How I Quit Caffeine And Did Not Die In The Process

I’ve known Lindsay Jones for twenty years, and as far back as I can remember, he always had a bottle of diet soda in his hand. I mean always. So when he recently told me that he stopped drinking soda, I picked my chin up off the floor, gave him a big high-five, and then asked him to share his story with you.

Lindsay is a composer/sound designer for theatre, film and television. With over 500 shows to his credit,ย Lindsayโ€™s work has been heard in most regional theatres in the United States, as well as numerous shows Off-Broadway. International theatre credits include: Royal Shakespeare Company (England), Stratford Shakespeare Festival (Canada), as well as shows in Austria, Scotland, South Africa and Zimbabwe.ย Lindsayย has scored many film and television shows including The Brass Teapot for Magnolia Pictures (currently in theatres) and A Note Of Triumph for HBO Films, which won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Documentary, Short Subject. Awards include: 5 Joseph Jefferson Awards (with 16 nominations), 2 Ovation Awards (with 3 nominations), LA Critics Circle Award, and 2 Drama Desk Award nominations. You can hear his work at LindsayJones.comย or check out his page on Facebook.

It was 2:30am. I had just driven 2 1/2 hours to my home after a 16-hour work day. I was exhausted, and as I walked up to the front door of my house, all I could think is that soon I would finally be able to sleep.

Thatโ€™s when I saw this sign on my front door.

New Rules

It said: New Rules

  1. No soda
  2. No going out of the house to buy soda
  3. Drink water or juice or milk
  4. If you drink soda, there will be a punishment

No. Dear god, no. This cannot be happening. Can it?

Let me back up for a second. My name is Lindsay Jones and Iโ€™m a composer and sound designer for theatre and film. Iโ€™m very fortunate to be working in a job that I love and constantly traveling all over the country to do it. I have an incredibly intense schedule that keeps me working around the clock every single day, and for the past 20 years, I have drunk an incredible amount of diet soda in order to keep up with that schedule. For about 15 years, I drank 8-14 cans of Diet Pepsi every day, and then for the last few years, I switched over to Diet Mountain Dew and drank the same amount.

Now, I know what youโ€™re thinking: Wow, thatโ€™s a lot of soda. Well, youโ€™re right, it is. But, as I said, my schedule is extremely intense and I honestly felt that I could not keep it up if I didnโ€™t have that soda. Besides, itโ€™s my only vice. I donโ€™t drink. Iโ€™ve never smoked a cigarette. Iโ€™ve never done any illicit drugs. Come on. Canโ€™t I have just one vice?

I have two wonderful children: Huck, whoโ€™s 9, and Sadie, whoโ€™s 5. They have never been fond of my soda habit and if I ever try to kiss one of them after drinking soda, they would cry out โ€œEW! SODA BREATH!โ€ and wipe my kiss off. All right, so drinking soda has its downsides.

Which brings me back to my front door at 2:30am. I stood there completely still, just reading the sign over and over. This is a joke, right?

As I walked in the door and turned on the lamp, I saw that it wasnโ€™t.

Then I looked up at the window.

And over to my chair at the dining room table

The bulletin board where my daughter puts her artwork.

Under the TV.

The refrigerator.

The kitchen trash can. (Really, the trash can?)

They were EVERYWHERE. What happened here? All I wanted was a day off, and instead Iโ€™m getting an intervention from a 9-year-old and a 5-year-old!

The next day, I sat down with my kids and asked them why they did this.

โ€œWell, we were talking to Mommy at dinnerโ€ Huck said, โ€œand Sadie asked her why she didnโ€™t drink soda any more.โ€

โ€œAnd Mommy said she didnโ€™t because it wasnโ€™t good for her to drinkโ€ said Sadie.

โ€œAnd I said that you still drink soda every day, and how come you still drink it all the time if itโ€™s not good for you?โ€ said Huck.

โ€œAnd thatโ€™s when Mommy said weโ€™d have to ask you thatโ€ said Sadie.

