Do you personally drink coffee and why/why not?

[ertyu]

I drink water and black coffee (and the occasional beer(s) when I hang out with friends, which I self-servingly don't count because I can take them or leave them). A LOT of black coffee. Starting to think about how it fits in with the rest of my life. I guess the question would be immaterial to those who can drunk a cup in the morning and be done with it so there's no reason not to enjoy a comparatively uncomplicated pleasure. But I wonder if someone else here ever made a conscious decision about what they wanted their coffee consumption to be like and what were the factors.

[take2]

I was drinking way too much coffee back in 2015/2016 when I had to get up c. 5AM and would only get to sleep at c. 11pm-12am consistently. Sometimes 5-6 cups a day. I developed some mild insomnia which was miserable and I decided to cut it cold turkey for about 3 months. The first two weeks were miserable (like really miserable) but then my body adapted.

Eventually I moved onto a different role where I was able to consistently get 8 hours of sleep and revered back to 1 cup in the AM. That’s my standard now, sometimes 2 cups on days that I really need it, or else sometimes I’ll have decaf just to simulate. I try to avoid all forms of caffeine after 3pm or so otherwise it affects my sleep.

[horsewoman]

Coffee is addictive, so one should probably give the amount one drinks some thought. I'm highly sensitive to caffeine, so I can't drink more than 3-4 cups (with lots of milk!) a day without getting extremely jittery and insomniac. I tried to give up coffee completely (repeatedly) due to sleeping problems and trouble with silent reflux, which gets worse with coffee. Considering how little I drink anyway, one would think giving it up should not be hard. Not so! I noticed that I'm having a lot more tension headaches and migraines without coffee, and my mood is considerably less bright. So I found my perfect balance with one cup around 9 and a second one around noon. No later than 3 in the afternoon, otherwise I'll be up until 2 in the morning

[chenda]

Yes, I love it. Just one or 2 expressos a day though.

[UK-with-kids]

I enjoy coffee as a novelty but almost never drink it. When I do it sseems to make me quite jumpy.

However, I drink on average around 10 cups of tea per day. I'm not sure on the relative amounts of caffeine we're talking about.

[slsdly]

I never got into it. I took one sip, ugh, no thanks. I also do not drink soft drinks, or tea, so the only caffeine I could be getting is chocolate, which I don't exactly eat every day or week or month. As far as I can tell, it simply puts people to where I feel in the morning without it. It does not look to be a good trade . Water is sufficient for my needs.

One time I tried a green tea that turned out to be caffeinated at around 6pm. I did not sleep that night, so wired.

[Jean]

I get reflux whenever i go over 1 or 2 cup in a day. So it's not hard to keep consumption in check.

[Alphaville]

i drink coffee and tea because they seem to work for my adhd, and i’m always in search of the right dosage.

without caffeine it’s hard to regulate my sleep and wake up at the right time.

without caffeine it’s also hard to stay awake during the day to perform uninteresting but necessary tasks.

if i was completely free to do as i wanted i wouldn’t have much use for this drug. but since i have to show up on time to do things that are boring, coffee helps me adapt.

[Campitor]

I drink 1 to 2 cups a day. Coffee supposedly increases telomere length which delays apoptosis and has health benefits. I just like coffee and don't drink it for health benefits. In Ecuador it seems coffee drinking starts at an early age. I was drinking coffee at kindergarten age. It was made with milk (no water) and added sugar. I now make my coffee with water, stevia, no milk, and an almond creamer.


https://www.news-medical.net/news/20190 ... inues.aspx

[ertyu]

i drink coffee and tea because they seem to work for my adhd

oof, i felt this. highly suspect that undiagnosed adhd is a factor here, too.

[Alphaville]

oof, i felt this. highly suspect that undiagnosed adhd is a factor here, too.

yeah

check this out and have a good laugh

https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-sleep- ... -symptoms/

the cosmos has a sense of humor, but fortunately for us there’s drugs

[BookLoverL]

I've never got into coffee myself. First of all when I was a teenager and tried it then I didn't like the taste, and then I learnt about the potential health effects and was glad to avoid them and also was glad I could save money by not needing to buy something addictive, and then later when I got Tourette's I decided I should definitely never try it because I think it would be likely to make the Tourette's worse. So overall I'm very grateful to teenage me's picky tastebuds.

[AnalyticalEngine]

I currently drink 1 (8oz) cup of black coffee a day. Even with a relatively small amount of coffee, I get massive withdrawal symptoms if I quit drinking it. Coffee is a guilty pleasure of mine because I love the way it tastes, and I've gotten into the hipster-brewing of using a pour over coffee maker, playing with the water temp to see how it changes the way it tastes, comparing different roasts with the location it was grown, etc.

