I just took a proactive step

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I am real worried i m gonna start drinking coffee again and get addicted and get up to multiple pots a day and that will lead me down the same path i went through.

So i called my case manager to hook me up with an addictions group.

drink enough and you can experienc agitation hyperactivity anxiety, mania psychosis delerium

in college i drank four to five times that amount.

I believe it depends on your personal chemistry. I tend to be hypomanic. I take medication to help me sleep. If I drink coffee I will not sleep at night and it's downhill from there. So everybody's different. If you haven't experienced any downsides, then maybe it's ok for you to drink coffee. If you have had reactions, then keep trying to live without. It is addictive.

However, I read about a recent study that shows that some caffeine every day (a couple cups a day for the average person, with average ability to handle coffee) is actually good for you. The study shows that such people keep sharper minds as they age. (Like the little bit of red wine every day is good for your heart, if you are not an alcoholic.)

If you can't drink coffee, I recommend green tea, but only very early in the morning. Getting green tea (Sencha) in a health food store is best. If you can afford it, there are fancy ones online that are fun. (The flavored stuff is not really green tea, or the Lipton's Green tea is garbage, the dregs.) Choice and Eden make ok every day, relatively cheap green teas available at health food stores. Don't brew for more than 2 or 3 minutes or it can get bitter. If you don't like it, try Genmaicha (Sencha flavored with roasted rice, it's a bit sweeter.)

Another thing to try, if you go the no caffeine root, is Teeccino--In my opinion, it's the best coffe substitute available. It's heartier than say, Perrot. They use ground dates in it, which gives it a fuller body. This is also available online and at big health food stores--like whole foods, wegmans.....

God bless the people who can handle it. When I could drink coffee, I'd come in to work on a Saturday and make double the strength. Gone are those days. (Every now and then I cheat with 1/2 cup with breakfast.)

By the way, when you do drink coffee, it's very acidic, so make sure you have lots of alkaline foods, like salads, greens, almonds, avocado, lemon (strangely enough actually metabolizes as alkaline, don't know why), grapefruit, berries....

Good luck

COFFEE, COFFEE, COFFEE, COFFEE, COFFEE! Yeah!! Great stuff it is, but if I drink too much of it I start to get tired again.

Dear Nightbender,

Been there. Done that. Got the coffee mug.

When I was in the Navy I was suffering severe depression and self-medicating with caffeine. My typical day included over a 6-pack of Coke, a few cappuccinos, two liters of Mountain Dew, and a pot or two of coffee. When I went on Elavil I quit caffeine cold turkey. I went from sleeping about two hours a day to sleeping about 15.

Since then I've been on and off coffee, tea and cola. I currently start my day with a mug of coffee and will have a few glasses of iced tea or cups of hot tea during the day. The big thing to be aware of is your own energy level. If it starts getting too high, you need to cut back, especially in the evenings, so you can sleep. Remember that it typically takes 3-4 hours to clear half the caffeine in your system, but this can vary widely based on age, medical condition, and other drugs in the system.

If you want to restart on coffee, jst use it at breakfast, to give you that morning perk up. Pun intended.

As you adjust to morning joe, you might try adding an afternoon coffee break, but be aware of your sleep.


Good luck and enjoy your java,

Ikari Gendo

my mom was on 2 pots a day and when she quit, she had a migraine for over a month... best of luck not falling back into old habits.

One of the problems with too much coffee and soda, is that they displace a whole bunch of other things you should be drinking. People can be harmed by not getting enough vitamin C from orange juice, or enough calcium and vitamin D from milk. With coffee, it's what you're not drinking that can hurt you, not that you'll end up like this guy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kegLdHfUsoY

I know someone who used to drink nothing but coffee, and she had problems with headaches and abnormally low bone density, which improved when she started eating better.

Too much soda is bad because of all the sugar. Soda is empty calories, which means it adds calories but it doesn't have any other nutritional value. I only buy diet soda. I don't even like the regular kind anymore because it's too syrupy, and too much sugar sometimes gives me a stomach ache.