Aha. Yes, well. I meanโ€ฆ I drink soda becauseโ€ฆ I need it. I mean, I donโ€™t NEED it, I guess. But it really helps. I mean, I like it.

โ€œBut itโ€™s not good for you.โ€

Well, no. I mean, itโ€™s not BAD for you. I mean, OK, yes, itโ€™s not great for you and there are a lot of things out there that say itโ€™s bad for you, but those studies are not totally conclusive and the people who make the soda seem to think itโ€™s fine for you.

โ€œDad.โ€ Huck said. โ€œCome on. Itโ€™s not good for you. Right?โ€

There was a long silence.

No. Itโ€™s not good for you.

โ€œAll right! So, no more sodas for you!โ€

WAIT A MINUTE, WAIT A MINUTE. Itโ€™s not that easy. Quitting caffeine is extremely difficult. Iโ€™ve only tried to do it once before when I was in the hospital with pneumonia, and to this day, I canโ€™t tell you which is worse: having a 105 degree fever with pneumonia or quitting caffeine.

โ€œBut you canโ€™t drink soda. And you hate coffee and tea.โ€

I KNOW, I know. OK, look. Give me a week, OK? Give me one week to start drinking less soda and figure out some way to do this. Thereโ€™s gotta be a way. Right?

The children agreed to a week and that night, I started to do some research. All right, thereโ€™s got to be an easy way to quit caffeine by now, right? I mean, itโ€™s 2012. We can do anything now. So I get on Google and type in โ€œeasy way to quit caffeineโ€. This is what came back:

ONE ARTICLE. ONE! And guess what it says is the easy way to quit caffeine? DRINK LESS CAFFEINE! You have got to be kidding me, man.

Look, quitting caffeine is impossible! Itโ€™s like weeks of incredible headaches and falling asleep during the day! Iโ€™ll be in such a bad mood that no one will want to come near me! Iโ€™m in the middle of rehearsing three shows at the same time, and Iโ€™m working an average of 18 hours a day! I canโ€™t deal with quitting caffeine while doing that! Iโ€™ll never make it!

I decided that I needed some help. I was convinced that I was seriously risking my health by trying to do this. Quitting caffeine would be such a huge jolt to my system, who knew what would happen as a result?

But who would I call? I mean, no one seemed to have any answers as far as caffeine. And then I started thinking about it. Maybe it was more than just caffeine? I mean, I eat almost every meal on the run, a lot of it being really crappy food, and thatโ€™s not exactly good for you either.

Suddenly, it hit me. Ifย  Iโ€™m gonna change this soda habit that Iโ€™ve had for 20 years, I might as well change the other habits that go along with it, and thatโ€™s the food I eat. Otherwise, itโ€™s just gonna feel weird eating the same stuff I always do, and not having the drink I always have with it. I did not want to get halfway through this and then give up.

So, I did some more research and found the Akasha Center For Integrative Medicine in Santa Monica. Itโ€™s a place where theyโ€™re all doctors who have PhDs but they also have a background in alternative medicine as well. Most importantly, they have this cleanse diet that they sponsor, and I thought AHA! This is what I need right here! A change of diet with actual adult supervision. And Iโ€™ll betcha a hundred bucks that theyโ€™ll know some holistic way to kick caffeine in no time flat. Right?

So I made an appointment, and met with this very nice doctor, and I came right to the point when he asked me why I was there.

