To Caffeinate, Or Not To Caffeinate? (2010)
Originally published at jimeh.me on February 14, 2010.
I used to be a caffeine junkie. My caffeinated poison of choice was Coke, the legal kind, not the illegal one.
When I say I was a junkie, I don’t use those words lightly. At most, I was drinking about 3–4 liters per day. I kid you not. On average though it was around 1.5 liters per day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The recommended liquid intake per day for adults is 2 liters (of water). This had been going on roughly since I was 16 or 17 years old, or 7–8 years ago.
Why Caffeinate?
I drank Coke for two reasons. Firstly cause I loved the taste of it. Secondly, and most importantly, cause the caffeine and sugar gave me energy. Being a developer, I spend all my time on the computer thinking a gazillion different thoughts at the same time all day long. Thanks to this, my brain eats up enormous amounts of glucose (sugar), and Coke is the perfect counter agent for this, as it contains both sugar and caffeine.
Also, I never really sleep a full night’s sleep, so I’m always tired throughout the day. If I didn’t have any Coke in the morning though, or there was a too long gap between one glass and the next, I’d get extremely tired, to the point of almost dosing off and not being able to get much work done. So I’d have another glass of Coke to counter these deep swings in my alertness.
Going Cold Turkey
So let’s jump to last spring, April 16th 2009 to be exact. While on a road trip, I decided to stop drinking Coke, cold turkey style. Originally I wanted to do it over the weekend just to see how I’d feel without any caffeine in my system. Which was something I hadn’t experienced for years. I was honestly a little surprised that after being a bit more tired than normal the first day, I was fine the second day.
The Withdrawal
After the weekend ended, I kept away from caffeine, and around day three or four, I started getting light headaches multiple times per day, everyday. And I never have headaches, except for when I’m dead sick with some flu so I can hardly stand on my own two feet. So I figured that the headaches were from caffeine withdrawal. According to Wikipedia, withdrawal symptoms can last for one to five days. My headaches didn’t let up for about two weeks.
The Aftermath
I didn’t drink a single drop of caffeine of any form for the next two months. And since then, it’s a rare event which generally only happens when I go to the cinema and buy popcorn and Coke for the movie. I generally feel better, I think. I’m still generally tired throughout the day cause I don’t get enough sleep, but I never get the deep end energy swings I used to get if I didn’t have any Coke for a while.
My wallet is also feeling healthier. I used to spend between 50 to 100 EUR on Coke every month, now that money is going to paying my cell phone bill instead.
Conclusion
I don’t need caffeine. I wanted to quit drinking caffeine cause I was curious. I knew it couldn’t be that good for me to keep drinking as much Coke as I was, and it was kinda expensive as well.
If you do consume a lot of caffeine, I’d suggest you try quitting cold turkey style for a week — or even just a weekend — to see how you feel without it. Cause chances are, that you can at the very least save a decent pile of cash over the course of a year or so, without feeling any worse than we all naturally do in our fragile human condition.
P.S.
I bought a bottle of Coke the other day, cause I felt like having some. After half a glass, I realized that I don’t really like the taste of it anymore. So this bottle will probably sit in my fridge indefinitely, and might be the last bottle I ever buy for myself.
Ten months after quitting Coca Cola, I don’t like the taste anymore. It’s lame, but for me it’s a pretty big event, as I used to consider Coke the best tasting thing on the planet in liquid form.
