The passage of science-ish horror is:
You see, caffeine works by causing your brain to overproduce dopamine. Dopamine is made from L-Dopa, which is made from Tyrosine, which is made from Phenylalanine. Extended caffeine use uses up your stores of Tyrosine and Phenylalanine, so your brain reduces its dopamine production to conserve them. It then takes progressively more caffeine to force your brain to use its remaining amino acid stores to produce dopamine- meaning you consume more caffeine, let have less energy and feel terrible.
Well, to start there's no citation or reference, and not even a mention of adenosine receptors, which are the things that caffeine antagonizes. The adenosine thing is not speculation, it's done and over. Just looking at the structure of caffeine and adenosine, you can see how they make more sense together than with dopamine.
It's also not internally consistent: he proposes caffeine causes higher production of dopamine (through some strange mechanism), which uses up the dopamine. So your brain makes less dopamine, so it can save the dopamine. The caffeine now forces the brain to make more dopamine. All around it doesn't make any sense.
There are well-studied systems that regulate the synthesis of dopamine in your brain, which is a whole separate process from dopamine signalling. None of them involve adenosine or caffeine.
Now, the complicated part of this is that dopamine is absolutely involved with reward, reinforcement and addiction. If you feel you're addicted to caffeine, moreso than just a withdrawal syndrome, you can for sure blame dopamine. But dopamine isn't used up by signalling these things. It's more like dopamine owns the telephone wires--you don't consume a telephone every time you make a call. All dopamine does is carry the message. So even if taking phenylalanine did make more dopamine, it wouldn't change the addiction signal.
And, what a lot of folks tend to gloss over, is that we know what happens when your dopamine really is depleted: you get Parkinson's disease. Excessive signalling, at least at the D2 receptor, is associated with psychosis. Getting your dopaminergic meds mixed up can cause neuroleptic malignant syndrome. These are robust systems that can handle a diverse diet, and they aren't going to blink at some supplemental amino acids.
Now, the actual complex part, is that dopamine has effects on the body, unrelated to its brain function. The clinically important one is increased kidney output, which is why meth users have to constantly piss. It also affects vasculature, constriction and dilation. These things overlap with caffeine, so I can't say that increased dopamine in your blood, maybe from eating phenylalanine, wouldn't have some value countering caffeine withdrawal, by promoting vasoconstriction maybe. But like you said, these aren't really the main complaints in caffeine withdrawal.
Yeah, it's a bit like stim withdrawal--you feel like you could deal, if only you had the energy to even get started. What you're waiting on is your adenosine receptors to downregulate back to baseline. I don't know much about that process, but I have the impression it takes weeks for that to happen. There's really no way to speed it up.
So the best bet is just temporary, careful use of other stimulants. And given you'd want a mood boost with it, all signs would point to switching to meth. Don't do that. I'd think something like methylphenidate/Ritalin or bupropion/Welbutrin. Or atomoxetine/Straterra, but I don't know if that comes with a positive mood. If it did, it'd be the kind that takes a month to take effect, so not helpful.
Note that Yerba Mate is just different caffeine, same with cocoa powder. I guess you could try ephedra. Ma huang is the tea version. I think ephedrine products are more risky for your heart than caffeine, but I'm not sure.
I don't know what else to tell you. Besides, good luck. Why don't you just taper off your caffeine?
