~A Place For Someone Who Gets It~

Galileo’s Middle Finger

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I went from consuming NO caffeine, to slowly escalating to around 150-300mg of caffeine a day to keep up with sleep issues, to suddenly stopping cold turkey when I flew out to the middle of nowhere and couldn’t get more and it was straight up a solid 5-6 days of thinking I had the flu

Nausea, spins, major fatigue, and some seriously heinous headaches

It was so bad that after two weeks without I swore I’d never pick up an energy drink again and made an appointment with a doctor to fix my sleep issues

Caffeine is a

Drug

And don't get me wrong, I love drugs. I think they're rad. I think there should be fewer barriers between most drugs and adults using them.

However, something that I think is fundamentally immoral is giving someone a drug without telling them:

That it's a drug

What the full possible effects of the drug are including side effects

What the withdrawal effects are like

And society treats caffeine like it's not a drug. We act like it's not a stimulant. We sell it on street corners. We sell in schools, to children.

We don't tell you what the withdrawals are like. We don't even acknowledge that there will be any, even though they can be severe.

In addition to what OP listed, other possible withdrawal symptoms include:

Hand Tremors

Anxiety

Irritability

Brain Fog

Low Mood

Insomnia (yes, counterintuitive as it may seem this is common withdrawal symptom)

Muscle Pain/Stiffness

Caffeine is a stimulant drug that causes physical dependency quite rapidly. The withdrawal symptoms can persist for days to months.