I strongly second this. I got into the habit of consuming lots of caffeine and assuming my anxious state was baseline. Aggressively cutting out coffee was a really interesting and useful experience.

If you love coffee and don't want to remove it from your life, try taking some L-Theanine with your morning cup of coffee. For me, it eliminates anxiety and jitters without tempering the cognitive benefits of coffee.

Worth noting that Coffiest (Soylent's latest drink product) contains both caffeine and L-theanine. Their ratio is questionable (150mg caffeine, 75mg L-theanine), but subjectively I have found it to be a great way to boost my productivity in the morning, and I've never noticed jitters or anxiety despite the (relatively) high dose of caffeine. I also prefer the taste to regular Soylent -- no "wet cereal" aftertaste, and you can add a bit of sugar or chocolate syrup if it's too bitter for you.

Or enjoy a cup of sencha or gyokuro which comes with caffeine and L-Theanine. It is a lovely combination indeed. :)

Cannot recommend this enough! Upton tea carries really a really good sencha called 'Japanese Super Sencha Kamakura' and their Gyokuro is brilliant too.

Never hurts to carry around a few 200mg L-Theanine capsules though.

I got some theanine from a a bulk sit because it was cheap, but probably has a low portion of L-theanine vs D-theanine... may need to look into fixing that since the effects don't seem to be as good as when I tried Suntheanine...

One thing I like to do is with anything addicting/I deem as necessary, every now and then I cut it out of my life for a duration. It helps increase my independence by avoiding decisions based on what I misbelieve are necessary.

I'm not sure if it's applicable to all, just something that I feel helps me a lot.

I did this for a while but got sick of withdrawal symptoms (my body seems to be hypersensitive in this regard), so I just stopped all together. Most recently cut out sugar. I feel so good now. I can't believe how many foods I was eating that had direct negative effects on my body.

You say "foods" - plural. Did you cut other things out besides sugar?

Yea, a ton. Turns out I'm celiac, so gluten was the first thing I cut (to solve digestion issues and sinus headaches). My nose cleared up significantly, but not totally. Years of eating gluten messed up my small intestine so I have digestive issues with high fructose food (HFCS and some fruit), so I cut out HFCS soda, that helped a lot. Next was caffeine to try to correct my sleep schedule, it helped and it also helped clear up my nose. I was still getting sinus headaches with all that and tracked it down to pepperonis in a gluten free pizza I was eating (from a dedicated restaurant), turns out it was sodium nitrite which is found in many deli meats and smoked foods. Most recently was sugar once I noticed withdrawal symptoms, sinus headache, vomiting, etc. when cutting it out. I was on and off it a few times, but the last time was a really brutal headache, so I just said no more.

I've given up and started again on all of these multiple times to confirm each one. My body seems to have a sensitive withdrawal reaction. I notice symptoms if I eat most of those foods too regularly and then mess up the schedule, and a bad reaction if I stop all together within a day or so. I'm super curious about it medically but don't really have time to work with a doctor and learn why all these foods cause similar reactions. I'll just chalk it up to celiac.

Given other people's stuffy noses and bad digestion, I believe a lot of people have foods that are no good for them. I highly recommend elimination diets. The less I eat, the better I feel. I discovered decongestants a year or two ago, which makes life a lot more bearable when I mess up and eat the wrong thing, but I don't want to rely on that stuff to feel normal when I could just not eat the garbage I was eating.

Any strategies to cut? If I don't drink my morning cup, I get bad headaches around the evening and basically stop functioning.

The painful way is pretty simple! Wait until you have a few days you can be "down" and just go cold turkey. I find I do OK the first couple of days, then get a pretty bad headache. When that's gone I'm back to normal.

This. The withdrawal symptoms of coffee usually last for about a week. The thing that is perhaps most surprising is that after that week you'll also feel less tired. Turns out that while most people consider coffee as a remedy to tiredness, it's the coffee itself that actually makes you more tired, so you need more and more of it, just like any other addictive drug.

I'd like to point out that gradually decreasing the amount of caffeine intake works very well and is a lot less painful.

Caffeine is a mild stimulant, but in the evening the main effect is probably blocking your adenosine reuptake sites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Pharmacology You can probably get a similar effect by drinking a small amount of caffeine in the early afternoon instead of a large amount in the morning. I mentioned this in another comment, but slowly decreasing your caffeine intake over time lets your body adjust with pretty minimal symptoms.

green tea matcha is a good alternative. 1 cup of green tea matcha has 1/3 of caffeine as a coffee cup. Since it is packed with L-theanine, it will also delay ingestion of caffeine, and you will feel less the typical crash

Wrote a quick post about coffee alternatives https://dailyhealthpoints.wordpress.com/2016/10/24/healthy-a...

Drink a lot more water, consistently throughout the day just before cutting and after. It won't stop the headaches completely but it will help.

It will suck a lot for a few days, bad headaches, might even throw up. For me, I was in slowmo for about a month. I normally work on stuff when I get home and for about a month I would go home and just sit around. After that I was over it and feel much better because of it. This was going from drinking 4+ of the Mexican Coca Cola bottles each day. That stuff is just a trap.

I gently titrated down by replacing coffee with a pre-workout drink (powder mixed in water). This allowed me to tightly control my caffeine intake and reduce it gently every few days until it was almost zero. I have been off of caffeine entirely for almost 15 months now. It has really improved my sleep.

Try cutting down gradually, eventually getting to a single cup in the morning. Supplement with decaf. Then just decaf. I've found I miss coffee more than cafeene now so I still drink decaf. Difference is I can sleep and don't feel the awful stress anymore.

I cut down my caffeine intake to one shot of espresso per day. (A single cup of coffee has quite a bit more caffeine than a shot.) Also, decaf helps!

As with any drug lower your dosage over time then quit.

Also, your morning fog may simply be early withdrawal symptoms.

When I was doing more physical jobs than now (also very stressfull), my collegues were amazaed at how I could handle the fatigue and anxiety that well without taking coffee. I still believe that actual abstinence from caffeine is the answer to many like issues

I second this. When I am under stress, the caffeine heightens the feeling of anxiety and on really stressful days, I can feel my heart pounding...