About Steven AitchisonAs you may or may not know I am an addiction worker working with people with alcohol and drug issues. There are a lot of people addicted to non alcoholic and what they see as non-drug based substances such as Coffee, tea and juice. However, caffeine which is in coffee, tea and many fizzy juices is a drug and can be addictive, more of a psychological addiction than a physical one. I used to drink around 12 – 15 cups of coffee a day a few years ago and have managed to control it to around 3 cups per day and can now take it or leave it.
I don’t want to go into addiction too much because it’s a huge subject. Needless to say a lot of alcohol and drug addicts don’t want to stop their addiction they just want to control it and that is great. I would rather someone drink or take drugs when they are in control of it. Aside from the from the fact that most drugs (A lot of people are addicted to prescribed medication) are illegal it’s better to help someone control their drug intake rather than lecture to them that they must stop drugs because it is bad for them; that never works.
Coffee addiction is mainly psychological and you may have formed a habit of drinking coffee over time but at the end of the day it’s can still be addictive.
Here are 5 steps to breaking your coffee addiction
1. Admit you’re addicted
This is obviously the most important step with any addiction. If you don’t admit it and don’t recognize that you have an addiction then in your head you are not addicted. It’s only when other people start to say things like ‘You drink a lot of coffee don’t you?’ or when your work colleagues start calling you ‘mr coffee’( I wonder if that’s how ‘Mr T’ got his name.) that you start thinking that you might be addicated. When you recognise the addiction it’s time to start taking action.
2. Recognise the pattern of your addiction
Most coffee addicts have a routine. For example the first thing they do is have a cup of coffee when they get up in the morning, then again after they have had a shower and put their clothes on and then again before they leave for work. That’s three cups of coffee within the space of an hour or so and the pattern continues at work and when they get back home from work and before they go to bed.
I always find it helps to have a visual representation of your habit and you can see at a glance just how much you are drinking.
As such I have made a PDF to record your coffee drinking routine throughout the day.
3. Breaking the pattern
As I said before your aim is to control the habit rather than have the habit control you, so we are not going for giving up coffee we are looking to cut down and be in control.
You can break the pattern by swapping coffee with water. For example if you have 3 cups of coffee before leaving for work, replace your second cup of coffee with a glass of water. This has two benefits; you are breaking the pattern of your coffee habit and you are re-hydrating your body (too much coffee can dehydrate you, this is why a lot of heavy coffee drinkers get headaches).
4. Resisting the craving
When we have a habit of any kind we get cravings to indulge in our habit. When you have an craving to have a cup of coffee during the day, resist it and do something else for 20 minutes. Cravings usually dissappear when we have our minds focused on something else, so if you can manage to resisit a craving for coffee and busy yourself with something else for 20 minutes your craving will go away. It might return again and you may have to busy yourself a few times throughout the day but your cravings will weaken as you mentally get stronger and are able to control the cravings.
5. Tell those around you your intentions
As with all habits that you are trying to break it’s good to let other people know about your intention to cut down. This way other people can encourage you when you are feeling particualrly weak.
As I said at the beginning my aim was to help you with controlling your coffee addiction not to eradicate it.
It would be interesting to know how many cups of coffee or tea our readers have per day. Leave a comment and let us know how much you drink per day.
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Hi,
Over the last few weeks I’ve gradually reduced my coffee consumption from about 12 cups a day, to just 2. I’ve replaced my coffee with rooibos tea, which doesn’t contain caffeine. Haven’t noticed any side effects (yet?).
Mel.
This is a very good plan for a lot of bad habits as well.
OMG! Mel, 12 cups a day!? I only drink coffee when at office work just to get up and drink something hot to keep the body warm. I usually drink around 1 to 2 cups only… it has no beneficial effect as I can sleep even after drinking coffee.
.-= JonatsGonats´s last blog ..Abraham Lincoln’s The Life in Your Years =-.
Hey Steven, great to bring the awareness on coffee addiction! The only times I ever drank coffee in the past was when I was younger and needed a pick-me-up before my exams. Today, I don’t drink any coffee at all. On the same note, I wrote a piece on quitting soda drinks before: http://personalexcellence.co/blog/2009/03/5-reasons-to-quit-drinking-soda-drinks-and-how-to-do-it/
.-= Celes | The Personal Excellence Blog´s last blog ..Update: 21-Day Exercise Trial, Latest Interviews, Guest Posts =-.
