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EatCannabisRaw
I have realized recently that I think most of my problems with anxiety in life might have been completely related to caffeine.
What I have realized is its not so much having a hit of caffeine that causes anxiety. Say, having a glass of green tea or whatever...
But there seems to be this slow, gradual build-up of something in the body, which over time just gives me more and more feelings of anxiety. Like a generalized anxiety disorder, with touches of social anxiety (probably because I end up feeling so jumpy that I start fearing interactions, etc)...
Its really insidious.
But if you are struggling with any types of anxiety, one easy thing to do is drop the amount of caffeine you intake a day, week by week, until you get to a level where you feel better.
Its actually really easy that way. This past 8 days I decided to quit cold turkey. Well, actually it was my 5th attempt to quit. Finally was able to go 8 days. But I realized that alot of my anxiety symptoms just sorta went away and vanished. And thats only 8 days. Its hard to notice sometimes the positive benefits, because they can be overshadowed by the nastyyyy withdrawals. Thats why its better to gradually just cut back on caffeine week by week until your not bothered anymore by your anxiety problems (whatever they may be)...
There is actually stuff on the web that talks about this "buildup" effect. It could be caused by different factors but it all comes back to how much caffeine you are using on a daily basis.
Here is one page that talks about some of this:
http://www.doctoryourself.com/caffeine2.html
Although I'm not sure its as complicated as that... its an interesting page.
I just thought I would post this because... I've been experimenting with so many things for a long time... and its just came to my attention now that caffeine really truly seems to have a build-up effect. And I was the type of person that would only use chocolate and yerba mate (the so-called less hyper types of caffeine)...
Recently I was using bakers chocolate (which I found calming), but also drinking yerba mate in the morning...
But yes, over time I started having trouble simply going to sleep at a good time, or not wanting to sleep at all, and definitely not dreaming. Also my anxiety symptoms around people I noticed was getting worse and worse very slowly over time.
Its so slow that you never question caffeine. You just put it off to other factors. For me caffeine build-up causes me to be tense around people. So instead of realizing that I'm just tense because of some toxicity causing some anxiety neurosis...I instead think its something completely different, maybe a problem with me or something which just further compounds the problem. And this is just one of my symptoms.
I believe that there is a build-up of something in the body.
If you google you will learn that genetically, there are fast and slow metabolizers of caffeine. I know for certain I am a slow metabolizer that is one reason I have issues with it...
But I'd imagine a build-up of caffeine could even impact the fast-metabolizers... depending on how much caffeine they have.
To prevent some of these build-up problems, it may be as simple as taking days off caffeine usage. How many days off a week or every 2 weeks or whatever would have to be determined by the person.
But taking so called "green days" (days with only weed, for instance), maybe on the weekends even...without caffeine...might really lower anxiety/tension/irritability problems drastically!...and its actually really easy to do. easier than just quitting all caffeine entirely (since its SO domesticated)
Anyways... for me like I said, the build-up happens slowly it seems, over time...slow enough that honestly, I don't know what is wrong. Hopefully now that I've experimented with this enough I can remember to say... okay... you need to cut back on caffeine... you don't need to go on a SSRI or take a bunch of b-vitamins to get a sense of calm... better to cut out the actual -source- of the anxiety in the first place.
I was previously taking a bunch of B-vitamins, with zinc, magnesium etc... I noticed without those I was really nervous even more... but when I stopped caffeine I suddenly didn't need those anymore.
Going without caffeine completely is hard. It was only until the last few days that I started waking up with more energy... although I think I needed another week to really notice even more benefit. (i just ended my caffeine-free fast at 2 am, drank some green tea-thats why I'm up)...
One time I went without caffeine (all forms) for 8 months. During this time I probably never felt so good in my life. I was very focused, had tons of energy (not the spazzy kind of energy but real), slept GREAT. had great mind-altering dreams every night where I literally felt like I would escape to different dimensions (it was like tripping every night)...
Then again I also went to bed early and woke up early, and was outside in the sun doing physical labor, so I had other things working for me.
Anyways...
My next experiment is to only eat chocolate as my sole form of caffeine. Bakers chocolate (which is 100% cacao)
I am logging all aspects of my behavior and seeing if the bakers chocolate effects me negatively over time. I want to test to see if maybe the chocolate doesn't affect me similarly although I think it will.
Then if I start noticing negative symptoms I will cut back to see what dose I can still have a day, without getting some of that toxic build-up effect.
Basically, at what dose can I have where my body will metabolize the dosage so I don't keep building it up in my body over time...
What I think happens in some people... is although you might only have a few cups of green tea a day... "some" of that green tea doesn't fully get metabolized...so the next day you are actually not just drinking 2 cups of green tea... but say...2.1 cups of green tea...etc etc...
Over time, depending on your metabolism etc etc...you might be going 24/7 with something like 3 cups of green tea metabolites in your system at all times... which will affect your sleep completely... and they say that it only takes a few days of bad sleep to start giving any normal person symptoms of mental disorder...
