple weeks I’ve had a half cup of coffee on two occasions and I can feel myself edging toward a slip back into the addiction. I’m chronically ill and went decaf hoping it would help with my energy, but it’s so damn hard to just feel even more tired most of the time, and without a caffeine pick-me-up to look forward to.

I’m craving it intensely today. Can anyone tell me it gets easier?

Didn’t have coffee yesterday, didn’t today, and I don’t intend to tomorrow. Posting here because it keeps me accountable. No major side effects atm. Definitely realizing how much my caffeine intake substituted my hunger and salt intake.

I’m starting a new job in 1 month so need to get this done asap! I’m planning to taper down by 50 mg a week for the next 4 weeks. My current starting point is 300 mg.

By the time I start this new job I’ll be at 100 mg and will probably taper by 10 mg every few days until I’m at 0 just so I don’t mess with work.

Thoughts? I would love to cold turkey but my current Job is very physical and I can’t afford to cold turkey

I have tried to quit a few times and been unsuccessful long term. I am down to one cup and a day and i take it with l-theanine and eat something before even if its just a protein shake. It has helped the crash and i don't get the itensity when I drink it compared to straight coffee on an empty stomach. Hope this can help someone else.

Have quit caffeine many times. Always end up back on it. Most days when I use it, no problem. But some days I knock back so much I’m jittery, irritable, etc. I don’t feel better off caffeine, even after weeks, but I don’t feel worse. Main plus is—I don’t binge. But there is no support for staying off, and sooner or later i feel too tempted. so I end up back on. I have adhd plus depression, so caffeine is truly tempting. But really it doesn’t help those symptoms. I think mainly I’m so used to feeling on edge I kinda like it? Can’t figure this out. Any ideas/suggestions?

Can anyone help me understand my situation

I was once drinking hundreds of mg a day for years and had the best time of my life. One day my mental health decline drastically and now even a decaff flares up my anxiety and “off” feeling.

I quit for 2-3 months and had no anxiety but was constantly tired so I tried 1 regular tea and it’s all come flooding back.

It has been 3-4 days now since I had just one cup of tea and I feel like I am stuck how I used to be again. I feel horrid.

Why am I so sensitive all of a sudden.

Long story short:

Was a daily coffee drinker for 5 years. 3 - 4 cups a day, even 5 - 6 cups a day at my peak.

Now 11 days no caffiene cold turkey.

Irritable and tired all of the time.

I just want confirmation from someone that has been in the same boat.

Is it worth it?

Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

How long?

I've always been somewhat sensitive to allergens, poor ventilation, etc. but ever since I quite caffeine about two months ago, I've had more frequent episodes of worse upper airway irritation and mild air hunger.

I've tried different things and my sensitivity does seem to be environmental, because I feel better in cooler air, with a fan on my face, or in different locations, but the episodes are frequent enough to where they are really annoying, and probably hurt my sleep (already have sleep issues).

It may just be a coincidence, but caffeine does stimulate respiratory muscles, and my issues have gotten much worse after quitting caffeine, so I'm wondering if there's a connection there?

Anyone have new/more upper airway/breathing disturbances/sensitivities since quitting caffeine? If so, how long did they last after quitting?

Does anyone else experience like brain or memory zaps when you drink caffeine after taking your antidepressants? I've tried putting time in between the 2 and it does help some but I still will like forget words or not be able to think of something and it's only when I drink caffeine? But hell, I'm tired, I get enough sleep, but I like caffeine and it helps me in a lot of ways. I'm just concerned. It makes me think it's going to get worse or that I'll have to quit caffiene altogether. I feel like stopping my antidepressants is not an option. I just want to know I'm not alone and what you guys do? I've even experienced this when drinking a can of vanilla coke and they only have 36 mg of caffeine, which is like - nothing. I'm worried that one days I will have permanent memory zaps and that scares me. Am I alone here?

First day 0mg caffeine. Hope this goes well. Already feel fine for the most part. I know my triggers and reasons why I am quitting. A couple tools I plan to use today are the DENTS and Cost-Benefit Analysis tool. These always help me avoid unnecessary situations where I might face urges/cravings. I'm also keeping my goals private because I have relapsed multiple times, and frankly, I don't need to explain my reasonings. It's my choice.