What an interesting field to be working in. Personally I don’t have a problem with coffee – it gives me the shakes. I shall be applying these principles in a quest to stop being a chocoholic:) Thank you.
I have to say that I found this article very interesting indeed, as I am obviously not an expert in this subject I have a question,
Does dependency have to be in large quantities? as many of us have things that we do every day and almost could not imagine not doing, things that are possibly more habit than addiction, or is this the same thing ?
I have never drunk coffee in my life! Although it seems tempting when I see how people pep up in the morning (after previously looking like death warmed up) I have never really been tempted.
Now chocolate on the other hand…
I can stop drinking coffee any time I want to
I usually drink between 6 and 24 cups a day, depending on the amount of sleep I got the night before. On days after I’ve gotten very little sleep, I’ve been known to slam back 6 espresso shots at once.
Currently, I’m down to 6 or fewer cups, and I’m drinking a lot of water.
.-= Rick´s last blog ..Are You Addicted to Caffeine? =-.
Thanks for the tips. i drink 6 to 7 cups of coffee per day. Is it an addiction?well from now on i will substitute with water.Thank for the psoting
An excellent course I had in college was “Drugs & Society” which began with something to the effect “is any substance that, when absorbed into the body of a living organism, alters normal bodily function.”(wiki)
That covers a broad spectrum of substances, including anything with caffeine, chocolate, some foods, as well as all the commonly thought of drugs.
Me, I had been downing 4-6 591ml Diet Cokes (well, diet since being diagnosed diabetic years ago,) for sometime. Recently decided to switch to decaff, and also reduce the number drank in any given day. It’s been hard, but I’m doing better.
Your tips will help me go farther. Next step when I get better control is switching to water. After that is substituting something for my stress snacking at work…
Another couple of tips I’ve found that help people get off the JOE is
1. supplementing with caffeine pills. It gives you the jolt you are looking for without the attachment of a cup. That’s one step closer to kicking the habit.
2. becoming a tea drinker. Tea has 1/3 the amount of caffeine, but still allows you the pleasure of drinking a drink.
Those two, in conjunction with one another, are a surefire way to help you kick the addiction.
.-= Ibrahim | ZenCollegeLife.com´s last blog ..Super Great Back To School Tips =-.
I don’t think I am a coffee addict, but I do drink it first thing in the morning. Without it, I can be quite grumpy–but I think it has as much to do with the fact that I just love the taste and enjoy the experience of drinking my coffee as it does with the caffeine intake.
I love the little bit of energy it gives me, but I would rather find a way to have more sustained energy throughout the day because coffee can really drop you off at the end of the buzz. Around lunchtime, I like to have chai tea (which has quite a bit of caffeine itself) or better yet, a peach or an orange. I’ve come to find that eating fruit throughout the day makes me feel terrific. But I’m still hanging on to coffee for now!
.-= Chris´s last blog ..Four Ways to Promote Your Blog and Gain a Following =-.
12 – 15 cups? Holy cow! Your poor adrenals! Great work getting past that!
I didn’t know that you help people with additions. That must be very rewarding. If you haven’t already, I have a book recommendation for you that’s a must read in this regard. It’s called The Mood Cure by Julia Ross. In fact, my post about improving mood through diet which was part of Leo’s Day 7 hotseat on images, is about this book! And the “cheesy” image is still there to see in all it’s glory.
I better get around to changing it pretty soon.
.-= Vin – NaturalBias´s last blog ..Health Care Reform is Not the Answer! =-.
Sugar is also something that many people are addicted to.
As for soda (also high in sugar), I used to drink a ridiculous amount of daily. I started the habit of drinking a full glass of water right before I poured my glass of soda. I often found that because my stomach was already full with water, I didn’t have as much room to drink the soda … I started doing this with every other glass of soda that I wanted to drink. Eventually, I craved the water over the soda, which no longer seemed as appealing to me.
Caffeine addiction does not only apply to tea and coffee. I believe I could apply this to my caffeinated soda and energy drink addiction.
.-= Joshua Shear´s last blog ..How to expand readership? Our Mission =-.