(But I never had any mental-health incidents, and I drink a lot of it, more than all people that I personally know.)

I also had a very big life altering mental health incident very recently, drank A LOT of coffee during and I feel it helped, now I am much more calm, "more correct" despite drinking coffee like before.

Based on this I posit that coffee is used by humans to offset unwanted mentality changes, not a cause of unwanted mentality changes.

When I quit I get splitting headaches that are way more severe than a typical tension headache. Completely debilitating without medication. Get them for a week or so (also get the muddier thinking but I could live with that).

After leaving that job, I now consume fairly regularly (for the past decade at least). I can still easily skip days without coffee, though I do prefer having it daily. I literally see no difference in my day to day between having coffee and not throughout my two decades of experience with coffee. I can just as easily fall asleep after a coffee and I rarely feel amped up from a coffee (if I do, then I just stop drinking it). I've certainly never felt anhedonia like many others have mentioned in the comments when I've taken breaks from coffee.

I think it's clear that people have different experiences with substances. Whether mine is a common one or not, I cannot say. But I do have a baseline to compare to and I can legitimately say the only thing that has ever caused me anhedonia was burning out from too much work (during burn out I was still consuming coffee and it didn't improve my mental state at all).

What if long term caffeine use causes some of the adhd symptoms? It interesting to ponder because if I stop using caffeine for a month, some of my adhd symtoms go away completely. I've done stints of complete caffeine breaks, content consumption breaks (one week or more without screens) and I felt amazing and alive. The first couple of days of using caffeine feels amazing but then I feel dead inside again and live like a robot. So in my mind, caffeine is my main target when I try to adjust my routine/behaviours.

I do have a professional diagnosis for ADHD.

Fantastic book. I first encountered it...in a coffee shop :) Read a chapter and immediately bought the book for myself.

Edit: this is especially relevant here, as the study found similar effects in decaffeinated coffee drinkers. So the effects they observed, if real, are not related to caffeine.

It likely was a contributor, insofar as the incident had poor sleep as a contributing factor, and I do know with some certainty the caffeine habit had been causing some (likely not all) of my sleep problems. I can also tell you the very worst day of that incident was when I mistakenly consumed caffeine again prior to being recovered enough for that to be safe; that was a horrible glimpse at what that drug can do to you when you're in an already very unstable state. Caffeine definitely can aggravate all kinds of symptoms, even when you're in a relatively stable state. It's a stimulant, after all.

But I think caffeine consumption is… only one factor of many in causes of that incident, and doesn't deserve any special blame. The relevance of the mental health incident here is really that it gave me a chance and a good reason to abruptly stop, and therefore also the opportunity to see what getting the brain back into the caffeination ritual again feels like. (I've tried taking it for a few consecutive days more than once since then, and not particularly enjoyed it. I've also tried it on single isolated days.)

Going caffeine-free made it much easier to lose weight as I have far less cravings for high carbs and sugar now, presumably this is related to the impulsivity impact talked about in the paper.

Going caffeine-free also made me very depressed for a while with severe anhedonia, this lasted way longer (like 3-4 months) than one would generally expect for caffeine withdrawal symptoms.

I had seemingly become so used to the increased dopamine signaling while buzzed on caffeine that my brain was a mess for a rather extended period of time as it got used to not having it.

Overall I view quitting as a positive for me, but I'd warn anyone thinking about doing it to do it carefully and closely monitor their mental health. AFAIK the impacts of quitting can be quite different for different people, so my experience may differ than that of others, but I had no idea how much of a (temporary) mental health crash quitting caffeine could cause until I experienced it.

Turns out I needed stimulants from time to time, just not that one.

I'm pondering getting a coffee machine at home. 400 EUR is not a sizable investment and one I'd have forgotten about it 3 months but I'm getting cold feet when it gets to committing.

Americano coffee definitely picks me up and is a full net positive for me. But that's only if I drink 2-3 times a week. Not sure how it's going to be if I start getting it every day.

Highly unlikely that 2-3 times a week will last though - either religiously stick to once a week or be open to drinking it daily.

What's good about the aero-press and the French press btw? I am only just trying to understand the landscape.

Americano means nothing - its just diluted strong coffee (eg espresso, moka pot). You probably need to learn how much actual coffee your body can handle.

