coffee, love, and other drugs
I've been working on my mental health a lot over the past year, and have really started to come around in the last 3 or 4 months. Part of this is from weekly sessions with my awesome therapist Caity and buckets of love and support from my wonderful wife M. Another part of this has been what I can only call a jumbled sampling of different psychiatric medications. Ill write about those lovely experiences some other time. Fortunately the latest regimen is working extremely well, and I feel better than I have in years, by better meaning I feel like my true self again.
The latest experiment in this journey is on the effect of caffeine. I fucking love coffee. I have to have it everyday, even when traveling or the whole day feels whack and cloudy. I love the morning ritual of brewing a fresh hot cup, and that its a clear thing to do first thing in the morning to get the day rolling. I love the first sip and the coziness of a warm mug on a quiet morning before everything has started. But. Butbutbut. My anxiety is just unmanageable at this point. I mean its fine, I go to work and generally hold it together, but oh boy do I feel like it could be so much better. I want more chill, more calm, more quiet. I dont want to think about crashing and dying 3 or 4 times on my drive to work. I currently take a short acting betablocker PRN that kinda helps, it for sure alleviates the physical symptoms for 3-4 hours which is nice; elevated heart rate, adrenaline rushes, heart palpitations. But this doesn't really cut it much for the mental symptoms like racing thoughts, undue stress, daydreaming about terrible things that might happen, etc. And Ive kind realized that Im amped up on caffeine all the time, and have been for years.
I've regularly drank coffee everyday since late middle school, since 13 or so. Early high school I would slam mountain dews and energy drinks and similar toxic sludge. But nowadays Ive dialed back to a thicc cup of coffee in the morning, and another stronk cup of tea in the afternoon. Based on the estimates Ive seen about the content, coffee is about 1.2-2% caffeine by weight. So for my morning pour over, Ive been using 45 grams for a mug for me and M, thats roughly 525-880 mg between the two of us for the pot brewed, call it 600 mg as an estimate. I'll usually just split the brew evenly, so thats 300 mg first thing in the morning. Tea is way vaguer and depends on the steep time and level of toast, but my stuff is likely in the ~150-200 mg range, its pretty dark.
Caffeine half life in the body is 6-10 hours depending on the individual's liver. Call it 6 for me just to be conservative. So I start the day with 300mg, then by 1pm thats halved to about 150 mg, then I have tea and bump it up to 300 mg. So by 7 pm theres still about 150 mg floating around my brain. For context, a mountain dew has 54 mg per 12 oz. Imagine slamming 2 or 3 mountain dews at 7pm, sounds "fun". Now you can still fall asleep with a decent amount of caffeine in your system, I dont regularly stay up past 1030 but reading about others experiences with reducing caffeine, my falling asleep is closer to a crash than a gently getting sleepy throughout the evening. I honestly had no idea that supposed to happen.
Theres also various research publications about how one can still sleep with caffeine in their system but the deepest stages of sleep get disrupted or are much shorter. Which makes people wake feeling unrefreshed and tired, and therefore needing more coffee! and so it goes round and round.
But all of that aside, caffeine gives me more energy but also makes me think more quickly. But I'm starting to suspect it also makes me anxious (racing thoughts, heart palpitations, generally jittery). A lot of others have noted that cutting back or removing caffeine severely reduced or completely eliminated their anxiety. Sounds fun (sincerely this time). So Ive cut back to 2/3 of a cup in the morning and no afternoon tea. From my journal entries this has been pretty profound.
day 1 of less caffeine. definitely less edgy in the morning. and dare i say calmer. A bit sweepy in the afternoon but nothing too overpowering. Also a minor headache but could just also be dehydration.
day 2, slept very well last night. again pretty calm this morning, more than usual. a bit of racing thoughts this morning but thats kinda normal for me. pretty chill so far today, talking about job prospects with my advisor it was actually pretty easy, even when discussing the data limitations and the implications for my dissertation. also my drive was pretty chill, no real nervousness or overly worrying about other driver and if im going too slow or something.
Its not night and day from a few weeks ago but its not not an improvement. And feeling more calm the last two days has been great. Looking forward to more of this and if it continues to improve, or even just more of the feeling I have right now. that would be nice.
-Bruce