Kicking Caffeine to the Curb

by alchemyofherbs

Morning Sunlight

Let me just get this out there – quitting caffeine stinks. It’s no fun. At all. I’ve been trying for the better part of a month to reduce my intake of caffeine, which I primarily get through my morning ritual of two glorious cups of coffee, for the purposes of improving my health and energy levels. And to say that it’s one of the harder things I’ve tackled, health-wise, would be devastatingly true. The first few days weren’t that bad. I went from having two cups of coffee to one… so far, so good. Then after a couple of days of that I switched to two cups of black tea. Even that was okay; not great, but I survived, no headaches, etc. Then one morning  a few days later I awoke, feeling optimistic that I could switch to Tee-chino, which has zero caffeine, and I’d be fine, since I’d been doing so well thus far. Not so. An hour after waking up and two (yummy but not coffee) mugs of Tee-chino later, all I wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep for another 10 hours. I had lots of work to do, though, so I sleepily got ready for my day and sat down to my computer to get some awesome writing work done. It was like torture. Brain fog like you wouldn’t believe. I couldn’t string two coherent words together in my mind, let alone whole, complete, witty and somewhat intelligent sentences! It was brutal. So I made myself a cup of black tea, and 20 minutes later I felt halfway human, halfway intelligent.

Fast forward another couple of weeks and the struggle continues. I am now down to two cups of decaf coffee made with chicory with only 1 minute scoop of caffeinated coffee between the two cups. That is just-barely enough caffeine to give me the slightest pep in the morning, but I have no splitting headaches (a side effect I experienced on my zero-caffeine days) and I do not feel anxious, jittery or wired. But I seem to be having trouble getting past this stage of the game. I think I’m just going to be kind and gentle to myself, though, and  just stay at this stage for a while, until something in me says it’s time to decrease the caffeine again.

Now let’s just get one thing clear – it’s not like I was a coffee maniac. I didn’t drink it all day long like some people do, and I never even drank it after 10am (at the latest!), but I  have drunk it consistently since I was 13 or so, owing to the fact that my Mum owned a kick-ass little espresso shop where I found the delights in all kinds of delectable coffee and espresso drinks… and got hooked on the thrill. Now, 15 years later, I was/am suffering from pretty much non-stop, 24-hr a day fatigue. I realized one day about a month ago that enough was enough. I’ve known about adrenal fatigue for several years now and am pretty darn sure I have it. Tired all day long until 5 or 6pm, then feel moderately awake until about 9, then tired again? Check. Allergies? Check. Wake up in the morning after a full-nights rest feeling like you stayed up all night? Check. The list goes on and on. And one of the things that seriously contributes to adrenal fatigue is caffeine. Why? Because the “energy” surge that you feel after downing a yummy cup of coffee is actually your body being pushed over the hormonal edge into fight or flight mode, which, assuming there are no saber-tooth tigers nearby, translates into feeling anxious, jittery, hyper-focused, hyper-aware and all around slightly more productive. But this day in and day out roller-coaster ride of hormones and unnecessary stress eventually tuckers you out, from a cellular, nervous and endocrine-system level. So you become more and more exhausted, and soon the caffeine that used to give you such a rush simply makes you able to function, and once it wears off the fatigue is wretched.  The upside is, given enough time without caffeine, the body will eventually re-stabalize and your natural energy will return, apparently in spades. This is what I’m looking forward to (especially the “spades” part) and holding out for.

Part of my impetus for quitting caffeine was also because, as we’re learning in the Herbal Apprenticeship, anything that has long-term effects on the nervous system, as caffeine most certainly does, eventually hampers your body to heal itself. And once the disorder becomes chronic and goes to the endocrine system, the immune system and working condition of the body is severely compromised. I hope that in my future herbal practice, if I need to recommend to someone to also quit caffeine, that I can draw upon this <painful> experience to help my clients through this tough time, as well as give them hope for the energy that lies on the other side of this.

I’ll keep you all posted, and I hope that I can post in the (near) future and tell you that I’m off caffeine 100% and that I feel better than ever. Stay tuned!

Warmly,

Jess