However, I'll add that I seem to be highly sensitive to both caffeine and alcohol. I try to avoid drinking alcohol because even 1 serving is enough to make me feel completely terrible. I've given up caffeine in the past, and I have found it helps with anxiety and sleep. Giving up alcohol has helped with depression. Caffeine tends to make me feel less depressed when I drink it.

If you're wondering how caffeine makes you feel, my suggestion is to wean off it and stop drinking it for a few months. Then reintroduce it in small amounts. That will let you know how it's impacting you and what a good dose of it for what you want to achieve is.

I might trying quitting caffeine again to see how it makes me feel. I seem to have a real addiction to it because I get emotionally attached to wanting a "coffee break" whenever I try to quit. I suppose the habit is not unlike cigarettes in that regard.

[ertyu]

I get emotionally attached to wanting a "coffee break" whenever I try to quit. I suppose the habit is not unlike cigarettes in that regard.

yep, really agree the ritual is a big part of it. Now that corona has made spending time at coffeeshops unfeasible (part of my ritual), I have found myself reconsidering coffee.

@Alphaville -- looked at the sleep article, checks out...

[Dave]

I started drinking coffee in my first “busy season” accounting internship, so about a decade ago. Over the last several years, I have tried eliminating coffee (caffeine) from my diet 4-5 times for a few reasons: desire to not be dependent on a chemical/subject to withdrawal, to save money (pretty minuscule amounts at home with the coffee I would drink but a bit more when out and about), to reduce teeth staining, to reduce environmental footprint, to stabilize my body’s “energy” system (this sounds fuzzy but caffeine distorts hunger which creates exaggerated cyclical hunger/consumption in my case in addition to peaks and crashes of energy), and to improve sleep. As someone who has had periodic onset insomnia throughout my life, the last factor is by far the most important to me.

After several attempts that didn’t stick, this spring I did manage to cut caffeine completely out for ~4 months without issues like excessive grogginess/tiredness during the day. For me, this has been very helpful in falling and staying asleep, and general feeling/performing well upon awakening.

Caffeine’s half-life is in the ballpark of 6 hours, which means if you sleep 8 hours per day, even if you only consume caffeine immediately upon awakening you only go through 2 2/3 half-lives, so you still have ~1/6 left in your system. In reality, most people continue to drink caffeine for hours into the day. The upshot here is that even though a lot of people say “I don’t drink caffeine late in the day”, the reality is you still have non-immaterial amount of caffeine in your system come bedtime. For some people this doesn’t seem to matter at all for falling asleep. But it is thought that even if you fall asleep it still disrupts the quality of sleep, which has spillover effects to other parts of your life (see Mathew Walker’s Why We Sleep, entertaining and very good book on sleep by a sleep researcher). I speculate caffeine is probably one of the biggest sources of sleeping issues for people, as very few people really want to try going 100% caffeine free for various reasons.

My current thinking is that for many people caffeine is a crutch used to compensate for other aspects of their health that are sub-optimal – sleep, nutrition, exercise, etc. It's pleasurable, helps get you by/function, and definitely is helpful in many aspects, but it’s not cost-less. A lot of people take caffeine consumption as necessary/given/a “pleasure” and so on, but may benefit from elimination of it or severe reduction of quantity and limited timing. It seems worth a try to me, for at least a peak outside the Cave to see other possibilities (e.g. what quality sleep could look like). Then you can make the decision if the benefits are worthwhile.

My current approach is selective application of caffeine: very early mornings, times when it's critical that I drive later at night, etc. One benefit of this approach is it's very potent when you're non-adapted so you don't need much to get a major boost.

[ertyu]

See this sounds so reasonable and sane

thanks for sharing dave

[7Wannabe5]

I drink a lot of coffee, but stop before 5 pm. If I also get enough exercise, I fall over like a top before 9 pm.

[basuragomi]

Don't drink any coffee. My parents rarely drank it so I only ever saw it as a sugary treat. Now I have zero caffeine tolerance from never drinking, so the caffeine symptoms from even tea are fairly unpleasant. That plus the cost, effort and equipment/supplies required means it would be a huge effort to get started on a habit. I love the smell of coffee and coffee-flavoured things though.

For me, caffeine disturbs sleep, gives a dry mouth, raises my blood pressure and makes me feel twitchy without actually feeling alert like being well-rested does. I'm not sure what's so great about it beyond the taste.

[Alphaville]

I drink a lot of coffee, but stop before 5 pm. If I also get enough exercise, I fall over like a top before 9 pm.

i’m very similar to this, but last coffee is with lunch. if i need more drugs later it’s just gonna be a small tea.

and morning exercise helps me sleep better than evening exercise. evening exercise often makes me wired and raises my metsbolism where i just toss and turn till 3 am

[UK-with-kids]

For me, caffeine ... makes me feel twitchy without actually feeling alert like being well-rested does.

Yes, that's what it does to me too. I sometimes drink it when I feel really exhausted for some reason, hoping it will help, but it leaves me "wired but still tired".