A few things we can throw into the mix:

1) twin studies show initial sensitivity to caffeine has a fat genetic component. Borne out by observation: I have watched a single can of Coke give people the shakes.
2) expectation effects aren’t particularly tops (there is a crap study by Kirsch from about 1993 on it) but conditioning is pretty possible – a very distinctive substance (i.e. smell/taste ) usually makes a good CS. This is the obvious explanation for why decaf works.
3) withdrawal symptoms are real, but as the general and receptor pharm. is so complicated, I don’t think anyone’s got much of an idea how they work yet. Review paper you want is Juliano and Griffiths, 2004 (I think in psychopharm.)
4) withdrawal will start from fairly low doses – http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/289/1/285

“try leading a healthy lifestyle, regular exercise, healthy eating, herbal laxatives, green tea, juice, lots of vegetables, do some yoga, regular sleep pattern etc.”

Or you could try drinking whiskey, beef jerky, working all night, being awesome, lifting jagged concrete boulders and not being a big tepid schoolgirl that thinks iced water and rice cakes is a treat.

sounds like y’all work-stress constipated. breathe, relax, walk in the park, take it easy. if withdrawal concerns are such an issue, mix black coffee (no milk-milk is used to flush caffeine from body, no sugar) dunk in a tea bag (can be abit potent mix) then transition to just tea.

Rather than increasing the dosage or going cold turkey, you could simply change the cues that are normally associated with the caffeine hit.

To boost it’s effects, you could:

1. Change the form of the caffeine: Remington, Roberts, and Glautier (1997) demonstrated that the same amount of alcohol induced less impairment when college students consumed the alcohol in an alcohol-associated beverage (beer-flavored beverage) rather than a liquid that had not previously been associated with alcohol (a blue, peppermint-flavored beverage), (Siegel, 2008). The same should hold for caffeine. A cold, caffeinated drink (e.g., red bull or V) ought to enhance the effect compared to the usual hot cup of coffee that tends to accompany your hit.

2. Change the medium: Similarly, tolerance to the cardiac effect of caffeine is more pronounced if the caffeine is administered in the context of the usual caffeine-administration cues (i.e., consumed in coffee) than if the same blood level of caffeine is obtained with an administration procedure that does not incorporate these gustatory cues (i.e., intravenous administration; Siegel, Kim, & Sokolowska, 2003). So take it intravenously or in pill form.

3. Change the time of consumption: Presumably, any disruption to your normal schedule will enhance the effect given Shep’s conditioned compensatory response explanation. If you set the caffeine hit to random, you can’t anticipate it, and thereby enhance the effect.

Cheers,
Jason

http://bit.ly/L2Yfl

One additional change I’ve made since then is to switch to pills. This way I know exactly how much caffeine I’m getting. I’ve gotten the broad strategy I wrote about to work rather well, and consistently, and I’m able to optimize at a finer level these days.