What I have realized is its not so much having a hit of caffeine that causes anxiety. Say, having a glass of green tea or whatever...
But there seems to be this slow, gradual build-up of something in the body, which over time just gives me more and more feelings of anxiety. Like a generalized anxiety disorder, with touches of social anxiety (probably because I end up feeling so jumpy that I start fearing interactions, etc)...
Its really insidious.
But if you are struggling with any types of anxiety, one easy thing to do is drop the amount of caffeine you intake a day, week by week, until you get to a level where you feel better.
Its actually really easy that way. This past 8 days I decided to quit cold turkey. Well, actually it was my 5th attempt to quit. Finally was able to go 8 days. But I realized that alot of my anxiety symptoms just sorta went away and vanished. And thats only 8 days. Its hard to notice sometimes the positive benefits, because they can be overshadowed by the nastyyyy withdrawals. Thats why its better to gradually just cut back on caffeine week by week until your not bothered anymore by your anxiety problems (whatever they may be)...
There is actually stuff on the web that talks about this "buildup" effect. It could be caused by different factors but it all comes back to how much caffeine you are using on a daily basis.
Here is one page that talks about some of this:
http://www.doctoryourself.com/caffeine2.html
Although I'm not sure its as complicated as that... its an interesting page.
I just thought I would post this because... I've been experimenting with so many things for a long time... and its just came to my attention now that caffeine really truly seems to have a build-up effect. And I was the type of person that would only use chocolate and yerba mate (the so-called less hyper types of caffeine)...
Recently I was using bakers chocolate (which I found calming), but also drinking yerba mate in the morning...
But yes, over time I started having trouble simply going to sleep at a good time, or not wanting to sleep at all, and definitely not dreaming. Also my anxiety symptoms around people I noticed was getting worse and worse very slowly over time.
Its so slow that you never question caffeine. You just put it off to other factors. For me caffeine build-up causes me to be tense around people. So instead of realizing that I'm just tense because of some toxicity causing some anxiety neurosis...I instead think its something completely different, maybe a problem with me or something which just further compounds the problem. And this is just one of my symptoms.
I believe that there is a build-up of something in the body.
If you google you will learn that genetically, there are fast and slow metabolizers of caffeine. I know for certain I am a slow metabolizer that is one reason I have issues with it...
But I'd imagine a build-up of caffeine could even impact the fast-metabolizers... depending on how much caffeine they have.
To prevent some of these build-up problems, it may be as simple as taking days off caffeine usage. How many days off a week or every 2 weeks or whatever would have to be determined by the person.
But taking so called "green days" (days with only weed, for instance), maybe on the weekends even...without caffeine...might really lower anxiety/tension/irritability problems drastically!...and its actually really easy to do. easier than just quitting all caffeine entirely (since its SO domesticated)
Anyways... for me like I said, the build-up happens slowly it seems, over time...slow enough that honestly, I don't know what is wrong. Hopefully now that I've experimented with this enough I can remember to say... okay... you need to cut back on caffeine... you don't need to go on a SSRI or take a bunch of b-vitamins to get a sense of calm... better to cut out the actual -source- of the anxiety in the first place.
I was previously taking a bunch of B-vitamins, with zinc, magnesium etc... I noticed without those I was really nervous even more... but when I stopped caffeine I suddenly didn't need those anymore.
Going without caffeine completely is hard. It was only until the last few days that I started waking up with more energy... although I think I needed another week to really notice even more benefit. (i just ended my caffeine-free fast at 2 am, drank some green tea-thats why I'm up)...
One time I went without caffeine (all forms) for 8 months. During this time I probably never felt so good in my life. I was very focused, had tons of energy (not the spazzy kind of energy but real), slept GREAT. had great mind-altering dreams every night where I literally felt like I would escape to different dimensions (it was like tripping every night)...
Then again I also went to bed early and woke up early, and was outside in the sun doing physical labor, so I had other things working for me.
Anyways...
My next experiment is to only eat chocolate as my sole form of caffeine. Bakers chocolate (which is 100% cacao)
I am logging all aspects of my behavior and seeing if the bakers chocolate effects me negatively over time. I want to test to see if maybe the chocolate doesn't affect me similarly although I think it will.
Then if I start noticing negative symptoms I will cut back to see what dose I can still have a day, without getting some of that toxic build-up effect.
Basically, at what dose can I have where my body will metabolize the dosage so I don't keep building it up in my body over time...
What I think happens in some people... is although you might only have a few cups of green tea a day... "some" of that green tea doesn't fully get metabolized...so the next day you are actually not just drinking 2 cups of green tea... but say...2.1 cups of green tea...etc etc...
Over time, depending on your metabolism etc etc...you might be going 24/7 with something like 3 cups of green tea metabolites in your system at all times... which will affect your sleep completely... and they say that it only takes a few days of bad sleep to start giving any normal person symptoms of mental disorder...
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