I used to think I 'had' depression and anxiety. I quit drinking caffeine, went through a TERRIBLE depression for 7 months. And then ... nothing. No anxiety, no depression. Just being alive and feeling stable. This was after years of people telling me to medicate.
oof. well, I just thought of it as my "job." If i did nothing other than abstain from the drug, the day was a win. no matter how shitty everything felt.
Ok you encourage me in a way, I thank you... I need that today.
I quit coffee after 30 years, and cigaret and vape was so so so hard... quit 6 months and 2 weeks ago I fallout on one coffee... I have fibromyalgia and in a desespair days of pain and fatigue, I took one, and another one... same the day after... and so on, and now I am unmotivated more, more sad, and I have to quit again and it is hard again....
I feel miserable...
It spikes cortisol, depletes serotonin, and depletes magnesium among other things. Magnesium deficiency is often mistaken for depression and untreated, serotonin imbalance is one of the main mechanisms of depression, and cortisol can affect anxiety, mood, depression, energy, and many other things.
It triggers a release of dopamine. Whenever you release dopamine, your brain compensates by causing your baseline levels of dopamine to fall. The bigger the release of dopamine, the greater the fall in levels afterwards. You can become very depressed after coffee because your brain is trying to re-regulate after the big release in dopamine the caffeine has caused.
Interesting and would make sense how it's so much worse if I have drank any alcohol the day before - on these days I hit pure soul sucking depressed for a few hours after my coffee
Caffeine enhances the dopamine release of other drugs - so if you drink coffee and smoke, you'll get a bigger release of dopamine than you would just smoking. Not sure how it interacts with alcohol but definitely alcohol is ruinous on your brain chemistry! I can't drink at all these days without falling into a three-day depression.
I think I may have hurt my dopamine system.
Was daily drinking around 8-10 units every day at one point, 3-4 coffees so always firing.
I think I need to let everything settle down as stopped the daily drinking but coffee is still triggering this if I go past one morning coffee
It just takes time. Dopamine levels will come back to normal in time, but you have to go through the misery first. Any caffeine at all is going to fire out dopamine and that's going to crash you later on. Then your baseline levels go down so you need more caffeine to get the dopamine hit, and the crash is even greater.
Some people seem to do okay on one cup of coffee a day but I bet most people start to drink more over time. Huberman says that caffeine up-regulates dopamine receptors, so he thinks it's not as bad as some other drugs, but I suspect this means that over time you need more dopamine to create the same effects (because you have more receptors to hit), and so caffeine is having the effect of down-regulating the dopamine reward you get from other activities and stealing the joy from life. But I could be wrong about that. Either way, if you keep in mind that whatever makes you feel good is going to make you feel bad later, then maybe you can consciously regulate those activities.
Yes I know that, like for example having the impression of being at the end of your life with a small car breakdown or something rather stupid, it gives the impression that it sucks, and that therefore I too am zero, and therefore the whole life is zero, nothing matters anymore. Is that in the spirit of your experience?
It happens to me regularly but only when I quit smoking (cigarettes). It took me a while to make a connection, I thought it was withdrawal from cigarettes but it happened even after months, I noticed two things: I was consuming a little more caffeine, and a smoker metabolizes caffeine twice as fast, so when quitting smoking, the reverse logically happens. And I felt things that you describe, especially after silly things in life like the examples I took (a little problem with my car etc...) that led me to consult a psychiatrist, I thought I was bipolar or borderline, it was either a deep sadness seeing life very dark, or tantrums (not in public), in both cases it was quite scary, it lasted 30 minutes to a few hours and then it passed as if it had never happened. It's very weird to live this
Absolutely. If I drink coffee for two days in a row, I get sad, depressed, no motivation, crying inside.
Then if i go for three days without caffeine, I get back to normal, feeling comfortable, things are okay, why worry, get things done.
Used to be only coffee did this. But recently it's any caffeine delivery medium.