I handle very little, so have a 1 cup moka pot which takes 9-10g of ground coffee. And that's pushing my upper limit. My body can usually handle better a very unsatisfying 6-7g brewed. I need to find some good decaf... (though I have a line on Laurina coffee, which has half as much caffeine. Hopefully I can get some soon).

French press is just a really easy way to get a great cup of coffee. You don't even need one - you could just make cowboy coffee (grounds in hot water) and carefully decant it out at after 5-10 min. Look up James Hoffman french press method. His aeropress series is good too.

You also need to learn that all of this stuff that everyone says is just drug addict self-talk coping. You only actually get a boost at first, and then your body adapts and is in caffeine deficit and is just trying to get back to baseline with more coffee.

The healthiest way to do any of this would be to try as you said (but likely unsuccessfully) to limit your coffee intake to 2-3 days a week, so that you might actually get a kick rather than just sustain your addiction. Once a week as a special occasion might be more successful. It should be treated as a healthy person treats alcohol...

I'm not even joking with all this drug addict talk.

How big is your moka pot? A "4 cup" Bialetti takes around 16-18g of coffee, which isn't a lot.

No matter how dilute your end product is, the amount of caffeine consumed will roughly be about the same. But I guess diluting it means you take longer to consume all that caffeine.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mokapot/comments/1p61tgb/how_much_c...

Ps Check out moka pot voodoo on YouTube, if you haven't already. I almost never make a bad brew now (except for literally just now, but was with a new bean, roasted darker than usual. Will grind finer next time).

The moka pot would be better if you have easy access to cooking facilities (the stainless versions are also easier to clean, and work on induction).

The AeroPress would be better if you only have access to hot water.

It's too concentrated.

An Aeropress is less concentrated in my experience, and it's pretty easy to use. I prefer iced coffee unless it's cold out, so I fill the collector with ice before I brew. The melted water dilutes it nicely, in my opinion.

Get an Aeropress, or Hario Switch, or Clever dripper. A kettle and some filters. For beans buy from roasters that do light/meduim roasts, and print a recent roasting date on the package/website. The only expensive item should be a grinder, look at 1zpresso Q/Air/X or Kingrinder K6 if you want to limit price.

What I am mostly looking for is some sort of an easy access to a diluted coffee like the Americano, really. I am OK with buying 1-2kg of beans because I am fairly sure that's going to last me 3-6 months. Cleaning the machine I've done in offices -- 3 minute job.

But any more commitment just sounds tiring. I am not a coffee connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination. But light caffeine doses absolutely do help me in very measurable ways. I need easy access to that.

Buying a coffee machine is not a big commitment obviously, I am just afraid I'll deem the experiment unsuccessful in a month and then I'll have a nice machine lying around doing nothing that I can't easily sell.

This style, pour over machine that grinds itself, but uses all water you put in, so it's not fully automatic.

It's automatic enough, but also very cheap. Maybe even ⅒ of a price of a fancy espresso machine. And you can add "too much" water (than the setting you set) to make lighter coffee.

(Buy used for even better value. Hand grinders last forever.)

For a similar coffee with more manual work, get a Chemex

But I have to agree with others: for my diluted espresso desires, I used (and still have) an Aeropress for years and it's simply fantastic. Low cost, almost zero maintenance, good results. Very similar output to an americano though lower on crema.

That's the main reason I'm leaning towards Delonghi Magnifica Start. It has a button for Americano. I tried moka pot coffee + diluting it with hot water. It's not the same. :(

(That's technically an Australian long black but I like it better - it leaves the crema on top.)

I have a very nice grinder: a solis caffissima digital coffee grinder. It is available under a different brand name in the US I think.

I make filter coffee with a very basic earthenware filter holder with melitta high quality yet very normal filters and sometimes I mix it up with an aeropress which offers a different type of taste because of the low acidity way of making coffee. I just drip the coffee into a nice thermos so I can make 4 cups in one go and just pour from the thermos.

My coffee is much nicer than I get in most places, both professional and at homes and it doesn’t cost me a lot in effort, money and, very importantly, workspace footprint.

Espresso machines require a lot of space and maintenance and trouble to make.

Having said all this, I am quite intrigued about all the stories about the negative effects of coffee. I just thought it was about influencing sleep, but I had never thought about the memory and mood effects. I will study this some more in the coming months.

Caffeine makes me feel like I'm overclocked, but Adderall lets me run tasks async. The latter is so much more preferable for dealing with the demands of life.

