Giving up soda pop has led to mental docoherence

[elfs]

I am not entirely sure what to make of my new mental states, now that I've given up soda pop.

When I was drinking pop until 5pm or 6pm, I was much more mentally alert around 8pm than I am nowadays. I would have trouble getting to sleep, but not too badly. Heck, when it was cola-based caffeine, I could sleep shortly after downing a large amount. I'd sleep fine, just quickly. I'd be mentally alert and capable until about bedtime.

Theophylline, on the other hand, makes it impossible for me to get to sleep. I used to order iced teas at dinner, mistakenly believing that the caffeine content was less. Theophylline is more powerful than kola or coffee-based trimethylxanthine and has a longer half-life. Lesson for me: don't drink black teas at night.

But now I'm down to two or three cups of coffee a day and, having given up all caffeinated products after 12pm, come 8pm I'm wiped. My eyes are heavy, my body is tired. This is true whether or not I get a full eight hours of sleep. It's sorta frustrating. It makes me think that maybe I should figure out when my last cup of coffee should be in the late afternoon, and enjoy it.

Comments

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

well, personally I tend to treat caffeine like any other bio-active chemical I'm putting into my body. Meaning that if I find I'm running out of energy several hours before I need to go to bed I'll work to figure out when I need the last "dose" of coffee or tea to keep me alert until bedtime but not keep me awake much past that point. your millage may vary of course, some people have much higher sensitivities to disruption in their sleep schedules then others.

[voidrandom.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Caffeine is like any other drug, dose and timing are critical and need to be monitored and controlled.

About 15 years ago I finally realized that my regularly scheduled Saturday migraines were caused by caffeine withdrawal. After some experimentation I figured that the equivalent of about a liter of black tea/day with the last consumed no later than 7 pm (given I go to bed at 2 am normally) would avoid most of the problems.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Every eight or nine months coffee starts making me jittery, and I go off it. It feels pretty much the way you describe.

Anecdata: some black teas are more bejittering for me than others. I find that "English Breakfast" and "Irish Breakfast" are way worse in that respect than the Stash Orange Pekoe. Maybe something about the way they're fermented?

Also: the adjustment time to lower doses of coffee (and similar) tends to feel like over-tiredness. Then my energy evens out over the course of the entire day, with fewer spikes & dips. (And then I end up going out for just-an-occasional-coffee with Daniel, and I get sucked into the whole drink-lots-of-coffee cycle again, which lasts until I get really jittery, eight or so months later.) The evening-out usually happens within about two weeks for me.

YMMV.

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

Perhaps this is your body's way of telling you that it wants more rest rather than more stimulants?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I'm also sleeping an average of 8.5 hours a night, 10 on weekends. This is a major shift from just three years ago. That's why it's bothering me.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Try green tea in the afternoons, maybe?

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

I've cut way back on caffeine myself recently. I was sick for two days a few months back, and decided that I had sufficiently detoxed to go almost-cold-turkey. I don't usually have more than one Coke/coffee these days, and the days I do, I tend to be up past midnight. On the days I _don't_, though, I can be in bed by 9.