Severe caffeine sensitivity?

I used to love caffeine and stims. For several years I'd drink several big cups of coffee and day and didn't have a problem. Couple years ago I got prescribed Adderall and abused the shit out of that. That's when I started having problems. My reactions to any stimulant began to get more and more overwhelming. I wound up in the hospital a couple of times because I thought I was either allergic to amphetamine/caffeine or dying of a heart attack.

Now I usually can't even drink a half cup of caffeinated soda without feeling like I'm going to die. Sometimes I'm fine and enjoy the caffeine, and can drink a couple cups of coffee. Other times it's terrifying. For example, over the past 2-3 hours I've had maybe one and a half cups of coffee, and I feel so strung out and spun. I'm pretty scared and thought I'd occupy myself this way. I'm just trying to wait it out...

Does anybody have the same problem with caffeine?

blahman8000 said:

I used to love caffeine and stims. For several years I'd drink several big cups of coffee and day and didn't have a problem. Couple years ago I got prescribed Adderall and abused the shit out of that. That's when I started having problems. My reactions to any stimulant began to get more and more overwhelming. I wound up in the hospital a couple of times because I thought I was either allergic to amphetamine/caffeine or dying of a heart attack.

Now I usually can't even drink a half cup of caffeinated soda without feeling like I'm going to die. Sometimes I'm fine and enjoy the caffeine, and can drink a couple cups of coffee. Other times it's terrifying. For example, over the past 2-3 hours I've had maybe one and a half cups of coffee, and I feel so strung out and spun. I'm pretty scared and thought I'd occupy myself this way. I'm just trying to wait it out...

Does anybody have the same problem with caffeine?

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Bro I have the EXACT problem. If I drink coffee I will freak out , start sweating, look around me - instantly get a panic attack.

I take clenbuteral , t3 , ephedrine - all sorts of CNS stims making weight for lifts and in the past fights. But god damn I cannot DEAL with it anymore man. Sometimes you jus gotta let your body do the talking and we just gotta listen !

Hey artofwar, thanks for the response.

Yeah man, it's bad. It happens to me almost every time I try to enjoy a caffeinated drink. I end up regretting it and it's like my insides are in overdrive. My blood pressure goes sky high and I can feel it.

Then the next day, if I don't have alcohol, for some reason I'm always itching to consume SOMETHING that will have some kind of effect on me, so I grab some soda or coffee, thinking it won't be so bad this time.

I hope I crash off this soon. It's pretty fuckin scary.

You will come down brother - it sounds like your caffeine intake is a major trigger for anxiety attacks - same as myself. I'm not sure when it started honestly but I am not gonna risk needing to use my benzo script just to drink caffeine !! I can tell you that much.

i am the same with coffee....only caffeine tho, i can still take other stims and deal with it. i wonder if it is a psychological thing rather than physical.
it all leads back to one night stayed up playing tiger woods and when it got to 5am i thought a strong coffee would keep me up for long enough to take my kid to school. gave me real bad jitters, made me feel like i had taken speed, eventually led me to have a panic attack, felt rough as shit thinkin i was going to die. i have since tried to drink coffee or take pro plus and its led to the same thing.

I'm the same with caffeine, although I still seem to consume it on most days. Especially if I have it on an empty stomach I will get EXTREMELY wired. Sometimes it is enjoyable if I'm thinking positive thoughts because they seem the flow much more quickly, but I become very anxious and then if my thought patterns turn negative then it's all downhill.

This also started to happen to me sometime after I stopped using speed heavily...

I've been reading up on it, and apparently people who spent a long time drinking very excessive amounts of coffee might eventually develop an "allergy" to it. I definitely think I've developed a sensitivity, because what I've just experienced these past couple of hours and what I have experienced in the past is very concerning and not normal. I need to learn that I can't touch this shit anymore. It sucks that such a minor drug has this kind of effect on me.

Even cigarettes can give me slight panic attacks. And weed? Forget about it...

Maybe I just have some weird problem with processing substances. Who knows.

