Does the body not clear drugs like caffeine at a constant rate? If you drink less caffeine does the body clear it less quickly? Or am I not understanding it? Caffeine half life is about 5 hours (via Google), so regardless of if I drink 100mg or 900mg of caffeine, half (50mg or 450mg) will be left in my body 5 hours later? That seems like a pretty drastic difference in the rate of clearance.
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This is specifically first order half life elimination. This is due to to elimination mechanisms being first order meaning that the more that’s in you the faster the rate of reaction for the elimination process is. Some drugs follow a 0 order half life trend, or in other words they are eliminated at a constant rate regardless of the amount.
An ELI5 analogy is you’re in a room full of balloons and you are trying to pop them all. At first there’s plenty of balloons that are right next to you that you can quickly pop without moving. However after popping the ones next to you you will have to move to pop more making it take longer. The more balloons you pop the more you have to move around to pop them increasing the time it takes even more.
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