In this podcast episode, John reflects on his relationship with caffeine and other stimulants, discussing their role in his life from childhood to adulthood.
Topics discussed:
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In this podcast episode, John reflects on his relationship with caffeine and other stimulants, discussing their role in his life from childhood to adulthood.
Topics discussed:
Buy my book! 75 EASY: the ultimate challenge for personal growth
Amazon US
UK
CA
AU
Weight loss coaching - Join the Weight Loss Freedom Academy today
To inquire about 1 -1 Coaching with John - email John at john@oakesweightloss.com
Check out the EASY WAY OUT Blog/Newsletter site
Join the free "Lose Weight with John" community
Watch the Easy Way Out on Youtube
Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - Hello and welcome. I didn't have one particular topic screaming at me today, so I thought it might be good to just hit a variety of topics quickly. And if one of them turns out to need more than 15 minutes explanation, I guess that will become the episode. First up, I think it's good to talk about caffeine. This is something I've been reevaluating a lot in the last few months. At first, the there's some basic best practices, like for instance, don't drink too much caffeine. You can use caffeine to improve your workouts, or some people use it to improve their productivity. You know what caffeine is for? And there are sensible tips like gauging how sensitive you are to it and understanding that caffeine has a very long half life, which is science talk for it stays in your system quite a while, and it goes through changes where it chemically alters as it's being metabolized, and that can have bad impacts on your sleep even many hours after you've consumed caffeine. So moderating curbing it earlier in the day.
Speaker 1 (00:01:01) - All of these are best practices. Smart things to do. Caffeine is a bit like food in the sense that we can pair it with almost any situation you can if you're having a stressful day, caffeine if you're having a chill day, caffeine if you're doing work, if you're being social, if you're celebrating, if you're mourning, it just goes with everything. And a lot of people grew up in families or cultures where food was very much that way. And so they learn to attach food to quite a variety of emotions, not just the classic depression or anxiety or sadness or whatever the most common emotions are. But I had an interesting experience that really got me thinking about usage of caffeine wholesale. Like, what is the role that it's playing in my life, and am I happy with that? And actually happened in a meditation. I was in a good meditation. I was it was a very visual one where I'm like, I'm being taken to different scenes and like I'm seeing things and letting my mind go where it wants to go and touch lightly move on to the next thing.
Speaker 1 (00:02:08) - But I started to get this sense that something wanted to tell me something, and I was like, okay. So I start paying a bit closer attention and it bounces me around. And then all of a sudden I'm in a car in the passenger seat at a certain intersection where I grew up, in the driver's seat of somebody who was abusive to me, and time spent in the car with that person was. One of the first things I realized was a platform for abuse. As I came to learn what was really going on in my childhood. And so I'm in this car and I'm like, okay, what about it? Like, I'm aware that this person was abusive. There's still levels of acceptance that I need to go through. So is that what we're focusing on here? And I just stayed in that passenger seat and I looked around and then I saw it and it was this big, like Big Gulp cup, like a big 32 ounce or 44 ounce soft drink sitting in the center console. And of course, it was filled with Diet Coke.
Speaker 1 (00:03:14) - And this had occurred to me once or twice before, but I never really thought much about it, that one of the most common drinks in my house was diet soda, and at the time, I didn't know that diet soda had caffeine. I didn't really learn that until I was, I don't know, it's quite a while. Or if I learned that it had caffeine, I started to understand how much caffeine it had. We could quibble about the exact milligrams, but I think a couple of Diet Cokes is about the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee. So as a child, I was consuming great deals of caffeine and I didn't know it. And I don't think that this isn't about like, don't let your kids have soda or anything like that. But what I realized when I thought about caffeine is like, oh, caffeine. Like I had access to diet sodas at home and I drank them at home. But when we're in the car, that's what we were drinking. And a lot of times this is back in the 80s and 90s.