Feel much better now... Never touching caffeine again. New Years Resolution.

blahman8000 said:

Feel much better now... Never touching caffeine again. New Years Resolution.

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hey man good stuff , glad you're back on point. q

I have that problem with coffee but not with tea (and I drink a lot of tea) or cola.

Hey this is a very common problem with former or even current stim users. But to keep it short I abused stims (meth) severely for 3 years, and afterwards could not touch any form of stimulant.
No more ephedrine for colds or coffee in the mornings. And my reaction to the ephedrine was about 100x worse than what coffee would do. Although they all would make me shake uncontrollably.

The good news however is after 8 years off of speed I tried coffee again, and noticed it doesn't make me shake anymore, so the body DOES heal itself over a long course of time. Now I drink coffee almost everyday, while just a few years ago one cup would have me shaking/twitching till I went to bed that night. It was a horrible feeling, really embarassing, and I actually told drs at one point I was "allergic" to both coffee and ephedrine. They even wrote it down on my medical records too haha.

Bojangles69 said:

Hey this is a very common problem with former or even current stim users. But to keep it short I abused stims (meth) severely for 3 years, and afterwards could not touch any form of stimulant.
No more ephedrine for colds or coffee in the mornings. And my reaction to the ephedrine was about 100x worse than what coffee would do. Although they all would make me shake uncontrollably.

The good news however is after 8 years off of speed I tried coffee again, and noticed it doesn't make me shake anymore, so the body DOES heal itself over a long course of time. Now I drink coffee almost everyday, while just a few years ago one cup would have me shaking/twitching till I went to bed that night. It was a horrible feeling, really embarassing, and I actually told drs at one point I was "allergic" to both coffee and ephedrine. They even wrote it down on my medical records too haha.

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I've read about literal allergies to stimulants, and it's said that if you experience major sensitivity to stimulants, you might actually have an allergy, but because it's a stimulant, your body releases adrenaline (which apparently is much like ephedrine) so it basically fights the visible signs that would suggest an allergy.

I've been feeling very uneasy all day, even after coming down off the caffeine.

/\ Yeh totally hear that. In all honesty I know for a fact that any amphetamine derivative will cause adrenal receptors to UPREGULATE almost the opposite way the opiate receptors down regulate when you use. So when you stop using speed, your left with an enormous amount of adrenal receptors. And what I heard is anytime something triggers adrenaline, even if its a tiny amount, you have more receptors that uptake it, and it basically sensitizes your entire adrenal response so its always in overdrive.
The thing I never understood however, is that I don't think coffee has anything to do with adrenaline. I think it works by flooding your brain with nitrogen. But if that raises your blood pressure, or speeds anything up, its also likely to start excreting more adrenaline. Adrenaline can be triggered by almost anything I hear, especially opiate wds because I know opiate wds themself the entire time I feel like I'm on speed again. Shakey, anxious, twitching and what not. I get those kinds of symptoms bad in wds.

Anyway I never realized how common it was till I came here. But overtime it definitely gets better imo. Just can take a really looong time.

Oh and this is a seperate post to propose a "cure". But I noticed when I got prescribe beta blockers 3 years ago I stopped reacting that way completely. Like although the reaction got less and less overtime after abstaining from stims inderal stopped the reaction at its toes.

I believe this would obviously be because inderal will block adrenal reuptake, stopping the reaction all together. And inderal itself is like #1 for flooring physical manifestations of anxiety. If you take stims of any kind inderal should be a regular part of your daily regime to keep those glands from overacting to stimuli. Most people respond to it while others respond to atelenol (or however its spelled).

Bojangles69 said:

/\ Yeh totally hear that. In all honesty I know for a fact that any amphetamine derivative will cause adrenal receptors to UPREGULATE almost the opposite way the opiate receptors down regulate when you use. So when you stop using speed, your left with an enormous amount of adrenal receptors. And what I heard is anytime something triggers adrenaline, even if its a tiny amount, you have more receptors that uptake it, and it basically sensitizes your entire adrenal response so its always in overdrive.
The thing I never understood however, is that I don't think coffee has anything to do with adrenaline. I think it works by flooding your brain with nitrogen. But if that raises your blood pressure, or speeds anything up, its also likely to start excreting more adrenaline. Adrenaline can be triggered by almost anything I hear, especially opiate wds because I know opiate wds themself the entire time I feel like I'm on speed again. Shakey, anxious, twitching and what not. I get those kinds of symptoms bad in wds.

