The Victor crew found an interesting article from the Huffington Post that talks about coffee interfering with your performance.
They state people start drinking caffeine to be more alert and get into a better mood. There are also studies that say that coffee improves memory and attention span, however, they don’t take into consideration each person’s actual caffeine habits. They claim that in one study they think the upsurge is due to having caffeine after going through withdrawal and that is giving the positive results. Caffeine withdrawal actually does negatively affect your mood and cognitive performance. So in other words, the caffeine is actually just bringing you back to your caffeine normal.
Caffeine releases adrenaline. In the fight-or-flight response this produces, you could be in a hyper-aroused state, allowing emotions to take over. Large doses of caffeine can also raise blood pressure, and deprive your brain of oxygen.
Caffeine can also affect sleep. You’ll want to stay away from it later in the day. Caffeine has a six-hour half life. It takes a full twenty-four hours to be depleted. If you drink it at 8:00 am, you still have 25% in your system at 8:00 pm. Caffeine also affects your REM sleep.
Caffeine withdrawal can cause headaches, fatigue, sleepiness. Some even go through depression and anxiety. It is better to taper off caffeine if you decide to stop drinking coffee (perish the thought.)