If you get headaches more than once a month. The reason is because of a phenomenon called rebound . The medication eases the headache for a short time, but then as the medicine wears off, the headache comes back even worse, and the headache sufferer takes more medicine. Quickly, a vicious cycle develops. The medicines are needed for the bad headaches, but they also make the headaches worse.
Caffeine causes the same vicious cycle.
Many experts believe that caffeine withdrawal is the number one cause of headaches in the United States. I taper my patients off all short-acting headache and pain medicines. If necessary, I may put them on low doses of a long-acting pain medicine such as Methadone. Because long-acting medicines stay in the blood continuously, there is never a rebound or withdrawal phase. Eventually, we may try to taper off even the long-acting pain medicines.