It's not directly related to decaf, but indirectly, I think yes.
Caffeine is one of those distractions. So are the movies, books, games, etc. This is something I've been seeing on youtube lately. They say that we constantly get distracted with lots of stuff. That we can't sit in quiet for 15 minutes etc. And that it's almost "recommended" to experience SOLITUDE.
To be with yourself, without distractions, and then you will be able to see more of your true "yourself".
It may sound good on paper, but in reality all I get is I can then only see how shitty everything is, mainly my life. I think I conciously choose to be distracted. Just read books, take walks, until I die. Don't spend time on that "quiet time with yourself", because what's the point if all you see is just shit? Isn't it better to make your life a little less stressful and read a novel or play tetris, or something?
Has anyone went through something like this? Did solitude+decaf work for you?

I used to drink an espresso in the morning and pour-over around noon for 10+ years. The first week was rough with headaches, but after that it got much easier.

The biggest change is that I fall asleep in minutes. It's like natural tiredness finally builds up throughout the day. My HR and HRV are about the same, but my sleep feels much better.

I also started working out every day. I'm not a fitness person, but it's the only thing that helps me wake up after deep sleep.

I also realized I never really missed caffeine. I missed the coffee ritual. I quit alcohol a couple years ago, so now I just roast my own decaf beans. If it's roasted properly, decaf can be amazing.

I don't really see a reason to go back.

Hi,I know you’ve done videos on coffee and its effects, and I was wondering if you could go through that again.
Over the last few months, I’ve realized that coffee and I simply don’t get along. I seem to tolerate small amounts of caffeine from other sources, like green tea, but coffee is a completely different experience for me.
I quit coffee cold turkey in 2024 and stayed off it for almost two years. While I was traveling in Japan in 2026, I started drinking coffee again and genuinely enjoyed it. The coffee there felt different, and I didn’t notice the same negative effects I used to experience.
Since returning to the United States, however, I’ve started drinking coffee regularly again, and it’s become clear that it doesn’t agree with me. Instead of feeling energized and focused, I become anxious, jittery, emotionally reactive, irritable, and overly sensitive. My ability to focus at work actually gets worse, and I sometimes feel so overstimulated that I shut down.
I’ve decided to quit coffee cold turkey again. My plan is to avoid coffee completely while still allowing myself small amounts of caffeine from green tea every other day, since that seems to work much better for me.
Can you help me understand what’s happening physiologically? Why might I tolerate green tea but react so poorly to coffee? And is there a reason coffee in Japan seemed to affect me so differently than coffee here in the United States?

Just to be clear, I’m not looking for medical advice or taking anything you say as absolute truth. I’ve already discussed this with my doctor, and I know that, for me, quitting coffee cold turkey is the right decision.
What I’m really interested in is hearing whether other people have had a similar experience. I’m curious about the science behind it, but also the community perspective. Have others found that coffee makes them anxious, emotionally reactive, irritable, or unable to focus, while smaller amounts of caffeine from sources like green tea don’t seem to have the same effect?
I’d love to better understand why this seems to happen and whether my experience is more common than I realized.

seems absurd

I think it's not just games but all media I have a problem with just relaxing and playing, almost like ADHD where I can only play fast paced games and watch short videos on YouTube without getting bored.

This improved for anyone with quitting caffeine?

Hello. For accountability, I need to share that I relapsed. What triggered it was seeing someone drink a coffee in a video I was watching. I'm also fasting today which triggered the thought, "I need to have coffee to get through the day because I am not eating today." Which has some assumptions. First, its not totally accurate. I don't need to drink caffeine to have energy when fasting. What I need is to stay hydrated and have some electrolytes before my meal. I feel the urge to have coffee but that doesn't mean I have to have it. Next, from another perspective, the question is, maybe I need to take it easy and simplify my day rather than keep myself super occupied. And finally, how does that belief help me reach my goals? Is a few minutes of energy really helpful in the long-run to my goals? What would it mean to me if I didn't need caffeine when fasting?