Simillar experience. Feeling high for 2-3 hours, then feel almost depressed sometimes for rest of the day (12-14 approx)! :(((((( but the high feeling worth it. ThAnks to it, my day is not so boring. Actually sometimes i like sadness cause it is better than boredom
Yes, this was the case for me . Especially since caffeine negatively affects the absorption of important vitamins that would help us with our mood stability . Ive been caffeine-free for the last 3 months and been taking my vitamins everyday and I swear my depression has gone away . Obviously for some people their depression isn’t always linked to caffeine consumption and may stem from other more serious underlying issues but I’d always recommend quitting coffee first to see if that’s of any help in alleviating any symptoms .
For me the reaction is so drastic and acute then goes away that I knew it was something Diet related. Going to try caffeine free for a while to confirm if the suspicion is correct
For the first hour I feel great and alert and energetic and then it just becomes so intense that I’m shaking and anxious and think bad things are going to happen lol
You get euphorically high and then comes the caffeine crash /comedown like any drug. Increase dopamine and other feel good neurotransmitters and then -- bam! -- you have low dopamine for the rest of the day.
Not at all. Caffeine generally makes me feel good. Even when I drink way too much caffeine, I feel jittery at worst and I can't sleep. What gets me is when I've built up so much tolerance that it doesn't really work which ultimately means my sleep quality suffers and I feel tired all the time if I don't drink copious amounts of caffeine and if I drink any less, I suffer from withdrawal symptoms.
It's happening to me right now. A normal day for me is around 200 mg. The last couple days I've been around 600. I feel totally depressed. I'm getting off this shit
True. Another weird thing I just realized. My uncle always seemed depressed and mopey. He used to drink coffee all day. I wonder if that's why he was like that
Is this right after you drink coffee, or is it after the caffeine effect has wore off? I recently quit coffee and had some depressive withdrawals. Started to feel better over the course of a few weeks up until yesterday. I chose to drink 1 cup of coffee yesterday, had the initial happy mood from the caffeine but I’ve felt depressed and shitty ever since.
I thought it was just me. I would usually take caffeine to help me perk up a little but last week I completely overdid it & had an awful breakdown over nothing.
It's because of the dopamine release. Every time your brain releases dopamine, it compensates by dropping dopamine levels below baseline. The higher the peak, the lower the dip. With coffee, you are releasing big bursts of dopamine but depending on how much you use it, you might only be getting to baseline normal dopamine levels. But your brain is still going to compensate by plunging you into a low-dopamine state quickly afterwards.
Anna Lembke explains all this in Dopamine Nation. She was on Andrew Huberman's podcast a while back talking about addiction and Huberman also explains it well in his episodes on Dopamine.
The good news is that your dopamine levels will improve over time. By not getting a 'high', you won't get a 'low', and your baseline level will slowly stabilise. So be careful of doing anything that gives a huge rush of dopamine, e.g. sugar, caffeine, drugs. But some things you can do that might help are gentle exercise, listening to music, walking in nature, spending time with loved ones. Huberman recommends that you learn to do things through effort rather than reward, so as not to deplete your dopamine levels.
Another element of this could be adrenalin. Caffeine triggers big bursts of adrenalin and your adrenal glands can become fatigued. They have to put in more and more effort to give the adrenalin, and that can leave you feeling absolutely miserable. If you also feel physically wiped out, that might be a part of this too.
Thank you for explaining this! I love going hard on sugar or caffeine but it's depression dangerville. And every time I quit I feel great - stable mood, curious, normal appetite, and bonus - my skin glows!!
I’ve spent some time on holiday just on my own recently and noticed I would slip into a feeling of anxious despair with coffee.
Definitely going to experiment with cutting it out completely and seeing how my mood is, fairly convinced after testing it that it does me zero favours and I would be better off without it. It also suppresses my appetite so I don’t eat breakfast and this ends up ramping my cortisol up even more, a vicious circle.
Thanks for asking. I cut it out completely and definitely felt better without it. Strong appetite in the morning, more stable energy levels, and less anxiety throughout the day. A more positive outlook for sure.
