The good news is that the caffeine withdrawal duration typically lasts for 2 days to about a week. It starts half a day to about a day after caffeine abstinence and peaks at about 2 days. Occasional reports slightly longer durations.
How much regular caffeine intake causes withdrawal? Abstinence from regular consumption of as low as a once a day cup of coffee, or 2 cans of soda has been reported to cause caffeine withdrawal. The probability of incidence of caffeine withdrawal is reported to be 50% of the population from a recent experimental study of healthy caffeine consumers that have stopped for about a day. But when minor caffeine withdrawal symptoms are also included, that ratio increases higher.
The table below lists the general caffeine withdrawal symptoms reported from various studies:
| struggle for concentration | lack of attentiveness |
| tiredness | fatigue, enervation, lethargy, prostration |
| drowsiness | doziness, somnolence, chronic sleepiness |
| moodiness | short temper, touchiness |
| the blues | funk, doldrums |
| uneasiness | tension, anxiety |
| trouble with alertness | degradation of perceptiveness |
The official word from the ICD-10 of the World Health Organization and the DSM-IV American Psychiatric Association is that caffeine withdrawal is likely to cause “clinically significant distress or impairment in functioning”.