A year without caffeine (part 2)

I love coffee and drink it pretty much every day. The issue I found with coffee drinkers in North America (when I lived there) was that most people would order huge cups of extremely sweetened coffee. I use to call it sugar water with coffee flavor. The general level of quality of coffee was also quite poor.

I generally drink my coffee with a little bit of milk and no sugar. It is quite easy to do when you get an amazing shot of espresso (or make it yourself at home with an AeroPress for eg.)

I never really feel any kind of disturbing feeling from coffee. I do get that feeling from energy drinks and generally avoid them.

I drink coffee everyday (somedays four or more espressos). I also stop drinking coffe for a few days at least twice every semester, just in case.

Even at peak coffee, more coffee still stimulates my mind and makes me infinitely more focused. The only times coffee hasn't worked is when I'm genuinely sleep deprived, although I typically get 6-8 hours of sleep.

While that may be the dominant theory it doesn't appear to be true. I follow a doctor out of NJ who uses dietary intervention to successfully treat a lot of diseases most doctors will say are "incurable", including ulcerative colitis, IBS, lupus, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes (the adult onset type). He has an entire newsletter devoted to the following:

Inflammatory Bowel Disease – Aggresive dietary modifications hold key to relief and recovery.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome – Recovery requires adherence to high–nutrient, fiber–rich diet.

Nutritional and Dietary Protocols for IBD – These nutritional basics have helped hundreds of patients.

A Crohn's Success Story – IBD patient makes recovery even after two surgeries.

Specific Carbohydrate Diet – Lack of scientific support and low success rate on this diet.

Eat For Health Recipes – The highest scoring recipes from Dr. Fuhrman's newest book.

https://www.drfuhrman.com/members/NewsletterDownload.aspx?is...

He shows (with references to back every claim, as with all of his writing) that these diseases DEFINITELY have a LOT to do with what is eaten.

The newsletter is $7. I wish it were free for as important as I feel this issue is. I would hope that before you continue to make such definite, and possibly dangerous claims, that you would fork over the money to at least make sure you're not helping to send people down the path of needless pain and suffering.

You're right that it's very extremely different than caffeine but a brain hemorrhage? That's not typical of opiate withdrawal at all. In fact, even in the most severe cases of opiate addiction, the withdrawal itself is rarely life threatening. Very rarely life threatening. The drug class that does have a potentially fatal withdrawal syndrome is the benzodiazepines (anxiety meds like Xanax and I'm not sure if alcohol is in that same class but it has the same withdrawal syndrome). The danger with those are fatal seizures most of the time. But opiate withdrawal can't kill you unless there are other underlying conditions or something. I say this because drug education in the U.S. is awful and most people only know the misinformation they were taught in school and get the wrong idea from something like what you mentioned, a video where the guy has a hemmorage at the end which was most likely unrelated to opiates.

That said, all addiction is very similar. I would say that people more often than not really mean dependence rather than addiction when it comes to caffiene but the problem is that most people think of those terms as being the same thing. They're not. Dependence can exist separately of addiction but addiction will always go together with dependence. Dependence is (very simplified here for brevity) when your body relies on a substance from outside itself to function normally. Usually that's because you've put a substance in for so long that your brain downregulates certain chemicals because you're replacing what's already there with something from the outside. Take the substance away and it takes a bit for the body to realize you won't be putting in any more nicotine or caffiene or opiates so it takes a while before it starts producing enough acetylcholine or adrenaline or endorphins or whatever the case may be. Addiction is dependence plus a certain set of behaviors (again, trying to be brief and simple here). A caffeiene "addict" (read: dependant) isn't going to rob the local Starbucks to get a fix like a true addict would. You don't see these caffeine addicts ruining their lives because their persuit of coffee is interfering with their jobs or their marriage and such.

There's a big difference not only between the withdrawal syndromes but I also think an important point is to stop thinking of these people with such stories as addicts. They're probably just dependent. A guy who gets sick if he stops taking his antidepressants is dependent. A guy who can't stop himself from downing medication X and puts his persuit of substance X above all else with serious negative consequences in other areas of his life is an addict.

I went fifteen months without consuming any caffeine or heavily acidic foods to get my GERD back in control. I don't think I've ever felt the same mental stimulation away from coffee. I understand that since I've been drinking coffee for such a long time it could have long-term effects, but I can't find anything that supports caffeine having long-term effects on the brain other than some mood and sleep patterns.

So, I'd be inclined to believe my baseline levels are generally around where I am now (a cup of coffee every few days). Taking from that, I do have a lot of faith that coffee is still a great mental stimulant for me, and it's not just bringing me back to my old normal.

Of course, I know I can't provide anymore evidence of this other than personal experience. I don't happen to have an MRI machine in my closet.