LONGECITY

I've been drinking around a ½ to 1 gallon of tea (Mixture of white green and black) since the age of 14 I'm now 32. I can't say why or how I started.

 

About 2 years ago caffeine has begun to make me very nervous and agitated and I eventually began to have panic attacks.

 

I quit cold turkey for around 6 months and became very very depressed (Dread, fear, low self esteem, no concentration, no motivation, can barely get out of bed and racing thoughts.) My depression did not improve over time.

 

I tried (not together) St Johns Wort, 5-HTP, SAM-E and they generally had no effect. L-Tyrosine, sulbutiamine help somewhat.

 

Drinking tea cures my depression, lack of concentration and overactive mind as soon as it starts taking effect but I get very nervous and irritable hours later.

 

Went to a doctor, but he didn't listen to me and seemed to label me a hypochondriac and told me I'm making myself sick and depressed. Blood tests came back “normal.”

 

Additional info: Father diagnosed with ADHD

 

Any advice or comments would be great.  

I wonder if you could continue the tea drinking and develop a meditation/mindfulness practice.  That might calm the anxiety, nervousness, etc.  

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Did the blood test measure cortisol?

[Coffee consumption in depressive disorders: it's not one size fits all].

"we observed a biphasic profile in caffeine psychostimulant effect: low to moderate doses may correlate with a reduction in depressive risk in healthy subjects and an improvement of many clinical symptoms (attention, arousal, psychomotor performance) in depressed patients, whereas the assumption of high doses may result in thymic dysregulation, favor mixed affective states and worsen circadian profiles and anxiety symptoms."

http://www.ncbi.nlm....eine depression
Edited by Metagene, 10 May 2015 - 01:41 AM.

Did you always drink a gallon of tea before quitting? Or did you gradually wane off the caffeine? Because of course you will feel depressed after taking that much and then quitting cold-turkey. I'm sorry to hear that that's the case - I hope things improve! Have you ever thought of slowly re-introducing it and then slowly waning off it again?

 

Caffeine remains in the body for 48 hours and the way I deal with caffeine without getting addicted is by having it every 2 days. 1-2 shots of espresso. Perhaps you can try this. But perhaps you should go see an endocrinologist, as I wouldn't be surprised if your adrenals are in shock by the sudden termination of caffeine consumption.

I'm just like you and I'm not getting much help for my problems either. I've been prescribed SSRI for my issues that's similar to yours.

 

Although I can't relate to you with the first one where caffeine causing nevousness and agitation. But I'm exactly like you with the second one. I've tried going without Coffee for over 4 weeks but my mood, mental energy and attentiveness/alertness never got better and it was really difficult for me to keep working as a waiter at a restaurant because I couldn't keep my attention to anything, so I eventually had to go back to drinking Coffee. I didn't become severely depressed without coffee but I was always in a low mood and not as happy without it.

Edited by Heinsbeans, 21 May 2015 - 12:01 PM.

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I tried quitting coffee many times in my life, but even when I was successful (for months), I just didn't function the same. I would eventually crawl back up to my 5-8 cups per day. I then had the idea of trying theophylline, a tea extract and adenosine antagonist (like coffee is), that is usually prescribed for asthma. However, despite being an adenosine antagonist, it isn't stimulating like coffee, due to some differences in the receptor profile. It changed everything. Now I drink 0-2 cups per day, half the days being 0.

Word of warning, theophylline has a narrow therapeutic index (this means the difference between a therapeutic dose and a harmful dose can be small), and just a bit too high of a dose can cause some issues. I take 400mg time-released per day, and will not go beyond that. I got it off ADC.

I honestly love coffee and didn't mind drinking that much, per se. But my stomach hated it, and the constant ups and downs were harsh. This stopped my caffeine addiction like Baclofen stopped me from drinking.