Caffeine (the legal drug)
Fun fact: coffee doesn’t actually give you energy it just tricks your brain into thinking you’re not tired as it does a clever job of Impersonating a compound that signals your brain to sleep (adenosine) which is a compound that builds up in the brain the longer you are awake.
Adensosine bonds with the receptor on brain cells slowing them down and making you feel tired.
Adenosine and caffeine have very similar structures making it a good imposter for this job. In english, they look like twins but aren’t related.
When you drink coffee or a coke, the Caffiene gets in the blood stream and makes its way to the brain this is where it heads straight to the adenosine receptor and because caffeine and adenosine look so similar the receptor cells happily accept the caffeine instead of the adenosine.
With the caffeine sitting in its usual spot its stopping the Adensosine from slowing things down because it cant get in.
Basically the clubs full, the caffeine is in and the adensosine is queuing by the door.
The brain cells stop getting the slow down signals from adenosine which boosts blood pressure and heart rate in turn, keeping you alert.
Unfortunately we all know, what comes up must come down and this happens when the receptors let go of the caffeine which lets the adenosine back in.
It’s 3am and caffeine is tired for the night, adensosine takes the opportunity to finally be let in even though it.
After 6 hours you will only feel Half of the caffeine’s effects and you will start to crash.
The next morning when you wake up feeling extra tired, these are already the effects of withdrawal creeping in that’s why in a desperate attempt to feel normal again, the craving hits for that morning cup of coffee.
Its all well and good knowing this but lets talk about what the body feels when you have stopped drinking it completely?
If you decided to stop drinking coffee/energy drinks altogether then the withdrawals would get to work pretty fast, the process Starts at around 12 hours and could last up to 9 days.
The best you will feel from caffeine is from the moment of absorption into the blood stream which is pretty much straight away and up to 2 hours after your first sip.
Its downhill from there, withdrawals peaking after one or two days of abstinence. For heavy caffeine drinkers who stop abruptly, the body can take even longer to readjust. How much you are affected depends on how much you have been regularly consuming. For example, someone who is consuming 200mg of caffeine daily which amounts to around one cup of coffee will be massively less affected than someone who consumes 600mg of caffeine a day which could be 2 coffees and a coke. The level which is seen as too much is anything above 400mg per day, even drinking this amount you will have quite intense withdrawals.
So you stop drinking it, you may feel fine on day 1 as there may still be some in your body, but once it realises there is no caffeine coming on next day delivery it will start to crave it.
Your body will feel more fatigued than normal because it hasn’t had its fix, the little kick in the morning which it needed. The tiredness is extreme so that your body send hints to your mind that you need to visit your coffee machine very quickly. These cravings need to be ignored to be able to come out on the other side.
The biggest side affect is headaches, and they will come pretty fast and heavy. For the individual that has been having the one cup, they may feel rubbish, tired, headache for a day or two but may feel quite alright after that. For the extreme coffee lover they might struggle a little bit more, headaches could last a week before starting to feel normal again, along with irritability and mood swings but these are usually only in the first 48 hours.
It might seem a scary thought when you wake up at 6am and cant get that quick energy boost but are the crashes worth it?
From experience every time I would consume caffeine it was fun for two hours but I was evil after those hours had passed, from giving it up my body started to use its own energy which was longer lasting and didn’t lead to big dips in my mood. If you love coffee but want to overcome this never ending addiction then decaf is the best option, it tastes the same! another option is opting for a low caffeine option like a matcha (current addiction) which has around 40mg of caffeine in depending on the strength and the grade of matcha that it is plus it comes with many health benefits but that’s a topic for another time.
I hope this helps in your coffee loving journey, it definitely helped with mine.