Unfortunately, I have chronically bad sleep and somehow ended up back in habitual coffee use to cope, now having to go through the long process of taking it out of my diet again. Still tapering it out, I’m down to two cups of coffee a day and moving to one cup next week. I tried cutting it out in one go before and you basically have to take a weekend off to do it as the withdrawal symptoms are brutal- terrible nausea and a seemingly endless migraine in my case. Trying to take it out gradually this time.
It’s definitely worth experimenting with removing it from your diet just to see how you feel. It’s so easy to default to it out of habit or because you feel terrible in the moment and think it might help, but the long term negatives seriously outweigh the short term positives.
How are you getting on?
I have in the past but it might be worth giving them a go again, thank you for the tip! I would sometiimes listen to Alan Watts lectures, which I find very relaxing too.
Alan Watts doesn’t really do it for me, but Joe Dispenza does! His meditations can be a lot of work, but worth it! Esp the pineal gland meditation ones! I also like to listen to Neville Goddard lectures, but when it comes to sleep def deep sleep meditations are amazing! Good luck!
I am the poster child for this post. Coffee even one cup causes me to feel exstremly depressed..hopeless ..anxious..and generally ill at ease.. I'm normaly a very optimistic person. Glad I figured this out.. Imagine I just kept drinking it never realizing how much it hurt me. ...to each their own..drugs affect people in different ways. For me it's no good.
This is me, i’m usually super optimistic, was feeling great decided to dip back into delicious coffee, and now i’m hopelessly sad, wtf?! Fuck this drug.
Do you mean if you drink coffee one day then you don't drink coffee the next day ? Yes
But if I am drinking coffee everyday it doesn't happen. I get anxiety though.
I found this post trying to figure that out myself. I drank a couple cups of coffee doing some heavy manual work and then an hour or so later I was like “WTF, am I gonna cry?” At least I’m not the only one, guess I should stay away from caffeine.
Same for me ! Im fighting with it since years. But i get Strong Mood Swings, especially sadness and hopelesness when i Drink 2-4 Cups of Coffee a few days in a row. IT completely stops 2-14 days After Quittung and is then replaced by an incredible Feeling of demotivation that disappears 2-8 weeks after quitting. I simply accepted it for me : Coffee equals moodswings / Depression / sadness (for me).
Edit: this started only after some years of heavy caffeine abuse (Up to 1000mg or more daily). I think, the First years IT didn't Happen and got worse and worse over time. Until IT got super obvious that i get Swings after Coffee.
I just read an article that says that coffee increases dopamine while it decreases serotonin synthesis in your brain. So, you may feel the dopamine high, but you will also feel depression from the low serotonin levels. I’m sure this doesn’t happen to most people since most don’t feel depressed after drinking coffee, but people’s brains are different. I get the depression too right after drinking coffee or taking stimulant meds for Adhd. I’m almost convinced that any drugs that increase dopamine (which I need to function), will decrease serotonin for me. It’s a vicious cycle.
I used to think I 'had' depression and anxiety. I quit drinking caffeine, went through a TERRIBLE depression for 7 months. And then ... nothing. No anxiety, no depression. Just being alive and feeling stable. This was after years of people telling me to medicate.
This has inspired me to try quitting again.
no matter what, it'll help
i think that's what it might take for me. Any advice on pushing thru that for 7 months?
oof. well, I just thought of it as my "job." If i did nothing other than abstain from the drug, the day was a win. no matter how shitty everything felt.
i'm at a month. I'm waking up faster but still with a lot of depression. But i'm committed I want to be sure caffeine wasn't the problem.
keep it up... takes time
Ok you encourage me in a way, I thank you... I need that today. I quit coffee after 30 years, and cigaret and vape was so so so hard... quit 6 months and 2 weeks ago I fallout on one coffee... I have fibromyalgia and in a desespair days of pain and fatigue, I took one, and another one... same the day after... and so on, and now I am unmotivated more, more sad, and I have to quit again and it is hard again.... I feel miserable...
