SundrayPeer Pressure (Azul Crescent's silly scribbles)
squaresingerThe good thing is that coffee withdrawals are over quite quickly and don’t have long-term effects.
But getting peer pressured into an addiction by one’s mom of all people is ironic.
There are coffee withdrawals? I drink 2 (weak) coffees a day sometimes 3 and I have multiple times had a week or two without coffee because I forgot. I just drink it for the taste and warmth.
The way caffeine works is that it allows the body to release energy reserves that it usually “locks” away from you. It allows you to tap into these reserves for concentration and makes you feel less tired.
That’s helpful for short-term use, giving you more energy and concentration.
But if you use too much caffeine for too long (“too much” depends on your body and “too long” is a few days), the body adjusts to the caffeine levels and now you have the same energy reserves and concentration that you had without caffeine before. Caffeine thus loses its effect on you and your baseline shifts, so that you need caffeine to be on the same level as before.
If you now stop your caffeine intake, this swings back. Your body thinks you are really tired and you get headaches, bad mood, low concentration and so on, until you either take in more caffeine or you abstain long enough for your baseline to shift back.
That’s why there are people who say they can’t work before they had their first coffee/energy drink. They literally can’t, because if they aren’t on the level of caffeine they are used to, their body tells them that they are super exhausted. This is the caffeine dependency/withdrawal effect.
The way caffeine works is that it allows the body to release energy reserves that it usually “locks” away from you.
I thought it just blocked the receptors for the chemicals that made us feel sleepy, not tapped into some hidden energy.
Correct - my best ELI5.
When you wake up your body starts producing adenosine, which slowly locks into receptors in your brain. As the day goes on, these receptors fill. By the end of the day your receptors are full which tells you you’re tired and need to go to sleep. When you sleep, these receptors clear to start the next day fresh (which is one of the reasons if you don’t sleep well, they don’t all clear and you start the day tired.)
Caffeine fits these receptor sites, preventing the adenosine from locking in and delaying the onset of fatigue. Caffeine half life is about 5-6 hours, which can lead to the “crash” as the free adenosine starts locking into the receptors the caffeine is now making available as it breaks down.
When caffeine is consumed regularly and the brain isn’t detecting the expected adenosine feedback, it responds by creating more receptors. More caffeine is now needed to account for the new receptors. If you skip caffeine with the addition of receptors, the adenosine fills the extra receptors faster and leaves you comparitively more fatigued/with withdrawal symptoms. If you reduce/abstain from caffeine for a few days the extra receptors are reduced and you return to baseline.