Breaking the Caffeine Addiction

Breaking the Caffeine Addiction

If you find yourself needing a soda, chocolate or even tea every few hours you may actually have a caffeine addiction. Many people haven’t even heard of this but it is real and it does exist in more people then it is documented. Most believe they can quit at any time, but the reality of them actually doing it is another story. Can you stop having your daily caffeine or are do you have a caffeine addiction?

Caffeine addiction is just as hard to break as any other addiction, if not more because you have it widely accessible and it is legal to have. Prices are cheap and it is around every corner whether it is in a machine, at a restaurant or inside a store. Enter a store and look straight down the aisles, you are sure to see an entire rack of nothing but chocolate candy, donuts and in the freezer side you’ll find soft drinks galore, chocolate shakes, teas, coffee and even chocolate milk. How easy is it just to walk away from all this? It isn’t.

Breaking the caffeine addiction is hard. Items such as a chocolate éclair, candy bars or even chocolate ice cream seem innocent but these too fuel the caffeine addiction. Even something that says it is “Caffeine-free” contains a small amount of caffeine in it, which means you are still using it. Many prescribed medicines contain doses of caffeine in them, so if you are trying to quit you’ll need to let your doctor know ahead of time.

Why would one want to break away from caffeine? One big reason is their health, it is possible to get heart disease or even fibroids from drinking too much caffeine. Some people may try cutting back on sodas that contain lots of carbonation because they rot your teeth. Diabetics normally cut out soft drinks as well as candy and if they were already addicted to caffeine it is much harder to break. Some may do it all at once while others do it gradually depending on the degree of diabetes they have. Another is to lose weight, that’s right if you replace your daily soda with water you can actually lose weight.

Cutting cold turkey from caffeine means to take anything that has caffeine in it and never eat/drink it again. But as doctors state it can put your body through withdrawls and you’ll experience everything from the sweats, shakes to possible fainting. Caffeine is actually a chemical compound that leaks into your system it is harder to quit. Doctors recommend if you are going to break away from your caffeine addiction to do it little by little but never to do it all at once. This will only cause a caffeine withdrawl to an extreme. There are several ways you can actually quit an addiction such as cold turkey, easing off or getting help through a professional. But the only way to break the addiction to caffeine is by realizing you actually have a problem. Once you have, you’ll be ready to overcome the addiction.

To learn more about caffeine and caffeine addiction, visit: OverCaffeinated.org (http://www.overcaffeinated.org/). Zak Rowe is a freelance writer.