When I was in college and grad school, I worked three jobs while going to school full-time. Let’s just say that my coffee addiction was…legendary. It didn’t help that one of my jobs was at a bookstore with a Starbucks-esque café at which I got 50% off, so after drinking a huge travel mug of REALLY strong coffee in the morning and possibly some more at school, I’d get to work in the mid-afternoon for a shift that would last until midnight and would down a triple-shot latte. Or two.
Yeah.
The biggest thing for me that helped kick the habit was, oddly enough, dating my then-boyfriend. I would go to visit him, and would, because I was out of my usual environment, either forget to drink coffee or not have enough coffee or have coffee too late in the day, after the withdrawal migraine (yes, migraine) started. I would then spend the rest of the day being absolutely miserable, in bad pain and being light-sensitive. I decided after the second go-round of this that this was no way to live my life, and that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life one (very large) cup of coffee away from a brutal migraine. When I got home on Sunday evening, the caffeine was out of my system and the withdrawal migraine was over.
The hard part started then. I spent a month or so dragging, and dragging badly. I found that it helped to have a mug of black tea occasionally through the day; that does have caffeine in it, but not so much that it would trigger a withdrawal migraine if I went without.
Honestly, I don’t think I’ve had as much energy since as I had then, and that was a year and a half ago. However, I’ve learned that this is actually a good thing. Why? Because now when my body is tired, I do what I need to do (and what I never could do in college) and go sleep for eight hours, and then get up the next morning feeling if not necessarily bright (I am not a morning person), at least not stressed and anxious. I still miss my coffee, but I’ve found that drinking decaf once every week or two helps with the taste craving. As to the caffeine…well, I honestly look at it as an addiction, with all that that encompasses. Some people are willing to rely very heavily on coffee, and that’s fine.
Me, I just wasn’t willing to deal with worrying about withdrawal anymore. Plus, I felt that with all the stress I put on myself with college and then grad school while working so much, I decided that it wasn’t worth it to me to damage my adrenal and cardiovascular system further by drinking so much caffeine.
In short, the way I’ve stayed away from it is to not start drinking it, not to have it in the house, and only have some caffeinated coffee as a very rare (once every 3-4 months?) special treat at a coffee shop. When I start to crave it, I remind myself of how horrible it is to go off it again and how much stress it puts on me, and I find that I can leave it.
Why do you want to kick the habit? Maybe that’s where you need to start–determine exactly why you want to quit.