โ€œIโ€™m here to quit caffeine.โ€

โ€œOooh, really? So, what, you have like a lot of coffee?โ€

โ€œNo. Diet Mountain Dew.โ€

โ€œAnd coffee?โ€

โ€œNo, just Diet Mountain Dew. I drink it all day and all night.โ€

โ€œWow. OK. So, like, how many do you usually drink in a day?โ€

โ€œLike 8 to 14.โ€

โ€œWOW! SERIOUSLY? WOW. 8 TO 14! Wow. (long pause) Jesus. Really?โ€

โ€œSome days, more than that.โ€

โ€œOK, STOP! Just stop. OK? Wow. I canโ€™t. I canโ€™t even.โ€

(long silence)

โ€œUh, so anyway, Iโ€™m here to quit.โ€

โ€œRight! Right, sure. So what brought this on? Were you feeling ill?โ€

โ€œNo, I feel ok.โ€

โ€œSo why do you want to change?โ€

โ€œMy children posted signs all over the house telling me that I had to quit drinking soda.โ€

โ€œYour children?โ€

โ€œStaged an intervention. A Mountain Dew intervention.โ€

โ€œThese are adult children?โ€

โ€œNo, theyโ€™re 9 and 5.โ€ I show him the pictures of the signs. โ€œThe ones with the stars on them were drawn by my daughter.โ€

โ€œI need to sit down.โ€

So, after he pulls himself together, we start talking about the cleanse diet.

โ€œWill it help me quit caffeine?โ€

โ€œWell, it will definitely help. I donโ€™t know anyone who has ever done it before specifically to quit caffeine, but it can only help.โ€

โ€œIs there anything that will work better?โ€

โ€œNot that I know of. You kinda just have to get through it.โ€

โ€œAll right, tell me what I need to do.โ€

He went through it. He gave me two huge jugs of powder that I was supposed to mix with fresh fruit and some almond milk to make a smoothie: one powder was made of rice protein and one was made of green vegetables. Some probiotic capsules to help with digestion. C seeds that would also go in the smoothie to act as fiber. Two of these smoothies a day, and a sensible meal for lunch or dinner. Then he listed off the things that I couldnโ€™t eat: no red meat, no dairy, no gluten, no soy, no alcohol and no sugar.

โ€œAnd no caffeine.โ€

โ€œDEFINITELY no caffeine.โ€

So what could I eat? Fruits, except strawberries and tomatoes. All vegetables. Fish, as long as they were low in mercury. A handful of raw almonds. Lamb and chicken occasionally.

โ€œWhat about dessert?โ€

โ€œWell, fruit is dessert.โ€

โ€œYeah, but you just made fruit the entrรฉe twice a day. I crave chocolate after dinner, and thatโ€™s another tough habit to break. Believe me, Iโ€™ve tried.โ€

โ€œOK, you can have an ounce of chocolate every day, BUT it has to be sweetened by agave nectar.โ€

What is agave nectar? Never mind, itโ€™s chocolate. Take what you can get.

I packed it all up and drove back to my job in San Diego. Boy, were they going to be surprised. For the past three weeks, I had shown up every day with a 12 pack of Diet Mountain Dew and a box of Pop-Tarts. Now it was a bottle of water and some seaweed.

My final stop before starting this cleanse was to appeal to my friends on Facebook, as well as my best friend Toy (who is a great resource of knowledge and support for things like this), and see if anyone had any other suggestions for quitting caffeine. They actually came through with some great information and so now, without further ado, I am now going to tell you how to quit caffeine in the easiest way possible. In fact, I know there are a lot of people out there looking for this information and since I need the Google bots to see this so that they will get the attention of those looking for this, I am going to write this title in big, bold, underlined letters (and Andrew Wilder, you should prepare yourself for the massive web hit count that is coming to you, when I write the following words):

THE EASY WAY TO QUIT CAFFEINE

Now, before we start down this road, let me just say that I am not a medical professional. In fact, I would say that Iโ€™m about the furthest thing possible from a medical professional. However, I am a lifelong heavy caffeine addict and this is what I did to kick it, and it wasnโ€™t really all that bad. Try finding that somewhere else on the internet. Go on, Iโ€™ll wait.