Speaker 1 (00:04:21) - You could spend a long time in your car because you had to. A lot of things that we can do electronically now, you had to drive different places to go do them. And so you'd spend an entire day running errands. And on these days I would sit there being actively abused and I would suck down caffeine. And at first I started to consider, okay, so what's the dose response? Like, what's the relationship? Is this about how caffeine contributed to anxiety and PTSD? Like, yeah, of course it did. Like a kid who's being abused. If they're sucking down stimulants, that's going to amp up their anxiety ultimately. But I think that for a lot of people and I think me included, stimulants don't just pep you up, they have other effects. And specifically when your mind is getting shaped by trauma, these effects can actually be more varied. I'll get into that in just a second. But the message that got through to me was not so much that, hey, caffeine, good caffeine, bad children drinking caffeine.
Speaker 1 (00:05:26) - Not good. Sure. It was. This was the official sponsor of driving around and getting abused stuck in this vehicle. This is what this was the official beverage of driving around, of something that took up a great deal of my life. And so the message was more like, realize that this was a companion. This was even at a time when I was learning to use food to help regulate my emotions. I was also using caffeine to regulate my emotions, specifically to weather the storm. And then I started to think about what I use caffeine for in adulthood. Do I use more caffeine when I'm well or when I'm not well? So I asked myself, what is the role of caffeine in my adult life? Is it to give me energy? Well, we all know that caffeine doesn't give you energy. It can borrow energy from later. It can force your mind and body to focus more on your tasks, to make you feel a sense of ability. Permission to get things done. This is really what we call energy is really.
Speaker 1 (00:06:42) - It's not a reserve tank, it's like a throttle. And oftentimes when we're faced with stressful activities, our brains throttle our energy down so that we won't do the stressful activity. It's simple survival, right? We don't like stress, so let's not be around the thing. Things that stress us. And I teach a lot about this, specifically in the motivation and energy module of my course that lives inside my coaching program. So after formalizing that that content and teaching it, I started to have a different view on, okay, let's think about how I manage my energy. It's like, yeah, maybe I'll actually apply some of the stuff that I teach. So that was the first realization. I use caffeine as a response to stress. It's not just for energy, it's for stress management. And what specifically does it do when I'm stressed? It allows me access to more focus and more of a willingness to take action. Although it doesn't force that it doesn't. There isn't an amount of caffeine that can get me to do certain tasks, just it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (00:07:51) - I might drink caffeine to to hope to force myself to do something. But just like food, there's a limit to what it can really help you balance out. One thing that that people who went through abusive childhoods is that it's very normal to exhibit a lot of the symptoms of ADHD, even though your brain may be neurotypical, it's just that a lot of the symptoms of chronic PTSD start to look a lot like the symptoms of ADHD. So if you have a lot of trouble with your productivity, lack of focus, intrusive thoughts, feeling like you're just bouncing around in your head from one idea to the next and not even like in your body. A lot of the time, you'll notice that stimulants almost have a calming effect. This is why many people with ADHD report that their stimulants actually make them feel less wired in a way, because it's allowing their brains to focus, which is actually lowering the overall activity inside their brain and the accompanying stress. So a lot of people are treating their PTSD brain with caffeine, and it's a real bandaid solution because it doesn't actually help you, because ultimately you don't need caffeine.
Speaker 1 (00:09:06) - You need deeper healing so that your mind can function in a more chilled out and quote unquote normal manner. But anybody who's tried to get an ADHD diagnosis, especially recently, knows that it's pretty difficult. And the reason is that the medical establishment has realized that these pharmaceuticals, after opiates, are one of the most commonly abused. Why? Because people get a high. There's a variety of psychological effects that can help people feel things related to the ability to feel pleasure, to not be so depressed, to move around and do stuff and enjoy the benefits psychologically that gives us. And it depends person to person, but it can also improve your sense of overall well-being. It can improve self esteem, promoting a generally more positive mental and. Environment, and again, in high enough doses. Caffeine has an analgesic effect. It numbs you. So yeah, I realized that from a young age, I had been unwittingly using caffeine to alter my mental state in hard situations. I didn't know that's what I was doing when I was sucking down Diet Coke, but that was part of why I gravitated toward that particular beverage, and probably why my parents were so into it.
