the lack of caffeine was due to not having money to buy anything but the most basic of food, and i didn't have any for exedrin...so i tried using the tylenol i had leftover in an attempt to try and wean off exedrin, thinking it was the aspirin and/or caffeine causing issues. apparently this wasn't the case, because the tylenol wasn't helping squat, and my headaches kept coming most days. i didn't have money for sodas or anything either, was basically drinking water, and last i checked, cheese and tortillas don't have caffeine either.
eventually i had a little more money to spend and decided to try Anacin instead, which has aspirin and caffeine. instant relief 3/3 times so far trying with only one dose. as far as tolerance goes, i've rarely ever needed to take more than one dose before, unless the migraine was hitting the right or both sides of the head, which is rare. there's not really a way to "manage" a migraine either, that i've seen. either you take a dose, and the pain goes away, or it just keeps ramping up like normal, in which case you can either take another dose to try and kill it again, or grin and bear it...which results in a lot of notgrinning because you do not "bear" a migraine, you curl in a corner and wait for it to stop trying to kill you, which generally can take 1-2 days of agony. there's no reduction of pain from taking an inadequate amount of med that i've seen. you know if you got enough because soon after taking it the pain immediately starts lessening and is gone within an hour or two.