> caffeine boosted focus and reduced anxiety

As someone who it taking a break from coffee because of pervasive anxiety, and I am surprised how zen-like I am even two days in (among the migraines and anhedonia), this sentence from the abstract is so utterly wrong I won’t even waste my time with the rest.

Like, do they even understand the pathways and receptors that caffeine affects? You can say anything you like about caffeine, other than it is an anxiolytic. (Don’t get me started with the ‘coffee calms me down because I have ADHD’ trope)

With coffee we’re in the phase we’ve gone through with red wine, where every day a new article claimed that a glass per day would cure a new illness and make you live 120 years.

Are you substituting any caffeine? I've been cycling through month-long periods exclusive to coffee, yerba mate, and non-caffeinated herbals. Sometimes others.

When I cycle back to coffee, I find myself reverting to a maladaptive redlining and recovery rhythm. I suspect this has carved a compulsion for the work-hard-party-hard glow so prevalent in my younger years.

This pattern doesn't hold at all, for me, with mate or oolongs.