Speaker 1 (00:10:28) - Oh, and it's also interesting to note that for a lot of my 20s, I was always on some kind of diet, and at the time, that was the the beginnings of the reporting that artificial sweeteners impeded fat loss. And this ends up not really being true, but I bought into it hard. And so I really didn't drink things with artificial sweeteners. I avoided that for many years. So as a result, I wasn't drinking hardly any caffeine, although there were times when if I was in a particularly difficult stretch of a diet, I would start to use caffeine to manage hunger and also to promote fat loss. This was back in the days of ephedrine. And yeah, I got my hands on some black market veteran. Yeah, one day I accidentally I took my daily dose of ephedrine and then I forgot that I had taken it and I, I took it again and whew, man, I was high. Like I was driving along and I was having like, like high thoughts where you're just like.
Speaker 2 (00:11:38) - Whoa.
Speaker 1 (00:11:39) - Man. Like, I remember thinking like the number seven, there's no seven. It's just once. Every number is just ones. It's just how many of them? The only thing that exists is 1 or 0. That's it. And I started seeing reality just in binary code. So that was wild. But definitely shows in in sharper relief the effect that stimulants can have. So yeah, in my 20s the only role of caffeine was to assist with losing weight. But then in my late 20s, when I was 26, I started my PhD program and about halfway into that started using caffeine to push through difficult tasks. And then so yeah, around 28, it came back. And then through my 30s I would go periods without because my stomach issues were so bad that I couldn't drink caffeine. But then I would as soon as I could, I'd get back on it. So I'm like, okay, let's take the bitter look at this. When your PTSD symptoms were really bad, you couldn't drink caffeine.
Speaker 1 (00:12:46) - Why? Because it would take your fibromyalgia symptoms and make them worse. In hindsight, it makes sense because those were all a byproduct of an overactive mind. It's just constantly running too hot. And when your mind is doing that at a lower level, say, if our normal range is between like a one and a ten and we're starting to run too hot, caffeine can help us come from like a ten or a nine down to like eight or 7 or 6, again, because of the ability to focus becomes easier. And but when your brain is at like 45, caffeine does not help. It's just pouring gasoline on the fire. And yet, as soon as my health improved enough, I would get back on it. Well, I think mostly because my sleep was wrecked, PTSD destroyed my ability to sleep, and so to get through the day, I really needed assistance. So I leaned heavy whenever I could. I leaned heavy on caffeine, and then as I hit a certain level of healing from my physical symptoms, my physical manifestations of the PTSD, this was very much improved by getting on an SSRI.
Speaker 1 (00:13:59) - Then my ability to consume caffeine went up. All right, so I'm going to bring it home okay. What do I really use caffeine for? And let's be honest about the effects it's probably having on me. Let's look at one particular cycle. Right. Let's say I'm stressed about work. I got too much on my plate. And so I start consuming a lot of caffeine during the day. Have a hard stop at 3 p.m., but up to that point, I might be maxing out my tolerance for hours. I realize that I use caffeine as a substitute for sleep when I can sleep fairly well. Now if I prioritize it, and if I'm drinking caffeine because I'm falling asleep at my desk, that's again, like drinking caffeine for any number of reasons that we do it that really are just preventing us from addressing the core healing that's needed. I'm using this to paper over my lack of well-being, and so it feels like it's helping, but it's really not. It's. Enabling. I tend to sleep less when I'm more stressed.
Speaker 1 (00:15:04) - So when am I drinking the most? Caffeine? When I'm stressed. Does this have a negative feedback cycle? Absolutely. Because caffeine can still have an effect on your sleep pretty much no matter when you drink it, especially if you're sensitive to it. And I think I am on the if we measured the caffeine tolerance of everybody in the world, I think I would be left of the mean I would be 40th percentile or something like that. Like I can handle quite a lot, but I think it seems like other people can handle more than I can in general. So I did an experiment. I have done this before, but I never stick with it. I stuck with it this time long enough to really see a difference. I cut out caffeine and when I started to lose focus or get too tired to work, I would get up and go for a walk, which is something I need to do anyways, because when you work from home, it's really easy to be super sedentary. Or if I'm falling asleep at my desk, then it's like maybe we should do the unthinkable and take a nap.
