Quitting nicotine and thebean
Chained to cigarettes and coffee? Herbs can help you keep your resolution to break free
January/February 2001
By Michael Castleman
One morning in 1992, I looked in the mirror. I
didn’t like what I saw. I saw a substance abuser. I couldn’t
survive without my drug, couldn’t get up in the morning without it,
couldn’t be productive, creative, or happy without it. Wherever I
went, I had to have a source of my drug nearby. If I didn’t, I’d
become anxious, frantic, impossible. Clearly, my need was out of
control. I knew it was time to quit coffee. But how?
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My wife felt the same way I did. She, too, was a java junkie who
wanted to quit. We both loved the warm, rich taste of coffee, but
the caffeine made us nervous and irritable and gave both of us
insomnia. We decided to quit, cold turkey, and switched to
decaf.
It was a very bad idea. We’d heard that quitting caffeine could
cause a headache, but we had no inkling how severe and persistent
the headache would be. Our withdrawal headaches lasted for days. In
addition, we felt sluggish, constipated, befogged, miserable. We
couldn’t take it. We ran back to the bean.
Life without java’s jolt
Quitting caffeine didn’t exactly turn me into Buddha,
but it lengthened my fuse considerably. I had more patience,
especially with my kids.
Shortly after our abortive attempt to quit, the first major
study of caffeine withdrawal was published by The New England
Journal of Medicine. Johns Hopkins researchers studied sixty-two
healthy adults who drank an average of two-and-a-half cups of
brewed coffee per day—about what my wife and I consumed. The
participants completed a battery of physical and psychological
tests and were then placed on a caffeine-free diet (no coffee, tea,
coffee-flavored yogurt, caffeinated soft drinks, or chocolate;
Excedrin and other over-the-counter drugs containing caffeine were
also banned).
Some of the study participants were given caffeine pills in a
dosage of 235 mg, the equivalent of about two cups of brewed
coffee. The rest were given placebos. When retested after two days
and after four days, the group taking the caffeine pills showed no
changes in physical or mental function, but the poor suckers who
got placebos experienced the same withdrawal effects that had
plagued my wife and me: severe, persistent headache, fatigue,
constipation, anxiety, and depression.
I found the study reassuring. My wife and I were not wimps. We
were not latte losers. We were just addicts—two otherwise normal
people up against the withdrawal syndrome associated with an
addictive drug. We were like many people who decide to make a
positive change in their lives, but don’t know how to do it.
The researchers suggested that people interested in quitting
caffeine taper off gradually rather than stop abruptly to minimize
withdrawal syndrome. So my wife and I tried again.
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