Bringing it down

Once the cut-off is in place and has held for a week, the second step is to bring the total down. This is where people expect suffering, and most of it is avoidable. This is my own method, and the reasoning is in chapter 9.

Decide where you're going. Not necessarily zero. The evidence in chapter 10 is that moderate coffee is fine and may be good for you, and the argument of this book is against the pattern, not the drink. A reasonable destination for many people is one or two cups in the morning, drunk because they like them, with nothing after the cut-off. Some will want none, for the pleasure of waking at the level with no cup at all. Either is fine. Decide before you start, so that the taper has an end.

Go slowly. Withdrawal symptoms rise with the size of the drop. Cut by roughly a cup's worth every three or four days, and let each step settle before the next. A taper from five hundred milligrams to two hundred over three weeks will have a few flat afternoons in it. A jump from five hundred to nothing on a Monday will have a headache and a bad week and will probably fail on Thursday.

Use decaf and dilution. Swap the afternoon cup for decaf first, since the cut-off has already removed it. Then make the morning cups half decaf. Then replace the second cup with tea, and the tea with a weaker tea. Mixing decaf into ground coffee, or using one caffeinated tea bag among decaf ones, lets you step down in small amounts without changing the ritual at all.

Drink water. Some of the headache of withdrawal is worsened by the loss of the fluid you were drinking. Replace each removed cup with a glass of water or a decaf.

Expect a few flat days. Two to nine, on the review's figures, with the worst around the second day after each step. A mild headache, a foggy afternoon, some irritability. If you get a headache, a painkiller is fine, and so is a slower step. What you shouldn't do is treat the flat day as evidence that you need coffee. It's evidence that you're adapting, and it ends.

Pick a quiet fortnight. Don't start the week of a big deadline or a long drive. Give the taper a stretch when a foggy afternoon costs little.

Keep the morning cup last. It's the one you value most and the one that does the most for the shortfall. Bring everything else down first. When only the morning cups are left, the shortfall is small, because there's less in the system to withdraw from, and you may find you want one rather than two.

I'd expect, and this is my expectation and not a finding, that about three weeks after you start, the morning score will be higher than it's been in years, the afternoon slump will have shrunk to the natural dip, and the coffee you've kept will taste better than it did.