This is an unusual topic for me. This year I worked to wean myself off of caffeine and artificial sweeteners, and given the trouble I had finding information on how to do it, thought I’d put notes out on what worked for me.
Why bother? After all, most of us have our addictions, and are able to get by in daily life despite them, particularly if they’re common ones. Caffeine dependency in particular is widespread, although most people are in denial about it. And many have a double whammy, being addicted to diet sodas, which have both caffeine and artificial sweeteners like aspartame. Most people take these in without any issues. But in recent years, I was drinking a lot of coffee and Diet Dr. Pepper, and as I’ve gotten older, it’s caused increasing problems.
I have a long history with caffeine. When I was younger, I drank copious amounts of coffee (usually black for maximum effect), somewhere in the neighborhood of ten cups a day, and chased them down with a few diet sodas. I was one wired puppy! That level of caffeine made it hard to keep calm in stressful situations, which caused both career and relationship issues.
This eventually led me to give up caffeine cold turkey, which I don’t recommend. You might be able to get away with it if you don’t work for a living, or if your job doesn’t include a significant social factor, but for me, it was the wrong approach. Still, I was able to do it, twice.
What I didn’t understand back then was that I was also addicted to aspartame. I kept drinking caffeine free diet soda, but it wasn’t always easy to find, which eventually led to me falling back on the caffeinated versions. Before I knew it, I was drinking a half dozen diet sodas a day. Not as bad as the ten cups of coffee, but that much aspartame led to its own set of problems. At one point I cut back on the diet sodas by mixing in a few cups of coffee, and so was back to where I started, although at a fraction of the earlier levels.
Early this year, the problems were increasing, so I decided it was time to do something. Tackling all of it at once was too overwhelming, so I decided to focus first on the diet soda, which meant focusing on aspartame.
Aspartame
The medical field seems unsure whether aspartame is really addictive. All I can say is that every time I tried to give it up cold turkey, I had bad withdrawal symptoms. One was an unquenchable thirst, no matter how much water I drank. The other were headaches, distinct from the caffeine withdrawal ones. But the worst was what I can only describe as a feeling of impending doom, which seemed to increase in urgency the longer I went without an aspartame hit.
Over the years, I had tried just gradually cutting back on the number of drinks, but that always led to a feeling of deprivation, along with longing for the next drink, and rationalizing why it could be sooner. It felt like an agonizingly long goodbye to an old friend. In short, I found the psychological effort in doing it this way problematic.
What finally worked was separating the experience of drinking the diet soda from the intake of aspartame. I picked up a large box of Equal packets, and found out how many milligrams of aspartame were in the drinks vs the Equal packets. (Getting reliable info was hard, but the best I could find was 35mg per Equal packet.). It came out to something like a 12 oz can of Diet Dr. Pepper having the equivalent of about 5.3 packets.
So I cut out the Diet Dr. Peppers cold turkey, but replaced them with the same number of glasses of water, each with five packets of Equal mixed in. I gulped these down quickly, treating them as a drug, and not savoring them. I also temporarily increased my coffee intake to keep the caffeine levels about the same. The first few days were rough. There were obviously other things in the soda besides the caffeine and aspartame that my body was missing, but taking in the aspartame in an alternate manner prevented the worst symptoms.
I then worked to gradually cut down the daily intake of aspartame. I cut the number of packets per glass of water by one each week. I discovered that the day after a cut was worse than the day of the cut, so my cut days were on Friday, giving me the weekend to recover. I did this until I was down to one packet per glass, and then cut those down by one each of the following weeks. It took about six or seven weeks, but it worked. I was now aspartame free!
That was several months ago. I had thought I might stabilize with the coffee drinking for a while, but the increased coffee consumption started causing its own issues. So I moved on to tackling the caffeine portion.
Caffeine
Here my strategy was similar: replace the habit of coffee drinking with caffeine pills. Finding low dose pills is difficult. The lowest straight caffeine pills (without other crap mixed in) that I could find is 100 mg, but there are splitable tablet versions, and four way pill splitters, so the dosages could be brought down to 20-30mg pieces.
I cut all coffee drinking cold turkey, replacing it with the pills. Again the first couple of days were rough but manageable. At the start I was taking in about 350mg of caffeine a day spread over 25-50mg hits throughout the day. The plan was to cut the daily intake by about 25mg each Friday. It worked. I was caffeine free by early December, and in a relatively stress free manner. Patience seems very useful for this kind of endeavor.