Anyway I never realized how common it was till I came here. But overtime it definitely gets better imo. Just can take a really looong time.

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Good info bro - Now I think about it , it was when I was in highschool and scripted dex amp i would just speed thru days. Now as stated , coffee tweaks me out !!!!

Bojangles69 said:

/\ Yeh totally hear that. In all honesty I know for a fact that any amphetamine derivative will cause adrenal receptors to UPREGULATE almost the opposite way the opiate receptors down regulate when you use. So when you stop using speed, your left with an enormous amount of adrenal receptors. And what I heard is anytime something triggers adrenaline, even if its a tiny amount, you have more receptors that uptake it, and it basically sensitizes your entire adrenal response so its always in overdrive.
The thing I never understood however, is that I don't think coffee has anything to do with adrenaline. I think it works by flooding your brain with nitrogen. But if that raises your blood pressure, or speeds anything up, its also likely to start excreting more adrenaline. Adrenaline can be triggered by almost anything I hear, especially opiate wds because I know opiate wds themself the entire time I feel like I'm on speed again. Shakey, anxious, twitching and what not. I get those kinds of symptoms bad in wds.

Anyway I never realized how common it was till I came here. But overtime it definitely gets better imo. Just can take a really looong time.

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What!? Where did you get the "fact" that speed upregulates adrenal receptors? The only drug I've read of that does this is nicotine with acetylcholine receptors. I'd like to know the source for this.
And coffee has a lot to do with adrenaline. Caffeine acts as a adenosine antagonist, which leads to more dopamine, noradrenaline, and adrenaline released. Not to mention the MAOIs in coffee allow all 3 of those to float around longer...

I'm only sensitive to caffeine but not other stims (ephedra, mephedrone, propylhexedrine). Even one cup of green tea will have me feeling cranky and over-sensitive to sound with a gnawing stomach pain that makes everything suck. Hands and feet go freezing cold and my urethra burns like crazy. I crave sugar intensely and eat more in general. Pretty sure it fucks with my blood sugar worse than most other drugs.

Caffeine kind of blows IMO, of course.

Wow I cannot believe there are so many people out there with an allergy to coffee, I don't feel like I'm just a crazy person anymore. The past few weeks I kept having all these random things happen until one night it was really serious and I finally connected it with drinking coffee. My feet and hands would get really cold and tingly and I couldn't see my veins at all (which I usually can loud and clear as I am very close to being the same color as paper :[ ) and my heart would race and then slow waaaaaay down, and when I would try to sleep my heart would skip a beat and tingle which freaked me out completely, making the anxiety all that much worse. Then two days ago I was just sitting in my room on my laptop messing around online and I felt like I was having an all out heart attack, ya know arms hurt, chest hurts, dizzy, can't focus, can't take a deep breath without it killing my chest like someone was sitting on me, can literally feel my heart beating out of my chest way too fast. Then (as I had no idea it could be coffee related yet) my skin would turn red and splotchy all over and a few bumps would rise up and sting like hell and I thought I was crazy for having a panic attack when nothing was stirring my anxiety whatsoever, and that I was dying of some crazy disease haha. So then I tested it out, stopped drinking coffee for two days straight, felt fine and dandy, esp. after taking some claritin, and then drank not even half a cup of coffee and within ten min. my arms and legs were swollen, red skinned and all patchy and prickly feeling, and once again like someone was sitting on my chest. I've been an avid coffee/energy drink consumer for years now, and it's a little heartbreaking that such a wonderful relationship has to end. But it is nice to know it's not just me, and that I am in fact not crazy...but now I am always going to be tempted when I walk into my kitchen because my family keeps a pot of coffee on the table at all times. Bleh.