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This has probably happened to everyone: There’s a big project to be completed by tomorrow, and it’s 11:00pm! What to do? What to do? You know you can’t finish it in an hour or two, but you’re not sure if you have the energy to stay awake for the whole night. Ah, coffee / red bull / your favorite caffeine source to the rescue! Except the project is so damn boring (why else would you have waited until the last minute?) that you have to drink another couple of cups to just stay awake from the boredom.

Come light of day, you now have a completed project, and you’re dead tired, but can’t quite sleep. You make it through the rest of the day in a zombie like mode. Finally, at 7pm, you finally get home, and oh so sweet sleep! At about 11pm, you wake up, sweating. Ug, all that caffeine is still in your system, keeping you awake! A glass of warm milk, a bathroom visit, and it’s back to la la land for you.

BEEP BEEP BEEP!!! It’s your daily 9am wakeup call, from your friendly neighbor – the annoying alarm clock. You slam the snooze button, and slowly inch your way out of bed. Can it be morning already? Wait… did you just sleep 14 hours? “Oh my god”, you think, “I can barely move”. Thanks to all that caffeine in your system last night, your body had to release massive amounts of melatonin to put you under. Now that the caffeine has mostly worn off, all that extra melatonin is still there, making every part of your body still feel sleepy.

You could go back to sleep, but unfortunately, that doesn’t really fix the problem. It does gradually return to normal after weeks or months, but that’s going to be a really slow couple of weeks. You could drink more caffeine, but that just repeats the cycle, and you’ll need more and more caffeine to get you up in the morning. There is, however, a great and fast (but not too easy) way to fix this.

Ironically, what you need, is exercise. That’s right, you are feeling completely tired and sluggish in the morning, and the only way to get rid of that feeling is exercise! Go outside and have a nice, long run. After you are sweating and completely tired out, walk around a bit, and then run some more. Do this until you feel very physically tired, and then come on home. Drink some water and lie around on the floor and rest for a while. Good job!

Now that you’re completely sweating, tired, and warmed up, go out and run AGAIN! Just one or two laps, you can do it! If you’re not that tired at the end of the couple of laps, you didn’t exercise hard enough the first time around :)

Okay, great! You can have a nice long shower. Congratulations, you’re now awake!

Whenever you are physically “sleepy”, just repeat this process. The exercise releases all kind of endorphins, adrenaline, etc. into your system. It speeds up your heartrate, bringing more oxygen to all parts of your body. It makes you forget about being tired, improving your focus. It’s the perfect counter-measure to wake up you! Soon, that “tired” feeling will go away, and you’ll just be left with the healthy habit of running daily.

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Comments

5 Responses to “How To Recover From Caffeine Addiction”

  1. tyler james on November 3rd, 2008 8:08 am

    wow..
    this story seems too familiar! :D
    this really helped me alot!
    I never thought that excercise would do that.
    thank you.. whoever did this post

  2. Paul C. Herson on February 19th, 2009 4:19 pm

    Caffeine addiction
    In this article, we are going to discuss the importance of caffeine addiction and the most important facts ictions in the world, just like cocaine and marihuana. Caffeine addiction sometimabout it, as caffeine addiction is something we all must prevent in order for us to be healthy and stay that way for years. We are also going to mention some significant facts about caffeine effects and how caffeine effects may affect our body performance considerably.
    Caffeine addiction is one of the most famous types of addes has been considered a lie, but it is a really, because caffeine is a stimulant that becomes addictive within a certain period of time. Interestingly, caffeine addiction shows up when you are not expecting it, and it does not necessarily show up because we want to.

    Pure caffeine is, chemically speaking, a plant-based alkaloid that stimulates the central nervous system in any living creature that intakes it. Biologically, caffeine serves as a form of pest control for certain plants like cacao trees, coffee shrubs, yuba mate and tea trees; it causes insects and other pests to fall down from the effects of over-stimulation. So, just like those pests and insects that I mentioned, caffeine also produces stimulation in our central nervous system, which usually makes us feel more energized, invigorating and active.

    There is something called caffeine withdrawal, which refers to the sudden denial of us to consume caffeine, and it happens when regular consumers of caffeinated products may experience painful headaches if the body is denied caffeine. These headaches are caused by excess blood gathering in the area around the brain and sinus cavities, so without the stimulation provided by caffeine, the blood vessels shrink, restricting the blood flow. The traditional cure for caffeine withdrawal is to ingest more caffeine, which is not a healthy solution and this is also why many headache medications contain small amounts of caffeine. You can more information for the Caffeine addiction in: http://yourcaffeineaddiction.com/

  3. monique on May 24th, 2009 5:10 pm

    Can you please tell me, what is the best thing to do, to excrete excess caffeine from your system quickly to counter the effects of shaking and agitation ect? I have been drinking plenty of water, and milk but it takes a while before the effects subside. Someone suggested to go for a walk to reduce the agitation and adrenaline effects. Is this correct? Can a long walk assist?
    Someone told me no, but after taking a walk it seemed to help though I got warnings from others.
    Can you assist me with an answer, as to the pros and cons of a walk to counteract the after affects of too much caffenine in detail?

    Thank you in advance
    Could you send me the answer via email?

  4. Serge on April 11th, 2010 9:13 am

    The poster above is incorrect, the headaches are not caused by vessels shrinking, it’s the opposite. It is blood flow returning to areas where it was limited.

  5. Stefan on August 18th, 2010 11:36 pm

    I find it takes about three days for me to detox it out by intense exercise that promotes profuse sweating. My suggestion is: Day 1 – 12km run, day 2 – hot yoga (90mins like Bikram) at 38 deg C, day 3 a long hot epsom salt bath (or another 12k run). Most of the symptoms have subsided or at least receded enough to feel normal again by then.