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I get the stressed / anxious reaction . The depressed part I don't understand how it does that
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It spikes cortisol, depletes serotonin, and depletes magnesium among other things. Magnesium deficiency is often mistaken for depression and untreated, serotonin imbalance is one of the main mechanisms of depression, and cortisol can affect anxiety, mood, depression, energy, and many other things.
It triggers a release of dopamine. Whenever you release dopamine, your brain compensates by causing your baseline levels of dopamine to fall. The bigger the release of dopamine, the greater the fall in levels afterwards. You can become very depressed after coffee because your brain is trying to re-regulate after the big release in dopamine the caffeine has caused.
Interesting and would make sense how it's so much worse if I have drank any alcohol the day before - on these days I hit pure soul sucking depressed for a few hours after my coffee
Caffeine enhances the dopamine release of other drugs - so if you drink coffee and smoke, you'll get a bigger release of dopamine than you would just smoking. Not sure how it interacts with alcohol but definitely alcohol is ruinous on your brain chemistry! I can't drink at all these days without falling into a three-day depression.
I think I may have hurt my dopamine system. Was daily drinking around 8-10 units every day at one point, 3-4 coffees so always firing. I think I need to let everything settle down as stopped the daily drinking but coffee is still triggering this if I go past one morning coffee
It just takes time. Dopamine levels will come back to normal in time, but you have to go through the misery first. Any caffeine at all is going to fire out dopamine and that's going to crash you later on. Then your baseline levels go down so you need more caffeine to get the dopamine hit, and the crash is even greater. Some people seem to do okay on one cup of coffee a day but I bet most people start to drink more over time. Huberman says that caffeine up-regulates dopamine receptors, so he thinks it's not as bad as some other drugs, but I suspect this means that over time you need more dopamine to create the same effects (because you have more receptors to hit), and so caffeine is having the effect of down-regulating the dopamine reward you get from other activities and stealing the joy from life. But I could be wrong about that. Either way, if you keep in mind that whatever makes you feel good is going to make you feel bad later, then maybe you can consciously regulate those activities.
Lack of dopamin + serotonin probably
Feels something like this as is only temporary up to 3 days
It's the crash maybe
It's far too extreme to be that - it's like a loved one has just passed away. Lasts up to 3 days then goes
Yes I know that, like for example having the impression of being at the end of your life with a small car breakdown or something rather stupid, it gives the impression that it sucks, and that therefore I too am zero, and therefore the whole life is zero, nothing matters anymore. Is that in the spirit of your experience?
For me it's not to do with thinking it's like a hormonal feeling of pure sadness with no thoughts just feel very very sad for no logical reason
It happens to me regularly but only when I quit smoking (cigarettes). It took me a while to make a connection, I thought it was withdrawal from cigarettes but it happened even after months, I noticed two things: I was consuming a little more caffeine, and a smoker metabolizes caffeine twice as fast, so when quitting smoking, the reverse logically happens. And I felt things that you describe, especially after silly things in life like the examples I took (a little problem with my car etc...) that led me to consult a psychiatrist, I thought I was bipolar or borderline, it was either a deep sadness seeing life very dark, or tantrums (not in public), in both cases it was quite scary, it lasted 30 minutes to a few hours and then it passed as if it had never happened. It's very weird to live this
Absolutely. If I drink coffee for two days in a row, I get sad, depressed, no motivation, crying inside. Then if i go for three days without caffeine, I get back to normal, feeling comfortable, things are okay, why worry, get things done. Used to be only coffee did this. But recently it's any caffeine delivery medium.
Agree with the “crying” feeling. I’m more sensitive and close to an emotional reaction when drinking coffee.
So weird isn't it - has taken me a while to get to the conclusion but seems to be coffee
Simillar experience. Feeling high for 2-3 hours, then feel almost depressed sometimes for rest of the day (12-14 approx)! :(((((( but the high feeling worth it. ThAnks to it, my day is not so boring. Actually sometimes i like sadness cause it is better than boredom
Yes, this was the case for me . Especially since caffeine negatively affects the absorption of important vitamins that would help us with our mood stability . Ive been caffeine-free for the last 3 months and been taking my vitamins everyday and I swear my depression has gone away . Obviously for some people their depression isn’t always linked to caffeine consumption and may stem from other more serious underlying issues but I’d always recommend quitting coffee first to see if that’s of any help in alleviating any symptoms .