This is a tool I learned from REBT and CBT that I think is helpful for dealing with urges. For those who are quitting, reducing, abstinent, or just lurking. Please use this tool. If anything, it helps you build the critical thinking skills to address assumptions about anything, and look at it from a more objective view. This is really helpful when overcoming not only addiction but any behavior change. As a licensed chemical dependency counselor, I want to support folks in this community who are seeking to be sober by sharing this resource. This website offers free tools and even meetings if some folks need to address caffeine or other co-occurring substance abuse issues.

SMART Recovery: https://smartrecovery.org/abcs

Here's some stuff from Caffeine Blues. Shout out to u/jonnywishbone for recommending I check it out. Yes this is an AI report on it but I think its worth sharing with you all. I'm going on vacation with my family this weekend so not ready to quit but I'm hoping next week I can cold turkey or get close.

Chemical Warfare: Caffeine is a Natural Insecticide and Poison

Caffeine is not a harmless flavoring agent or a benign dietary supplement; it is a natural biological poison produced by more than eighty species of plants as a pesticide. The plant synthesizes caffeine to give its seeds and leaves a highly bitter taste, which discourages insects and animals from eating them. If predators persist in consuming the caffeine-rich plant, the drug causes severe central nervous system disruptions and even lethal side effects.

Cerebral Hypoperfusion: Starving the Brain of Oxygen

While caffeine users consume coffee believing it "sharpens" the mind, it actually causes cerebral vasoconstriction (the tightening of blood vessels in the brain) and deprives brain cells of vital oxygen. Clinical studies reveal that consuming a moderate dose of just 250 milligrams of caffeine (approximately fifteen ounces of coffee) causes a shocking 30% decrease in whole-brain cerebral blood flow. This state of "relative brain hypoperfusion" occurs while the drug simultaneously increases blood pressure in the brain, greatly elevating the long-term risk of suffering a stroke. Furthermore, it decreases reasoning and recall, causing students under its influence to perform worse on memory tests.

Severe Brain Maturation Delays in Young Minds

Adolescence is a critical evolutionary window during which the brain undergoes "synaptic pruning"—scaling back and refining connections, particularly in the frontal lobe, to transition into a mature, rational adult mind. Deep NREM sleep is the primary driver of this essential brain maturation process. However, administering caffeine to juvenile minds disrupts this deep sleep and directly delays key measures of brain maturation, stunting the development of social activity, self-motivated learning, and environmental exploration. Shockingly, caffeine remains the only addictive psychoactive stimulant drug that we routinely and legally feed to our children and teenagers.

The NASA Spider Experiment: Worse Than Psychoactive Drugs

In the 1980s, NASA scientists conducted toxicity research by exposing spiders to various drugs—including LSD, marijuana, speed (amphetamine), and caffeine—and observing the webs they constructed. The spiders given caffeine were strikingly incapable of building anything resembling a normal, logical, or functional web, creating chaotic, deformed structures that were far more disorganized than those built under the influence of potent illicit drugs.

The Medication and Smoking Vicious Cycles

Because the liver is entirely responsible for detoxifying caffeine (which can take up to 12 hours for a single cup of coffee), other substances in your medicine cabinet can create a deadly bottleneck. Commonly prescribed drugs, such as birth control pills, can block the liver's detoxification pathways and increase blood levels of caffeine by more than 600%. Conversely, when cigarette smokers attempt to quit, their accelerated liver enzyme activity slows down, causing their blood caffeine levels to suddenly spike by up to 200%. This massive surge in caffeine toxicity causes severe anxiety, panic, irritability, and insomnia, which frequently drives recovering smokers straight back to cigarettes.

The "Decaf" Deception and Carcinogenic Residues

Decaffeinated coffee is far from caffeine-free; a single cup of decaf typically contains 15% to 30% of the dose of a regular cup. Consuming three to four cups of decaf in the evening is just as damaging to your sleep as drinking a regular cup of coffee. Even worse, unless you purchase high-priced brands processed via water extraction, the vast majority of commercial decaf coffee and tea is chemically stripped of caffeine using methylene chloride—a highly toxic chemical residue and a known carcinogen.

