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Comment by jw1224 | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps (respectfully) this is not good advice? In my experience a “sense of control” over one’s addiction only serves to keep it alive.

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I've tapered caffeine successfully by measuring out instant coffee. This works pretty well for managing the physical effects of caffeine withdrawal, or at least spreading them out. Basically, I 1) committed to only having the same exact amount of instant coffee, at the same exact times, every day, and then 2) every so often, reduced it a bit. Then I switched to a very moderate amount of decaf (which, yes, has a little bit of caffeine in it, but not enough to cause me problems).

I did this because I was getting withdrawal headaches most mornings, which is an unpleasant way to begin the day- I wasn't even drinking that much caffeine!

Caffeine doesn't have a strong psychological addiction, but it's physiological withdrawal symptoms are bad.

I have not found a drink equivalent to a coffee to drink in the morning. This is my psychologic addition.

All these fake coffees (I’m looking at you, chicory root) taste like ash-trays from the grimiest bar in town.

Ginger shots made at home with some orange juice or apple juice help a lot.

Maybe for you it doesn't have strong psychological addiction, but for me it certainly did.

I never really liked coffee, but I drank it at work just as a pretext to talk to other people.

I didn't have a coffee maker at home at that time. So I started getting headaches on Sunday. I made the connection eventually, after my headache completely disappeared 20 minutes after drinking a cup of coffee with a friend.

This appears to be a pretty common scenario.

If you have demonstrated the ability to quit any time you want, is it an addiction? Or a tool you find useful?

The technical term is "dependency". Caffeine causes physiological changes, and withdrawal is unpleasant.

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