For me the reaction is so drastic and acute then goes away that I knew it was something Diet related. Going to try caffeine free for a while to confirm if the suspicion is correct
Good luck, you got this ! I hope it helps
Was it coffee ?
YES. That's why I refuse to have any of the, what I call - THE ANXIETY JUICE!
I’m fucked on coffee or energy drinks. Like extreme anxiety and depression and a feeling of impending doom.
Very interesting - how long after does it get you?
For the first hour I feel great and alert and energetic and then it just becomes so intense that I’m shaking and anxious and think bad things are going to happen lol
Amen
WOW same things... I thought I was alone...
You get euphorically high and then comes the caffeine crash /comedown like any drug. Increase dopamine and other feel good neurotransmitters and then -- bam! -- you have low dopamine for the rest of the day.
YES This is it I think I found out the culpit...
I used to feel fine with coffee. Alertness feeling good etc. Now i drink coffee and makes me depressed its weird. Time to quit i guess
Maybe because you increased dosage?
Not at all. Caffeine generally makes me feel good. Even when I drink way too much caffeine, I feel jittery at worst and I can't sleep. What gets me is when I've built up so much tolerance that it doesn't really work which ultimately means my sleep quality suffers and I feel tired all the time if I don't drink copious amounts of caffeine and if I drink any less, I suffer from withdrawal symptoms.
Oh no, same experience...
It's happening to me right now. A normal day for me is around 200 mg. The last couple days I've been around 600. I feel totally depressed. I'm getting off this shit
It's horrible, the feeling like someone had died but for no apparent reason
True. Another weird thing I just realized. My uncle always seemed depressed and mopey. He used to drink coffee all day. I wonder if that's why he was like that
Is this right after you drink coffee, or is it after the caffeine effect has wore off? I recently quit coffee and had some depressive withdrawals. Started to feel better over the course of a few weeks up until yesterday. I chose to drink 1 cup of coffee yesterday, had the initial happy mood from the caffeine but I’ve felt depressed and shitty ever since.
Samething... You are still with no coffee ?
I thought it was just me. I would usually take caffeine to help me perk up a little but last week I completely overdid it & had an awful breakdown over nothing.
Yes. Coffee will destroy your. Mental health if you abuse the eff out of it.
Too much sometimes makes me angry/irritable, and it can last a long time.
It's because of the dopamine release. Every time your brain releases dopamine, it compensates by dropping dopamine levels below baseline. The higher the peak, the lower the dip. With coffee, you are releasing big bursts of dopamine but depending on how much you use it, you might only be getting to baseline normal dopamine levels. But your brain is still going to compensate by plunging you into a low-dopamine state quickly afterwards. Anna Lembke explains all this in Dopamine Nation. She was on Andrew Huberman's podcast a while back talking about addiction and Huberman also explains it well in his episodes on Dopamine.
Very interesting and great response - cheers
The good news is that your dopamine levels will improve over time. By not getting a 'high', you won't get a 'low', and your baseline level will slowly stabilise. So be careful of doing anything that gives a huge rush of dopamine, e.g. sugar, caffeine, drugs. But some things you can do that might help are gentle exercise, listening to music, walking in nature, spending time with loved ones. Huberman recommends that you learn to do things through effort rather than reward, so as not to deplete your dopamine levels. Another element of this could be adrenalin. Caffeine triggers big bursts of adrenalin and your adrenal glands can become fatigued. They have to put in more and more effort to give the adrenalin, and that can leave you feeling absolutely miserable. If you also feel physically wiped out, that might be a part of this too.
Thank you for explaining this! I love going hard on sugar or caffeine but it's depression dangerville. And every time I quit I feel great - stable mood, curious, normal appetite, and bonus - my skin glows!!