Afterward
I recently had a drink of a diet soda, and discovered that it didn’t taste nearly as good as it used to. Apparently when you’re addicted to something it may taste like one of the finest pleasures in life. But get away from it for a few months, and you’re able to realize what you were taking in was mediocre at best. It seems to support the Epicurean insight that pleasure is basically lack of suffering, what they called “ataraxia.”
The methods used here are similar to the nicotine patches smokers often use to quit, although I only realized it afterward. I’m not a particularly strong willed person, and it worked for me. If you’d like to wean off aspartame (or other artificial sweeteners) and/or caffeine, it might work for you too. So if you’re looking for something to have a New Year’s resolution on, this might be a candidate.
I’m not planning to be strict about the caffeine. After a few months, I can see having the occasional (full sugar) coke or mocha. The trick, I think, is not drinking them at home or work, or in any other setting where they could turn back into a daily habit.
SelfAwarePatterns 
I, too, liked this.
I thought I was addicted to tea but now I know ain’t there yet. I can take several cups of tea a day or just a cup of tea. I have no addiction to sweeteners.
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The good thing about tea is it has less caffeine than coffee (at least most teas do in comparison to most coffees).
Although I’d keep a close eye on the daily count. I didn’t get to drinking as much as I did overnight. It gradually creeped up over months and years.
But a cup or two a day isn’t bad.
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Nice.
Still, I’m not giving up my daily breakfast: coffee (pour over), cacao (not sweetened), Bailey’s(creamer) and Kahlua (or other liquor, sweetener).
Some days I get another mocha from one of the bazillion coffee shops around here.
Am I addicted?
*
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That sounds like a tasty breakfast!
On whether you’re addicted, the best way to find out is try to skip a day. If you’re like most people, you’ll feel it. Although if you’re only drinking one homebrewed cup, it probably wouldn’t be that bad. But coffee shop coffee tends to be a lot stronger. If you’re taking that in daily, you’ll feel it a lot more.
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Yikes, sounds like you’ve had it pretty rough. I had no idea aspartame was addictive. I used to drink diet sodas, but when I heard they’re not good for you I switched to seltzer water and didn’t notice any bad effects. I wasn’t drinking that many diet sodas, though. Ultimately I think what I really liked was the festive flavored carbonation, not the sweetness (I never liked real sugar sodas, as they made my teeth feel furry and gross.)
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Strangely enough, once I figured out separating the experience of the drink from the physiological dependency, it wasn’t that hard. But figuring that out wasn’t fun.
Not every diet soda is saturated with aspartame. (Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper are the worst.) A lot of others mix in other artificial sweeteners like Splenda that may not be as addictive. And maybe it doesn’t effect everyone the same. Most of the people I found on the internet who talked about addiction were consistently drinking several a day.
I had stopped liking the regular sodas while on the diet ones, but had a coke a few weeks ago and it tasted much better. I’ve never been able to get into seltzer water. At this point, I mostly just do water.
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Water is the best option for sure. Can’t go wrong there!
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These addictions and the drastic techniques you’ve had to resort to sound dreadful. While reading about your journey I wondered if you ever thought about introducing some meditation practices. Although it may take a long time, meditation can help some deal with the psychological patterns that hold on to various compulsive behaviors. Just a thought.
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Thanks for the thought! I did try meditation a few times when I was younger. I fear I’m not patient enough and get bored too easily. Although some of that may have come from being over caffeinated back then. Maybe in retirement.
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In my youth I drank a lot of coffee, sometimes 16 cups a day, but as I approach 70 I find that more than two or three a day leaves me exhausted and sleepy all the time. There’s nothing like that first cup (I’m drinking my first coffee of 2025 right now), but after that I have to pace it. I aim for one around noon and maybe one around 4 pm.
Sometimes I sneak in an extra one, and generally I regret it. So why do I do it? Your point about rationalization strikes a chord. Sometimes it’s because I need to power some extra thinking, so I tell myself, and sometimes it’s just to enjoy the taste. Ah, but why not decaf? Well, that’s just against my principles! It’s like drinking de-alcoholized beer, don’t you know. I suspect these are made-up excuses. It’s not that I experience headaches on withdrawal — I do, but they’re not intolerable — but that my character and expectations for myself, my identity if you will, are built in part around being a coffee drinker. These days I try to drink more water, although I’m “not a water drinker” (!), and I find it’s been good for my sense of physical well-being. Or I’ll have a cup of mint tea, which helps with my chronic sinus problems.
