Wow. According to How Stuff Works caffeine isn’t out of your system in 4 hours, as I’ve always heard. Instead, it has a half-life of 6 hours, meaning that if you ingest 200mg of caffeine at 9:00 AM, by 9:00 PM when you’re trying to wind down, you actually still have 50mg of caffeine left in your system from that morning java.

So now, if you look forward to 9:00 AM of the next day, you actually still have 12.5mg of caffeine in your system from the previous day. Then you have your typical 200mg more of caffeine, and by the time you’re winding down at 9:00 PM again, you’ve got 53mg of caffeine left in your system instead of just 50. Obviously this cycle gets worse as time goes on.

No wonder coming off of caffeine is so difficult and uncomfortable. But maybe it’s even more worth it than I previously thought.

Note that I’ve determined I’m a “slow caffeine metabolizer“, compared to some people I know. *Cough* Francesca… *Cough*