The first thing my friends suggested was:

1. Vitamins

It turns out that the powders that Akasha gave me were PACKED with vitamins and nutrients. I mean, you name a vitamin or a nutrient, it was in there and there was a lot of it. Plus, the food I was eating was also packed with vitamins and nutrients. As a result, I think my body was so distracted by the massive influx of nutrition that it was suddenly getting that it really took a lot of the edge off the caffeine not being there. Plus, it really cut down on the cloudy feeling that I remember having the first time I quit caffeine. Now, this is not to say that I did not get headaches for the first few days, which bring me to number two:

2. Ibuprofen

OK, you are going to need to take two of these every 4 hours that youโ€™re awake for the first three days. You will have headaches but if you take the ibuprofen, it will be manageable. You can get done what you need to get done and not punch people in the face. You will want to take this with a good size glass of:

3. Water

When youโ€™re taking in a lot of nutrients, I feel like itโ€™s also important to take in a lot of water to keep things moving through your system. Especially if youโ€™re doing a cleanse, which is all about changing how you eat food, drinking water keeps you from feeling hungry and keeps you from thinking about the other things that youโ€™re trying NOT to drink. But the other really important thing you need is:

4. Sleep

You will be able to get through your day with no problem, even if your day is like mine which goes from 9am โ€“ 2am every night. But, at the end of the day, you are gonna crash hard. Try to give yourself space that when you get home, itโ€™s quitting time in a big way. You will sleep hard and you will fall asleep quickly. Donโ€™t make any plans outside of work that doesnโ€™t involve a pillow. And finally, for all you soda drinkers out there, thereโ€™s one more thing Iโ€™d like to recommend:

5. Kombucha

Wait, what? What does this have to do with caffeine? Well, nothing, really. But what it does have to do with is the fact that you are trying to get rid of a habit that you have had for long time. In my case, I really loved soda. Now, yes, I was reliant on the caffeine (or so I thought) but thatโ€™s not really why I drank it. I drank it because I liked the carbonation, the sting of the chemicals and the slighty tart taste that I got from it. And thatโ€™s where kombucha comes in. Itโ€™s a somewhat tart, naturally fizzy drink that conveys an experience that is somewhat similar to drinking a soda. BUT! Hereโ€™s the beauty of it: you cannot get addicted to drinking Kombucha, no matter how much you like it! The reasons for this are: 1. It contains a ton of natural probiotics in it, which means that if you drink more than two in a day, you are really going to feel it in your stomach, AND #2: it costs like $4 a bottle! Yes, thatโ€™s expensive but expensive means that youโ€™re gonna drink it more sparingly so you can enjoy it! Itโ€™s just impossible to get hooked on it, like you can with soda. But the good news is that one of these a day feels like a real treat, and really satisfies in the way that a soda would. Plus theyโ€™re all natural and kinda good for you! I recommend getting the GTโ€™s Synergy line of Kombucha that mixes with fruit juices. Theyโ€™re super-tasty and very non-threatening in flavors.

So, there you go. I did that, and a few days later, I was off caffeine. It really was that easy. Iโ€™ve kept up the smoothie regimen since then, although I use different powders now that you can find in Whole Foods. I try to get the vegan protein or rice protein powders, mixed with greens.

But you want to hear the crazy part? Just by changing my diet and quitting diet soda, Iโ€™ve lost 18 pounds in 3 months. Thatโ€™s right. Plus, the thing that I was most worried about, which was: can I keep up my crazy schedule without caffeine? Well, the answer is yes! I DONโ€™T actually need caffeine to work harder or stay up later. It turns out that I can do that anyway without any assistance. You can just do it, if you need to. What a revelation that was for me.

So, now, I feel better and Iโ€™m eating more much healthily and I owe it all to my kids, whom I love very much. I never could have done it without them. But, believe me, if I can quit caffeine, anyone can. Seriously. Itโ€™s just a matter of getting yourself ready and then taking good care of yourself when you do. You can do it. Some day, Google will be filled with millions of stories of how easy it was, and I hope your story is there too.

A photo of Andrew Wilder leaning into the frame and smiling, hovering over mixing bowls in the kitchen.

Welcome to Eating Rules!