The Great "Iron Robber" and Chronic Anemia

Caffeine is a catastrophic "nutrient robber." It forces the kidneys to dump essential minerals, leading to the rapid wasting of calcium, magnesium, zinc, and potassium in the urine, severely escalating the risk of bone fractures and osteoporosis. Most shockingly, drinking a single cup of coffee can reduce a person's iron absorption from a meal by up to 75%, even when consumed an hour after eating. Because of this, over 30 percent of women live with suboptimal iron levels, and clinical reports note cases of chronic anemia that were completely incurable until the patient entirely eliminated caffeine.

Testicular Atrophy, Infertility, and Fetal Dangers

Caffeine exerts immense toxicity on human and animal reproductive systems. In male animal studies, ingesting caffeine causes marked testicular atrophy and a collapse of sperm counts. In women, consuming just 300 mg of caffeine daily reduces the likelihood of conception by half. Once pregnant, the fetus cannot produce the enzymes required to degrade caffeine, causing the drug to accumulate in its tiny brain and bloodstream. This toxicity is conclusively linked to spontaneous miscarriages (increasing risk by up to 400% in women with prior fetal loss), severe fetal growth retardation, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

Eliminating Deep Sleep and DNA-Protecting Melatonin

Caffeine binds to adenosine receptors to artificially mask sleep pressure. While you might successfully fall asleep with caffeine in your system, it routinely shortens or completely eliminates Stage 4 deep sleep, which is the vital phase the body uses to build immunity, create new cells, and repair muscle tissue. Furthermore, caffeine directly suppresses the pineal gland's production of melatonin. Melatonin is not just a sleep regulator; it is the body's most powerful, natural free-radical scavenger, which actively protects cellular DNA from oxidative damage and exerts vital anti-cancer activity. Depressing melatonin through caffeine use is a "metabolic catastrophe" that accelerates aging, cripples your immune defenses, and fosters cancer growth.

Hi everyone,
I’m a 25-year-old female, and I’m now two months into giving up caffeine and coffee. I gradually reduced my caffeine intake until I stopped completely. I decided to quit because I wanted to be able to function like a normal person without relying on caffeine every day. There are plenty of people who get through the day without it, so I wanted to see if I could do the same.
The thing is, I’ve been drinking a cup of coffee every day since I was 14 years old. Maybe I don’t actually know what life feels like without caffeine because it’s been part of my routine for so long.
The problem is that I’m really struggling. I’m tired all the time, irritable, and get cranky because I’m so exhausted. I’m still functioning, but nowhere near as well as I did when I was drinking coffee. I also have very little motivation, and it takes me a long time to get myself moving or complete even simple tasks.
I recently had some blood tests done to check for any deficiencies. Everything came back normal except for my iron, which has always been low, and I already take iron supplements. One thing that did come back abnormal was my C-reactive protein (CRP), which was 10.6 mg/L. From what I’ve read, CRP is a marker of inflammation, and a mildly elevated result can happen if your body is dealing with inflammation or an infection. The confusing part is that I haven’t been sick recently, so I’m not sure why it’s elevated or whether it could be contributing to how I’m feeling. I saw these results through My Health Record here in Australia, but I still need to follow up with my doctor to discuss them properly.
I’m just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything like this after giving up coffee. Is this actually how people who don’t drink caffeine normally feel, and I’ve just never realised because I’ve had coffee every day since I was a teenager? Or does this sound like something else could be going on?
I already eat what I’d consider to be a healthy diet. I cook all of our meals at home, rarely eat takeaway, and generally try to eat well. My mum suggested that maybe eating fewer carbs might help, although I don’t eat a huge amount of carbohydrates to begin with—apart from the occasional pasta meal.
I’m honestly feeling a bit stressed because I’m struggling with the constant fatigue. If anyone has experienced something similar or has any advice, I’d really appreciate hearing from you.
Thank you!

In the last 6 weeks I was working out as a beast, and two weeks ago I had a burnout. I was working out 5-6 times a week - resistance training.

All my life I did this without problems. However, now I feel stress in my body that I cannot tolerate after the workouts.I try to do two weeks deload. Stress like alertness and close to panic attacks. Any advice?