How I Quit Caffeine after 25 Years of Daily Consumption

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How I Quit Caffeine after 25 Years of Daily Consumption

You'd be surprised by the impact it has.

Sean Kernan

Oct 17, 2026

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I’ve done the unthinkable: I quit caffeine.

My obsession began when I was 18. It started with a simple Mountain Dew in the morning with breakfast.

It was an easy pick-me-up that made my mornings a little easier. And I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

Little did I know, I’d begun rolling a boulder down a mountain that wouldn’t easily be slowed down.

At least until recently. Here is the backstory on how I came to quit this addictive substance and the surprising ways it has affected me today.

Snowballing consumption

In college, the morning caffeine became a lunch caffeine and then a late-afternoon caffeine. Then, in my 20s the morning diet soda became two.

Everything was moving in one direction. It got to the point where I was drinking the equivalent of eight or more cups of coffee a day.

And it was so easy for this to happen. We receive so many cultural messages about the okayness of this drug, which is also

the most commonly used drug in the world

, though doctors categorize it differently than other drug addictions. After all, drinking ten coffees a day won’t typically leave you jobless, divorced, and on the path to ruin.

In fact, it’s quite hard to die from the substance. In 2015, two students nearly died after being given 30g of caffeine during an experiment instead of .3g, due to a misplaced decimal. This was the equivalent of 300 cups of coffee all at once. They required dialysis to remove it from their system and lost 20 lbs by the end of their treatment. They were

rightfully compensated

more than $500,000 by the university.

Back here in the real world, normal levels of heavy consumption do come with a tremendous cost that I’ve only now realized and that many people still miss.

It’s so easy to get caught in this trap because, well, coffee feels good—especially if you’ve never drunk it before. I remember bumping into my boss at the office, a young and beautiful woman in her 30s, who seemed absolutely cranked—talking a mile a minute. She later confided she’d had a coffee that morning despite not being a caffeine drinker.

The catch is that— like any drug, that amazing high can leave you chasing the dragon in perpetuity.

Context of why I made the change

As I approached age 40, I began cleaning up my lifestyle and audited everything I was doing. I realized I was yawning more than ever and constantly complaining to myself about feeling tired.

Over the decades, I’d begun trying to fill this energy gap with more coffee, diet soda, and anything that could give me a boost. And in the process, I became, for lack of a better term, a caffeine junkie.

One day in the breakroom, a coworker made that run-of-the-mill work comment: “I’ve been waiting for this coffee for hours.”

And it struck me that I often feel that way too. Somewhere along the way, my entire day became broken up by my next break to get caffeine. It’s like I was only a partial version of myself until I got that next fix.

The abrupt switch

I knew I was going to quit, and it felt like I was standing at the edge of a high diving board at the deep end every morning, waiting to jump.

“OK, go, go, go… n-n-no, not yet.”

Eventually, I kicked it on a whim, switching to water that morning and, I’ll confess, I was a shell of myself, especially the first day, but on the second and third days as well.

There is this predictable heaviness you feel when

withdrawing from a caffeine habit

. It feels like there’s a heavy cloak hanging on your body as you go about your day.

There was a surprising gap in my daily routine too that took some getting used to. At so many points in the day, my mind was used to thinking, “Now is a great time for some coffee.” I’d usually head to a break room or a vending machine for options.

Instead, that time was freed up to get things done or relax. I didn’t feel any strong cravings. I’d quit smoking cigarettes many years prior, and that was certainly harder to kick than this. I’d like to think the difficulty of quitting cigarettes sits somewhere in the middle between quitting caffeine and heroin, but thankfully, I wouldn’t know regarding heroin.

The interesting thing is that you still get nicotine cravings weeks and even months after quitting cigarettes. I never got any cravings for caffeine after the first few days. It had little staying power, which was very nice. And I didn’t get super cranky like I did when quitting cigarettes.

The most surprising thing about quitting caffeine

When I first began this journey, my chief fear was, “How am I going to wake up?”

The crazy thing? Wakeups are much easier now without caffeine, for more than one reason.

Caffeine trains your body to require an outside stimulant to get back to baseline.

Much of the “boost” habitual users feel is just relief from withdrawal

. Once you quit, your baseline energy levels return to a normal place, so you don’t feel like you’re in the absolute pits, even after sleeping a full eight hours.

And on that note, my sleep got

much

better. Caffeine lasts far longer than we give it credit for. The boost fades within a few hours, but the drug itself lingers. In one study, people who took caffeine six hours before bed

lost more than an hour of sleep

.

Caffeine has a half-life of about five hours. Drink a 100 mg cup of coffee at 8 a.m. and you’ll still have 50 mg in your system at 1 p.m., 25 mg at 6 p.m., and about 12 mg when you’re climbing into bed. Add a second cup at lunch and the numbers stack.

That impact varies from person to person. A liver enzyme called CYP1A2 does most of the work of clearing caffeine, and depending on your genes, yours may run fast or slow.

I’ve heard stories of people who can drink coffee a mere two hours before bed—but I have yet to meet these superheroes.

The other great perk

Caffeine works by

blocking adenosine receptors

. Adenosine is a key chemical in your body that makes you sleepy.

As you go through your day, cells burn energy and

produce adenosine as a byproduct, which builds up in your brain over time

.

With caffeine, you block those receptors, giving you a temporary feeling of energy. But behind the scenes, that adenosine is building up, waiting to hit you once the caffeine wears off. This is why you often get a huge crash, and why the adage “what goes up must come down” so aptly applies to your coffee habit.

After quitting, I’ve noticed a much more stable and sustained level of energy throughout the day. There isn’t this yo-yo effect pulling you up and down as you work. I don’t feel as anxious in general. Some people report dramatic drops in their anxiety levels after kicking caffeine.

Also, my

blood pressure

has improved slightly, and I lost a bit of weight, mainly because I was taking in

lots of extra calories from additives

in my caffeinated drinks.

In hindsight, I’m realizing I was using caffeine to mask the source of my tiredness, rather than address those things directly. When I started examining my habits and the things holding me back, rather than chugging more coffee, I was able to make actual change.

The funny thing is, anytime I’m around people drinking caffeine, I never feel the temptation to join them nor do I judge them.

I suspect they’d like life on this side of the fence if they tried it. What I hope you gain from this is to at least audit your consumption habits. Make sure they haven’t grown out of proportion and become a monstrosity as they did with my caffeine.

Thrive by Sean Kernan is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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