Only option for me at my workplace is either coffee (undrinkably bitter) or expired tea (tastes like rot). Did not have enough time yesterday to make myself tea for the next day and the shop where I buy energy drinks is closed. I extremely drownsy and my head hurts.
EDIT: Coffee is undrinkable to me, quality or not. The bitterness will just overpower everything.
Short term?
-Keep hydrated. This one is key.
-Take an OTC painkiller for the headache.
-Splash your face with really cold water a few times and go for a brisk walk during a break/lunch period (when I was in office my lunches were pretty small/quick to eat to maximize doing-anything-else time, YMMV).
-Depends on your working environment, but if you have the ability to do at least some of your work standing, stand.
-If you’re crazy drowsy and just need some means to stay conscious until clock out, a rubber band on the wrist can help. If you start to space out/feel your eyes start to close, give it a snap. Not the greatest thing, but a little pain can release some useful endogenous chemicals.
-If anyone has little candies in the office, ask if you can take some. The sugar in well-timed doses can help a little.Medium term?
-When you get home, pack up some dried tea/tea bags of acceptable quality, and immediately place it in your ‘going to work’ kit (bag, car, whatever) so you have a stash in case you forget to make a thermos/whatever of tea the following (and subsequent) mornings.
-Go talk to whoever stocks the tea at work and let them know they’ve expired. They may not drink tea themselves, and if no one else has brought it up they may not know/haven’t checked in a while.Long term?
-Ween yourself off of caffeine. Slowly start swapping out your tea stash with herbal teas with no caffeine content (some are quite tasty), and reduce the amount of caffeine you’re inbibing bit by bit until it’s 0.
-Work on adjusting your sleep schedule.Listen to music, keep your feet moving while working.
Cold turkey on caffeine - takes about a week and a half to get over the addiction and you’ll be sleepy and have headaches for most of it.
After that you’ll be perkier than before and will probably even sleep better (depends on how late your last caffeine intake of the day was before as it mainly works by you feeling sleepy earlier and naturally going to sleep earlier).
You can still take something caffeinated once in a while and you will really notice the effect of it once your body isn’t hooked on the stuff (just don’t to it too often or your body will go back).
You see it turns out that when you’re addicted to caffeine you actually require regular caffeine intakes merely to be at your normal baseline level, and will be below it without the caffeine, whilst for those who are NOT addicted to caffeine taking it actually umps them up above baseline (I once read of a study about it but don’t have the link anymore).
If you actually like the taste of coffee and the coffee habit as I do, switch to decaf. If you have hot water at work, buy instant decaf and make from that yourself.
If can’t be added getting over the caffeine addiction, do you can use instant coffee instead of instant decaf.
I went caffeine free a while ago. The first 7 days were terrible, after 7 days you normalize and are fine.
Taper out, your body and brain will get used it it in about a week or two. If you’re like me life will stop having meaning as a side-effect. My longest time away from coffee was 3 months, and my mind did totally not get used to it in that time.
I have no doubt about coffee being a pretty hard (even if benevolent) drug.
How much tea do you usually drink? coffee has quite a lot more caffeine then tea. just slam a small shot of coffee.
Headaches and extreme drowsiness suggests caffeine addiction. You may want to consider decreasing your caffeine intake slowly over time. As for working without caffeine, unfortunately, that’s a bit more complicated. I assume that you have difficulties with getting up in the morning, hence the need for caffeine. That might then imply that you are simply a night owl. These things are biologically hardwired into your DNA, and while night-owl-ness is known to change as you age, there’s genuinely nothing that you can do to make yourself into a morning bird.
You can try dimming the lights after sunset, that might help at least a bit with going to sleep/waking up earlier, which might help lower your need for caffeine
Excedrin with caffeine. Won’t help with the drowsiness, but should be suffecient to get rid of the withdrawal headache.
Wean yourself off the caffeine addiction.
Easier than you think, just a week or two of minor side effects, headache being the worse. Tylenol helps.
Your energy starts rebounding after only a few days, within a month or two, you feel a sustained, normal amount of energy through your day that doesn’t suddenly spike and drop.
And then after a few months you forget why you stopped, and start drinking that amazing coffee again <-- I am here
Not a fan of coffee, but I’m very careful about the amount of caffeine I take. This gives me fewer negative effects, lower tolerance, and a better kick if I’m feeling drowsy and turn to caffeine to solve that problem.
A proper amount of sleep is the better way, but I have a really hard time falling asleep before 9 and need to wake up at 5.
Find caffeine pills. No-Doz is a popular one, but the dosage is so high you should only have one in a day.
Time release 100mg pills are your friend, if you don’t take too many.
50mg pills are hard to find, but better replace a cup of coffee.
100mg pills that are not slow release or time release hit hard and crash hard, but spread them several hours apart and cut them off at noon, and it will absolutely get you through a sleepy day.
No-Doz is 200mg a pill.
I’m probably a terrible metric because I work nights and probably have a skewed view/high tolerance, but that doesn’t seem like a concerning amount.
Hmm, you’re right. Recommended dosage afik is 400 mg a day, so 2 pills several hours apart would be the limit. Idk if they’re timed release or if they really hit you with 200mg at once, I haven’t tried them. Nutricost brand 100mg pills are way cheaper, so I stick to them.
Bring your own tea into the workplace?
Tea bags are fine, but I recently discovered tea resin. It’s basically a small block of concentrated tea that you dissolve into hot water. Not quite as good as fresh leaves, but more portable (dozens of servings fit in a tin the size of a USB stick) and very resilient against going bad.
I have a small selection of resins on emergency stash in my work bag, in case the coffee machine at the office is broken.
Drink water. A lot of it. It won’t replace the caffeine, but it will make the day more bearable.
Maybe ask a coworker if they have any painkillers for the headache.Many painkillers come with caffeine added too.
Excedrin is one of the more popular brand names. They’re specifically advertised for headaches.
In the long run, weaning yourself off caffeine and getting enough sleep will make you healthier overall.
Yeah when I quit coffee it took me two weeks to feel normal again, but I got the money off my back!
but I got the money off my back!
Turned your fanny pack around to the front, eh?
That’s the neat thing, you don’t.
Cocaine?
I doubt a workplace too cheap to provide decent coffee would want to invest in cocaine as a job perk
Meth on the other hand is much more economical, it’s just good business.
Tell that to your dentist.
When the day is long and you wanna ride on
