For many people in the world, their day does not start without coffee. According to GoodRX Health, “Today, 64% of adults in the United States say they drink coffee regularly.” There are some benefits to drinking coffee, such as increasing alertness. However, for the most part, consuming caffeine is not very good for your health. Quitting caffeine has so many more benefits than continuing caffeine.

One of the most prominent benefits of quitting caffeine is that it can reduce anxiety. The burst or few bursts of energy that you get from drinking caffeine can also trigger your fight or flight hormones, which then causes an increase in anxiety. Drinking caffeine can even lead to caffeine induced panic attacks. Quitting caffeine doesn’t just magically cure your anxiety. Jennifer Garam from Psychology Today stated, “Going off coffee, what I’d hoped for is that I’d never be anxious, ever again…What I realized is, off coffee, I still get anxious. And when I’m anxious, I’m anxious. But the difference is, I’m not anxious all the time, or for no reason.”

There are so many more benefits to quitting caffeine than just the fact that it can reduce anxiety. Quitting caffeine can also help you to save money. According to The Simple Daughter, “The average 25- to 34-year-old reported spending $2,008 per year at coffee shops, and according to a survey by the money app Acorns, 41% of millenials admitted to spending more on coffee in the past year than they had invested in their retirement accounts.”  

The thought of quitting caffeine may seem easy and simple. However, sometimes it can be quite difficult. If a person regularly consumed caffeine or relied on it, they could go through caffeine withdrawal. Caffeine withdrawal happens after a person regularly consumes caffeine and then abruptly stops. Symptoms of this can include headaches, fatigue, and irritability. These symptoms can then last from 2-9 days. The best way to avoid caffeine withdrawal while quitting is to slowly reduce your caffeine intake.