Medicate at 4pm, then I know I can effortlessly interleave chores, family time, social obligations, and my own creative pursuits. Otherwise I'd spend my evenings on the couch stuck trying to offload unsolved problems of the workday.

Vigorous exercise accomplishes the same thing, but I can't always make that happen "as-needed".

I just need something like the Americano every now and then really.

I agree on vigorous exercise completely. My last two jobs have been (well, the current one still is) hugely demanding and that led to me dropping a lot of exercise. Still trying to understand why and to undo that because I gained back 5kg (sigh).

Tried Earl Grey too. It's actually awesome but I must be careful; easy to go above a certain dose that just tires me and makes me crash.

One thing I'll try before considering the coffee machine really seriously: theacrine pills. I'll give them 2-3 weeks and will make a decision.

My stimulant of choice now is low-dose nicotine patches which I feel is extremely underrated, and demonised because of the effects of smoking and vaping. Mind you: I am an ex-smoker and I am quite aware of how strong the addiction can be, yet pure nicotine is the most mellow stimulant there is.

It's been 2 years now since I replaced my ADHD medication with nicotine and I haven't felt the need to increase the dosage. It's cheaper, lasts MUCH longer, doesn't cause anxiety and it doesn't push you around like amphetamine.

YMMV.

Also positive in the long-term for me. Fewer digestive issues, less spiky dopamine sensitive or impulsiveness and performance during the day, better memory. I wish it weren't so.

But damn was the 3-6 months of anhedonia awful. I still feel pangs of it.

The ensuing several months were some of the worst in my life (many confounding variables) missing coffee, feeling anhedonic, and inadequately caffeinated/lucid to tackle my problems.

That's surprising to me. In my case one of the reasons I discontinued it (emotional effects aside) was mild but consistent weight loss. The stimulant part of the effect seems to suppress my appetite quite effectively although at least part of that is likely indirect due to sustained task focus leading me to skip meals.

I think this is one of those YMMV things with caffeine.

It is an appetite suppressant in general but for me it seems to cause a significant rebound effect.

On caffeine I would eat less early in the day (when I was most using caffeine) but then I would get severe cravings for carbs/sugar later at night.

Without the caffeine everything is nice and evened out and I feel way more in control of my eating habits without really trying.

So yes, coffee is an appetite suppressant, but 6-8 hours later your appetite rebounds. Many people don't feel this effect simply because they have frequent-enough meals and/or coffees to stay ahead of the blood sugar crash. If you get into intermittent fasting, it's pretty easy to notice. In my quest to fix my metabolism, I am constantly aware that my morning cup of coffee is the biggest reasons why I get ravenous around 5pm.

You might want to look at this pathway, and the enzymes, and the cofactors for these enzymes:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pingyuan-Gong/publicati...

Tyrosine 3-monooxygenase (TH) needs Iron

Aromatic-L-amino-acid decarboxylase (DDC) needs B6

I think caffeine is legitimately more disruptive and addictive than is commonly acknowledged. It creates quite a life-style loop where you need it for [drive, energy, mood, alertness] as a fix to many of the issues it causes, lol. Caffeine is such a widely used drug yet doesn't seem to have been studied that much. It's fascinating to me how the drugs that are socially acceptable seem completely arbitrary. Like alcohol (which in terms of addictiveness isn't far behind the most addictive drugs.)

In tables that compare the most addictive drugs, you know what drug is always missing yet seems to be consumed more widely than any other recreational drug on the planet: caffeine. This is funny though. It may be difficult to actually do high quality, comparative research on caffeine because to do so you would need to find people who don't already consume caffeine and I suspect that is a harder problem than it sounds.

By the way: the set of people who have never been effected by caffeine shrinks even further if you consider whether the mother consumed it during pregnancy.

I recently traveled and didn't have coffee for more than a week. No change I could feel, no craving, nothing. But one of my ex-gf was quite sensitive on many things, had frequent headaches, low blood pressure and coffee was helping with those visibly. So YMMV.

After reevaluating your comment and my experience I declare that coffee is not always a cause of mental health incidents, sometimes it might help people.

But then I found out I can drink coffee just fine, even 5 cups per day.

Now I'm thinking it was the artificial sweetener.

I couldn't drink coffee or alcohol during those 4 weeks, and notice that I didn't get any migraines after those 4 weeks even when I, for the past 12 years, knew exactly how I got them reliably.