Hi! My name is Andrew Wilder, and I think healthy eating doesnโ€™t have to suck. With just three simple eating rules, we'll kickstart your journey into the delicious and vibrant world of unprocessed food.

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Elle
October 11, 2012 8:56 am

Thanks so much for sharing this great story! You really have two wonderful kids. I need to quit my sugar addiction… I don’t drink sodas or eat junk food but I really need my chocolate and my (usually homemade) bajed goods.
I once tried thr first phase of the south beach diet for 10 days and my family nearly through me out of the house I was so irritable all the time without my carbohidrates.
Maybe someday I will find a way too.

October 11, 2012 8:54 am

I also gave up caffeine completely, although it was more than 20 years ago. Headaches, yes, although I was drinking a lot less per day than you, Lindsay. I found the easiest way to do it was to dilute gradually – half a cup instead of a whole cup for a week, then a quarter of a cup, then nothing.

October 11, 2012 8:45 am

Those photos are awesome!!! What a great support system you have.

After about 5 years of drinking a sugar free energy drink every single morning, I decided to quit. It wasn’t affecting my health by any means, but I decided I wanted to save money, I was starting a Strike Sugar challenge, I was starting a Paleo challenge at my gym, and I wanted to truly live the Get in Shape Girl lifestyle, so if I tell people not to do it, I should be heeding my own advice.

I hate coffee so in place I started adding a scoop of Ultima Replenisher (all natural, vitamins and electrolyte with a light flavor via Stevia) to my water every morning.

Now I have just as much energy as I ever did with the caffeine! I don’t feel any different, but my wallet is a little heavier ๐Ÿ™‚

October 11, 2012 8:37 am

This is awesome and hilarious. As a recovering stage manager who quit coffee (?!?) I’ve helped several former coworkers reduce caffeine dramatically and improve their diets. They said tech is so much better when they’re eating well! Amazing. =)

Great work, Lindsay! And gold stars to your kids.

October 11, 2012 8:28 am

Great story, but, um, kombucha has caffeine. It’s made with tea. Granted, it’s far less caffeine that you were drinking. But, it does have caffeine (as does your ounce of chocolate).

October 11, 2012 8:24 am

I really enjoyed reading this. I loved the details down to the google search. thanks for sharing. loved all the pics and signage. kids r amazing.

October 11, 2012 8:18 am

Well done, indeed! If I regress and have a diet coke, it now tastes of chemicals and I’m repulsed…I got off it by making a huge pitcher of iced tea every day. I throw in a mix of different herbal tea bags and never know what color it will be. But it worked for me.

October 11, 2012 7:56 am

I loved reading this! What great kids to have staged this intervention; and good for you for taking on the challenge. It’s so hard to change our diet if we’re not (yet) feeling negative effects from it. I used to have a soda habit too until I realized soda was great for removing bumper stickers from my car. It really made me wonder what the hell it was doing to my stomach ๐Ÿ™‚ Later I went decaf on my coffee, and now I feel so anxious if I drink caffeinated beverages. Now I just need to find decaf chocolate.

October 11, 2012 7:26 am

Thanks for telling your story! Your kids deserve a lot of credit for providing you the motivation! I quit caffeine several years ago after giving soda up for Lent. I realized that I felt much better without it – more energetic, less anxious, and I had STOPPED BITING MY NAILS for the first time in my life. Once Lent ended, I cut out caffeinated drinks altogether, and within the next few years gave up all other sodas too. I know I am a happier, healthier person without those chemicals – especially the caffeine – in my system. Now I’m so sensitive to it that eating a bar of chocolate will get me jittery, and the occasional reminder of that anxious, fluttery feeling from the chocolate confirms my intention never to go back to caffeinated drinks.

Cheryl
October 11, 2012 7:02 am

Wow, Lindsay! What an amazing story! I’ve already given up soda, but I sure enjoy my morning coffee and an occasional iced tea. I do feel like I’ve had too much caffeine once in a while. I think I’m becoming more sensitive to it as I age. Your story is very encouraging. Thank you for sharing it.

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