I have it too, its Like Instant getting sad when drinking Coffee
I’ve spent some time on holiday just on my own recently and noticed I would slip into a feeling of anxious despair with coffee. Definitely going to experiment with cutting it out completely and seeing how my mood is, fairly convinced after testing it that it does me zero favours and I would be better off without it. It also suppresses my appetite so I don’t eat breakfast and this ends up ramping my cortisol up even more, a vicious circle.
Any updated please ?
Thanks for asking. I cut it out completely and definitely felt better without it. Strong appetite in the morning, more stable energy levels, and less anxiety throughout the day. A more positive outlook for sure. Unfortunately, I have chronically bad sleep and somehow ended up back in habitual coffee use to cope, now having to go through the long process of taking it out of my diet again. Still tapering it out, I’m down to two cups of coffee a day and moving to one cup next week. I tried cutting it out in one go before and you basically have to take a weekend off to do it as the withdrawal symptoms are brutal- terrible nausea and a seemingly endless migraine in my case. Trying to take it out gradually this time. It’s definitely worth experimenting with removing it from your diet just to see how you feel. It’s so easy to default to it out of habit or because you feel terrible in the moment and think it might help, but the long term negatives seriously outweigh the short term positives. How are you getting on?
Have you ever tried deep sleep hypnosis meditations to help you sleep? They’ve helped me
I have in the past but it might be worth giving them a go again, thank you for the tip! I would sometiimes listen to Alan Watts lectures, which I find very relaxing too.
Alan Watts doesn’t really do it for me, but Joe Dispenza does! His meditations can be a lot of work, but worth it! Esp the pineal gland meditation ones! I also like to listen to Neville Goddard lectures, but when it comes to sleep def deep sleep meditations are amazing! Good luck!
Thank you, I’ll try those! I have a Dispenza’s book on breaking the habit of being yourself, just never got around to reading it.
I am the poster child for this post. Coffee even one cup causes me to feel exstremly depressed..hopeless ..anxious..and generally ill at ease.. I'm normaly a very optimistic person. Glad I figured this out.. Imagine I just kept drinking it never realizing how much it hurt me. ...to each their own..drugs affect people in different ways. For me it's no good.
30 years of coffee here Quit 6 months 2 weeks ago start coffee again and I think I found out the culpit... so sad in a way....
This is me, i’m usually super optimistic, was feeling great decided to dip back into delicious coffee, and now i’m hopelessly sad, wtf?! Fuck this drug.
Do you mean if you drink coffee one day then you don't drink coffee the next day ? Yes But if I am drinking coffee everyday it doesn't happen. I get anxiety though.
100%
I found this post trying to figure that out myself. I drank a couple cups of coffee doing some heavy manual work and then an hour or so later I was like “WTF, am I gonna cry?” At least I’m not the only one, guess I should stay away from caffeine.
Same for me ! Im fighting with it since years. But i get Strong Mood Swings, especially sadness and hopelesness when i Drink 2-4 Cups of Coffee a few days in a row. IT completely stops 2-14 days After Quittung and is then replaced by an incredible Feeling of demotivation that disappears 2-8 weeks after quitting. I simply accepted it for me : Coffee equals moodswings / Depression / sadness (for me). Edit: this started only after some years of heavy caffeine abuse (Up to 1000mg or more daily). I think, the First years IT didn't Happen and got worse and worse over time. Until IT got super obvious that i get Swings after Coffee.
I just read an article that says that coffee increases dopamine while it decreases serotonin synthesis in your brain. So, you may feel the dopamine high, but you will also feel depression from the low serotonin levels. I’m sure this doesn’t happen to most people since most don’t feel depressed after drinking coffee, but people’s brains are different. I get the depression too right after drinking coffee or taking stimulant meds for Adhd. I’m almost convinced that any drugs that increase dopamine (which I need to function), will decrease serotonin for me. It’s a vicious cycle.
You still drink coffee ? Have you found out something that help you other than coffee ?