At the edge of caffeine withdraw

Recently I was curious about my coffee and caffeine habits. There seems to be mixed research on the benefits and hazards of coffee consumption. I herd about the caffeine withdrawal symptoms but never controlled my consumption to en-duce or verify the symptoms.

I herd that the there is a benefit to coffee for the first time drinker, but after becoming a chronic drinker, the kick is gone. Coffee lately has been in the spotlight for possibly anticancer and antioxidant properties.

My sources of caffeine typically comes from a few small coffees every day, occasionally have a green tea and less often a chocolate snack.

I've been tweaking my coffee over the years from a medium double double to black. I wanted to tweak the experience further by mixing things up. I am also a social coffee drinker and enjoy the coffee ritual. I've also experimented before with various types of fasting. Combining two distinct ideas  is appealing to me.

My Goal is to reserve the right to have a kick on demand, while also providing a eustress mechanism on my organism. The idea is to  keep on the edge of homeostasis by modulating between caffeine and decaffeinated. My assumption was that the withdraw symptoms would dissipate over time, and I could get the benefit of the kick more consistently.

I also wanted to give my body clearer signals and align with my circadian rhythm. Especially an optimal cortisol curves.

Something like

Coffee or decaf in the morning

Green tea or decaf after noon but before pm

Other caffeine free herbal tea or wine before bed 

I started by going caffeine free for about 2 weeks reading that the half-life of caffeine  is 6 hours. Symptoms started a few days after I started.

Noticeable symptoms in in the day were headache, irritability, lethargy and near the night sleepiness  starting around 7:30 pm. My headache and irritability symptoms seems to go away around 5:00 pm. Sleeping was much easier and deeper for me from day 1.

After two weeks the symptoms weren't 100% gone but I felt that that was enough time to reintroduce caffeine.

My new ritual  of drinking coffee is only following  the end of withdraw symptoms. Substituting decaf to allow me to maintain ritual consistency. If I know I need a boost later in the day for example before I go to the gym, I would substitute decaf in the morning and go with a coffee just before the event.  Every 6 hour count so if you can put it off, the kick should be stronger.

Overall I have achieved my desired goals and feel a new level of alertness. the withdraw symptoms also feel more tolerable with the passage of time.