Speaker 1 (00:16:04) - I've never liked taking naps. I just don't think about it bothers me, and I think it's probably related to my general aversion towards sleep. But I remember even being like 4 or 5 years old at daycare and we all go down for nap time, and all these other little darlings are passed out. And I'm sitting there staring at the ceiling and I'd just be like, oh, this sucks. And so I would just be sitting there thinking while the other children were sleeping. But when you're really in a context of sleep deprivation, a nap can be a game changer and it can actually help you get on a normal sleep cycle. If you're really in a deep lack of sleep. Generally the people advise don't nap if you have problems sleeping at nighttime, but in my experience, I've done that and that does help if you push through and then you sleep harder. But I have absolutely seen where sometimes when it's really bad, you take that nap, you give your body what it needs, and it's still it still needs a solid eight hours later in that day, you're still you're basically just making up for what you already missed.
Speaker 1 (00:17:10) - And I've seen myself sleep better because of taking naps. So removing caffeine from from my world forced me to be better to myself. And I know there are other health benefits. Caffeine doesn't do any favors for your blood pressure. And as somebody who still struggles with PTSD, blood pressure is something I pay a lot of attention to, and I think caffeine is just not smart. And overall, I think letting go of caffeine has a lot of the same benefits of letting go of emotional eating. I end up getting more in touch with the reality of what I'm feeling, and not feeling like I need to push through things like if I don't want to work on something, instead of just being like, ah, fuck it, I'm just going to gas up and attack, I'll have to consider, okay, why am I so reticent to do this task? Why am I so disinterested in this? And there's usually some kind of discomfort, some things unsettled. There's a fear that's lurking in the back of my mind, that's pumping the brakes.
Speaker 1 (00:18:08) - And actually dealing with that lends itself to a more healthy and peaceful inner world. Same as happens when we let go of emotional eating. You tend not to go back to emotional eating because your life quality of life is so much better when you're not actively engaging in that compulsion. But like any lifelong compulsion, it can come back, it can work its way in, and it's little by little. So do I currently drink caffeine? Yes, but I drink a lot less, I'd say. I say my max now is probably half of what I would drink on a high intake day of sworn off Diet Coke, if not chemically. Symbolically. Nothing against Diet Coke, nothing against the good people at the Coca-Cola company. It's just not for me. It's just an unnecessary linkage to the past. And when you're healing from trauma, the more of those linkages you can sever, the better. One of my personal areas of focus is my sleep. I don't want to say it's a goal, because ultimately I'm making the decision to stay up too late.
Speaker 1 (00:19:09) - So there's not really a point in making a goal to make my decisions differently. I would just look at how I'm forming my decisions and why and get to the bottom of it. So yeah, for me, it's an area of focus. And I think I know, I think I've gotten to the bottom of why I still avoid sleep, and it has to do with things in the daytime. So it's actually not about nighttime. It's about what I do when I'm right now, this part of my day. And maybe that's a topic for another podcast because I think it's pretty interesting. So will I eventually go off caffeine entirely? I think so, I think that I need to admit to myself that it's not as beneficial as I like to believe, and that a lot of what I'm getting from the caffeine is a temporary. Solution. It's a temporary Band-Aid to deeper solutions. And sometimes when we have a lot of Band-Aids, it just makes it easier and easier to get by and get by and just put off the focus on our healing.
Speaker 1 (00:20:11) - That is really what we need more than anything. So I think I definitely know what would be best for me. So certainly minimizing it is going to be the plan going forward. Many people listening to this probably are in the same boat, probably have a relationship with caffeine of some kind, and sleep struggles are very common these days, so I hope that this was helpful. I hope that this allows you to pause and reflect on this, and maybe make decisions that are more in alignment with your well-being, even if it feels weird, even if it feels like, whoa, I'm not going to drink coffee, like that's my thing. But to just like with emotional eating or letting go of any compulsion, start to notice how good it feels and then let that motivate the changes. I guess I'll wrap it up there. If you have questions that you would like answered on the podcast, you can email them to me, my emails down in the show notes. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast. Leave me a review.
Speaker 1 (00:21:08) - That would be great. I would really appreciate it if you could leave me a review on iTunes or Spotify. Super easy takes five seconds. You can do it. I believe in you. All right. Until next time.