The hardest thing I have ever had to do

When I read the following words in "Adrenal Fatigue", I thought this guy has been following me around - creepy:

"many people with adrenal fatigue get through the day by kicking their adrenals with several cups of coffee and beverages containing caffeine or by combining caffeine, sweets and chocolate (which contains caffeine and a caffeine like substance)."

The amount of tea and coffee (yes, I drank both - first warning sign) I would drink during a day varied.  Typically, the first thing I would do in the morning would be to have a cup of coffee, which I would drink sitting on the couch.  I would take a second cup of coffee to the bathroom to drink while having a shower and getting dressed.  When I got to work, I would turn on my computer and go get a coffee or tea to start the work day with.  Then I would have a coffee or tea every couple of hours and often finish with a mint Freddo chocolate frog around 4pm. 

I'm not sure how much caffeine that added up to over the course of a day, and I knew from previous caffeine-free periods in my life that I would feel much better without them, but I didn't want to give up even one of those cups.  I once saw a Russell Brand documentary where he showed a video of himself high on heroin from the years when he was a heroin addict.  He said that watching the video made him feel envious of his former addicted self because, even though he knew it was destroying his life, it felt so good to be high that nothing else mattered.  That's how I feel about caffeine. 


The problem is that caffeine artificially and temporarily forces your adrenal glands to produce additional adrenaline, which just makes it even harder for your adrenal glands to function properly.

I knew I had to stop and I knew it was going to be hard.  At first I tried a gradual reduction strategy.  I decided that from the next weekend, I would only drink tea, no coffee.  The weekend came and went, as did the following week and the next weekend, so finally on the Monday week I stopped drinking coffee and stuck to only tea.  As a result, the number of teas I drank increased to compensate for removing the coffee, but not much else changed. 

I then decided it was time to get rid of the tea another few days passed.  I then started trying to play tricks on myself - I only had to give it up for a month, a week, a day.  None of this worked.  I produced an immunity to change map and decided on two experiments, the first to observe if caffeine really made me feel as good as I believed it did and the second to have no caffeine for a week and see how that made me feel.

So I ran the first experiment and drank as much tea and coffee (yes, back on the coffee) as I liked and the results were as I expected.  Caffeine made me feel anxious, unable to focus, kept me up at night and as consequence, made me tired (and craving caffeine) the next day. 

Then came time to run the second experiment, where I don't drink any caffeine.  Every morning I would get up and find an excuse not to start that day.  Eventually I asked my facebook friends for advice on how to give up and it generated one of the biggest discussions of my facebook career. Even though no-one had any magic wands to wave, the next morning, after all the hullabaloo I had generated, I was too embarrassed to have any caffeine and had a herbal tea instead.

How did my first day (25 March 2015) caffeine-free* go?  It was brutal.  I was exhausted, I could not concentrate, I don't think I achieve anything at work.  Co-incidentally, work has meditation sessions on a Wednesday lunch time, I went along, fell asleep sitting up (I have never been capable of this before), spent the following hour in daze, the infamous headache started around 3pm (at least that's when I was first conscious enough to notice it). I went home early, fell asleep early, slept about 11 hours and was late to work the next day.

Now on Day 10 of no tea/coffee, I have experienced almost every side-effect of withdrawal that has been identified:

• Headaches, ranging from moderate to severe, and usually starting behind the eyes before spreading - strangely, after feeling a false sense of security about this because the head-ache wasn't so bad on Day 1, it got much, much worse on Day 2, the head-aches are getting better now, they come and go and are much less severe but they are still present (I have a head-ache now while I am typing this post);
• Chills and/or hot spells - I thought I must be getter another cold until I learned this was a side-effect
• Decreased alertness and difficulty concentrating or thinking - I could not even contemplate writing this post before today
• Fatigue, lethargy and / or sleepiness - yes to all three, the first Saturday and today (Good Friday public holiday) after having a full night's sleep, I fell asleep at 11am and did not wake up until 5pm. After waking up I'm still useless for a couple of hours and feel trapped in my body. 
• Irritability (moderate to extreme) and restlessness - it's a good thing I spent Day 2 working from home, I think I used more swear words that day that I had in the year prior
• Insomnia - this one is really annoying, you would like to think that having given up caffeine you could at least rely on the promise of a good night's sleep, yet on Day 7, I didn't get to sleep until 1 am and then kept waking up all night
• Muscle stiffness and / or pain - it's like I've been working out, except I haven't been working out because I'm just too tired to do so
• Blocked sinuses - I sometime wonder whether this is what is now causing my headaches
• Depressed mood - none of the above is going to make you feel like the life of the party, particularly the sleeping all day on weekends.

Has it been worth it?  It's still a little early to tell.  There are moments during the day, moments which are increasing both in frequency and duration, when I feel really good and energetic.  I never felt that way when I was drinking tea and coffee.  I also don't feel so overwhelmed by how much work I have to do, even though the amount of work hasn't changed.  I like to think that in a couple of weeks, the sleeping during the day will have passed and I'll be feeling great all day. Time will tell.


*I'm still eating chocolate, so I'm not 100% caffeine-free just yet.