Caffeine, Part 3 of 3: How to Quit

“The second strategy to use as the excuses line themselves up is to ask, “Why am I lacking courage at this moment? Why am I being a sissy?” It’s a bit of twisted psychology that rattles the cage and causes a passionate reaction.” -From the Chapter “Quiet Courage,” from the book “Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less.”

If you’re looking for ways to break an idle habit, lose weight or get beyond some kind of obsession, a first inclination is to drill into an intense Google session. In doing that, you’ll find plenty of mind-tricks and manipulations. But here’s the thing: For success, there has to be something substantial underneath the method, a recurring strength that will see things through.

Diets do work.

It’s lack of fortitude that causes us to fail. To get to the root of things we need to submerge into the depths of the process – below the techniques, and into the machinery – and talk about internal strength.

You know by now I have a tendency to be blunt (when rooting down into the simplest explanation it’s often where one ends up. Sorry about that, you politically-correct enthusiasts) and so, not surprisingly, I have a simple and abrupt theory about strength: Every tough decision – or refusal to make a tough decision – comes down to whether one has a backbone or one doesn’t have a backbone. So when there is a challenge, the question to ask oneself is this: In this moment, do I have a backbone or don’t I? Think it through: This has to do with marriage, divorce, cleaning the house, making that extra sales call of the day, hedging in a business deal, stretching the truth in a sales presentation, fulfilling a promise, standing up for oneself in a confrontational situation, being patient with a child, or enlisting in the Marines: Every decision comes down to – in a given moment – whether one is being courageous or not.

Here’s a further impolite pronouncement that’s good news for the those who can see it: Our soft Western lifestyle can cause an individual to underestimate his or her own internal strength. There’s the incessant demand for PC properness,  the concurrent fear of offending someone, and sheer peer-group pressure that stymies us from making personal judgments. And being willing and able to take a personal stand has everything to do with demonstrating personal fortitude. For the individual, understanding this Western anti-judgmental bias is incredibly liberating: It’s OK to make personal judgments. It’s OK to decide caffeine is a drug and not a cultural ceremonial sacrament.

So here we are: In quitting caffeine (or alcohol, or painkillers, or whatever), it comes down to having the internal strength to make a definitive judgment about the negative side-effects of the stuff, and the moment-to-moment backbone to deal with unpleasantness until unpleasantness goes away.

The immediate task is to build up strength and then get past the craving/depression/headaches in the shortest period of time. At first, it’s time that is the enemy, but then time becomes a friend. In the beginning, the more time allocated for quitting by, say, “cutting back slowly,” the better chance one will fail. But later, as significant time passes since the last ingestion, the better chance one will succeed.

So, put your chin out there and go cold turkey.

The first step is to get through one day with out any caffeine whatsoever. That won’t be so tough because this new approach to the day is exciting. It’s the 2nd through the 21st day that are killer. The headaches are real, the depression is colossal and the excitement has devolved into coping with the decidedly difficult side-effects of withdrawal. Here’s the thing about time becoming a friend: If there was a manipulation that I used in my own struggle to break the addiction, it was to count the days I was caffeine-free. By the time I got to twenty one days there was much less chance I was going to ruin my accumulating accomplishment by “just having a little sip.”

Then it was a month with zero intake. Then two months, and by this time I had seriously marginalized the craving.

That’s it! Keep score just like they do in AA. Build a day-by-day record and congratulate yourself at the end of each of these caffeine-free days…but always remind yourself you want to break the addiction, not become a monk. Unlike alcohol and the other much more dangerous drugs, caffeine is relatively benign so your abstinence doesn’t necessarily mean “never again.” More on that in a minute.

Remember that the depression of withdrawal is not your normal mental state. Although in the moment it’s smack-up-against-the-head real, remember it’s a phony depression. It’s your body screaming for relief from the withdrawal and in weak moments be careful: It’s this false mental depression that will connive you into a cup. Power through the weak moments; things will get better.

And what about the headaches? They aren’t going to kill you. Per the people who know such things, the only withdrawal that can literally end your life is going cold turkey from heavy alcohol or opiate addiction.

Expect problems with sleep for awhile, going to bed early and waking up in the middle of the night. Ultimately this will pass and you’ll find yourself napping sometimes and otherwise getting more sleep each night (and getting enough sleep is critical for mental acuity and physical endurance. See Part 1 of this series)

There are physical methodologies to make the transition easier: Exercise in the early morning to counteract the brunt of the withdrawal. Another: There is caffeine in Diet Coke, chocolate, tea and various other small delights. In the cold turkey phase, don’t kid yourself. You must eliminate them too. Arcoma Gonzalez Lambert (a naturopathic physician in Forest Grove, Oregon, who describes herself as an expert in quitting caffeine) wrote to tell me that all through the withdrawal process, thorough hydration is critical.

After the initial break-the-addiction phase, don’t continue to treat this cold turkey effort religiously, going into the realm of 12-step. The endless abstinence will become an obsession in itself. Yes, coffee is one of life’s small pleasures and an occasional cup isn’t going to kill you! OK, another trick: Once the addiction is defeated, avoid having coffee two days in a row because it’s the daily-repetition that will deliver you back into addiction. Two day’s consumption easily stretches into three days, and so on. And remember that when addiction is in full swing, it’s hard to have just-a-little coffee. Once one starts a cup intending to drink “just a few sips,” the entire cup is invariable ingested and a second cup magically materializes.

You want to get to the place where you don’t need caffeine.  You’ll have it only when you feel like it.

Like so much, it’s about control.

When I broke my habit back in 2000, I watched myself closely and remember it took nine months for the craving to totally stop. Total, I went 18 months without taking a trace of caffeine (or alcohol, for that matter). But that forever-cold-turkey positioning isn’t the way I want to live my life. I seldom drink alcohol and never do drugs, but Dammit, I’m not dead.

What are your thoughts about all this? Are you firmly entrenched into caffeie addiction with no hope of breaking free? Or, are you happy with your habit and absolutely committed to the early-morning ritual? Or maybe you have no habit at all and don’t touch the stuff? I’d like to know your thoughts. -sam

Part One of the caffeine series
Part Two of the caffeine series