Doll says that one cup can cause shakiness and irritability, but since she’s become accustomed to the side effects, she’d much rather be shaky and uneasy than suffer withdrawal effects.
“I definitely do get shaky and can’t sit still if I’ve had more than my usual one cup of coffee in the morning,” she said. “I prefer being shaky over the headaches I get from lack of coffee, which do not feel great at all.”
For some students, although they say they rely on coffee to be productive, they’ve become so habituated to the caffeine levels that it’s not really doing much anymore.
Freshman political science major Maggie Swett has been drinking coffee since she was 13 in order to wake herself up. She tried to quit but found herself experiencing painful headaches, and is back to drinking it again.
“I think I drink coffee more out of habit and comfort than anything else,” she said. “I don’t think it actually wakes me up or works as well for me as it used to. Sometimes it even makes me feel more tired.”
Doyle says that although she drinks at least two to four cups of coffee a day, she’s not sure that it’s helping her in the ways that it did before. When she was a sophomore in high school, she’d drink one cup a day, which she says fully woke her up.