I didn't make sense to me to keep drinking coffee because the benefits of coffee which for me was mostly ritual and taste, didn't outweight the weight of having a migraine for sure if I slept a minute less than 8hrs.

Mind you, I'm talking about a cup almost everyday with milk, ice coffee in the mornings.

Very interested.

I am a regular coffee drinker, mostly limited to very early morning (e.g. 5-7 am). Also consume celsius here and there when I want to minimize stomach disruption in the morning (e.g. I am about to run).

But have also used THC in the past (no longer, major anxiety inducer for me). Alcohol like so many people. And more recently went on an assisted MDMA/ketamine therapy journey that continues to amaze me in its impact (in all good ways).

Asking as I am reducing caffeine slowly right now and curious what folks are seeing as differences on/off in real terms.

I have better mood, presence of mind and working memory in the morning, especially compared to caffeinated peers. I'm also a lot more aware of when I've woken up from a bad night's sleep (see paragraph 5).

I have much less mid-day dysregulation/impulses compared to caffeinated peers. No predictable afternoon slump either – but a rich lunch will always leave me foggy, lol. If it's the weekend, I'll often join my young kid for the afternoon nap and fall asleep in minutes – the 30-45 min nap usually feels amazing.

Coffee really feels to me now like the psychoactive substance it is. I've had anxiety issues for other reasons in recent years, and today a cup of caffeinated coffee will often trigger a good level of anxiety if I'm not physically active during the peak. The physical symptoms of both are very similar. If I'm moving about, it usually feels good, like something hyped me up, but the sensation comes on its own instead.

Anxiety greatly changes my sleep needs, and caffeine and alcohol both hid these sensations in the past, enough that I suspect I didn't have the interoception (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoception) to consciously notice and adjust in the past, which would leave me stuck or spiraling in terms of maintenance/recovery, probably for weeks at a time.

In recent days (pretty low anxiety! knock on wood) I have sleep that's almost 2hrs shorter per night, waking up naturally. That came very progressively (sleep quality), then very suddenly (lower needs). Also a great gain, though I also aged a decade and that must contribute as well.

Note that I faded out caffeine by progressively substituting for decaf. No headaches this way (from a peak of ~4 cups a day, I would say?). It sounds like you're doing the same, which I really recommend! There's no need to self-flagellate on top of what's usually a major habit adjustment.

But the effect quickly drops to almost nothing very rapidly. I started having caffeine 3 out of 7 days because having a low caffeine tolerance was too annoying. One coke, tea, chocolate would completely destroy my sleep.

My cognition in my 40s is now better than it was at 26, at 37 before I started this routine I thought my engineering career was over, the post lunch crash, the mental tiredness, just terrible.

The fact that we build our brain work spaces so distant from physical movement is bad for our mental health, our soles, our souls, and doing untold economic damage to our country (the u.s. in my case.), I tried lunch walks for years and it's just too fucking boring, cycling is great, after work I rollerblade and it's so mentally engaging and distinct it obliterates the after work fog.

Ain't this the truth. It's a ridiculous way to build a society.

Much less anxious now too, but that's more likely due to ADHD meds.

Once drank alcohol free champagne, while adjusting meds. I was on 27mg Concerta - long release methylphenidate. It turned out to be too much for me. But, oh boy, when i realized that the champagne was alcohol free, but white tea based - had to leave the birthday party I was at and just walk off the coming panic attack. Compared to that - coffee on lisdex will either just feel a little speedy and then give slight tiredness, or (and I don't understand why and when) give an effect comparable to high dose of methylphenidate - wired and cut of my feelings.

This "cut off feelings" state was why I chose lisdex instead. Not because I was cut off after coffee, but because being cut off of feelings was a regular side effect of methylphenidate for me.

But it's all super personal and case by case. Especially people that also have autism spectrum traits, should be aware that stimulants can work strong on them. So don't suggest yourself with my body's reaction and patiently and compassionately go through the meds adjustment process yourself.

I jog every day and enjoy vs I don't exercise but I occasionally sprint and I feel awful after.

coffee is caffeine plus THOUSANDS of compounds interacting with each other and your body: some of them are protective for the heart for example.

That's why synthetic caffeine is bad, while coffee is overall good in moderation.

That's why more people die from energy drinks than from coffe in coffeeshop hehe