Caffeine Withdrawal Physical Pain

[WikiRando]

Hi guys. On my journey I have eliminated from my life incredibly addictive things such as alcohol, cigarettes, red meat and other chemicals. Mostly by developing myself but also by using Leo's method of cultivating intense awareness which has been pivotal in understanding the patterns and breaking addictions.

The one challenge I noticed had recently that I didn't always have is Caffeine addiction and withdrawal. This manifests as a very painful headache when you miss your daily tea (I don't drink coffee). This is a bit of dual problem because the tea beceause usually the tea beverage I buy contains sugar too.

I noticed even with quitting supposedly addictive things like tobacco and alcohol, the physical withdrawal is not as strong as caffeine. I don't end up in actual physical pain.

But with the caffeine withdrawal headache, I actually end up in quite a debilitated state of headaches and physical pain which makes me have to drink some caffeine to relieve the pain.

I would just pop a painkiller but I'm legit wondering if I'm gonna hurt myself since pain is the body's signal and it might be telling you not to push it. 

Wondering if anyone has any experience with caffeine withdrawal and quitting caffeine especially focused on:

 

1. Dealing with very strong, debilitating physical pain / headaches of withdrawal.

2. Quitting tools and modalities 

3. Health effect or danger of the headaches

Thanks! 

Edited Sunday at 04:59 PM by WikiRando

[The Renaissance Man]

You could reduce your caffeine intake gradually instead of going cold turkey. Eventually the headaches go away, but a softer transition may be better for you, since you describe them as debilitating.

[WikiRando]

24 minutes ago, The Renaissance Man said:

You could reduce your caffeine intake gradually instead of going cold turkey. Eventually the headaches go away, but a softer transition may be better for you, since you describe them as debilitating.

 

That's true, if nothing else works, I will have to probably get way more methodical with managing the dose decreases. Thank you

[Michael569]

Yeah, that's a very common side effect of withdrawal. It is going to get better after a while, but a few things you could consider to help you

• Rather than cold turkey you could go for gradual reduction. Say if your starter was 5 cups a day, you could aim to reduce it by 1 each week and replace that cup with green tea for example. It will take longer but might be more doable. Eventually you may either end up at a very low intake, such as 1 cup per day or completely switch to green tea and then get off that as well. Depends how far you wanna take it. 
• Mix your caf coffee with decaf in about 8/2 ratio and gradually aim to minimise caf while increasing decaf. At some point, you won't even notice that you are drinking decaf. 

Edited Monday at 10:22 AM by Michael569