Tobacco is a different story. That stuff gets a hook in you. I smoked a pack of strong cigarettes for four years, from about 17 to 21, and I tried to quit many, many times. In the end I did it cold turkey by following a simple principle, which was under no circumstances to have another cigarette. It sounds simple, but you wouldn’t believe the arguments I’d concoct for why it was OK to break the principle “just this once.” It was only after I cottoned on to my own rationalizing tricks that I was able to kick the habit. For a few days I did smoke a pipe, which made me look insufferable. I also took to chewing Bic pens, until one night I dreamt I was eating a bowl of shredded plastic with milk.
Congratulations on figuring out your own route out of these bad habits. Your approach was admirably scientific!
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Thanks!
I’m lucky to have never fallen into the tobacco trap. It would have been so easy during my teenage years. My parents smoked and most people in school did. But for some reason the groups I hung out with didn’t.
Your coffee intake thresholds resonate with my experience. But it’s just so tempting to try for that initial rush again. Particularly on days where it feels needed and justified. It’s why my intake had a tendency to creep up over the months and years.
I’d also note that decaf tastes different from regular coffee. There’s a lack of bitterness, of “bite”, there that my tastebuds miss, and with it a feeling of deprivation.
I recognized that I probably could have just reduced my intake down into the two cup range and probably would have been okay. But given that history of intake creep, if I was going to make the effort anyway, continuing down to zero felt worth it. We’ll see if it holds, but it is nice not having to worry about when and where to get my fix.
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I got hooked on tobacco because in those days people used it to roll hashish. I had to borrow a cigarette and practice so I didn’t cough everything out. The cigarette made me physically sick, and I expect that happens with everybody’s first cigarette. It must act as some kind of initiation rite into a social group.
In my retirement, to keep these stiff and failing legs moving, I now go for a daily constitutional. My destination is Morley’s, a coffee shop that shares space with Friction Books (a bookstore heavily into mysticism); Taz Records (dealing mainly in vinyl); and and Joel Plaskett’s music studio (up the stairs at the back). Great place to hang out, but now I’m drinking more coffee.
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Walking is my main form of exercise. I do an hour of it a day, although where I live that doesn’t involve any interesting destinations. But it does allow me to keep up with my podcasts, or occasional audiobook.
I miss hanging out in bookstores. Although similar to Saturday morning cartoons, what I miss is the experience of what it once meant in terms of discovery. Once I could search and download the book I want in seconds, bookstores lost much of that meaning.
This reminds me that I need to think about what I’ll order next time I am hanging out with anyone in a coffee shop. Maybe a hot chocolate.
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Thanks for this post.
I had an aspartame (artificial sweetener? any old sweetener?) problem too. It was pinging my insulin system (or so I figure) and making me crave more “calories”. The calories could be imaginary (more sodas), or real (apple, pretzels, whatever). When I have a diet soda with a meal, it seems to have less effect on cravings. Anyway, I gave up the morning sodas at work, and also gave up bringing them to lunch. It didn’t feel like withdrawal, but I did miss the sodas I wasn’t drinking.
Caffeine probably played a role – I’m pretty sure I was mildly addicted to it. I started drinking tea to substitute. Sometimes I forget to have tea, so caffeine has limited grip on me, I guess.
I have a walking/running machine/desk at work. If I’m hungry a few hours after breakfast, I find that walking for a half hour to an hour makes it go away. I don’t understand that one, but I’ll take it.
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Thanks. Your description of the effects of artificial sweeteners on appetite match my experience. I noticed my metabolism seemed better once I was off of it.
Sounds like you had an easier time giving up aspartame than I did. Some of it might be because I’d been drinking it for decades. And not all diet sodas have as much aspartame as Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper (my drink). But it also just might not affect everyone the same. The fact that I’ve been on a diet for much of the year might also have made a difference.
Caffeine is definitely part of it, although it’s lower in sodas than coffee or energy drinks. If you were only having a couple a day, then I wouldn’t think it would be too addictive. Once my intake went below 100mg a day, the cuts became increasingly easier. Overall, I found caffeine easier to wean off of this year than aspartame.
From what I remember reading, the body reduces digestive processes when the rest of the body is active, so I can see walking helping with hunger. I think other types of activity, like a workout, can help too.
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I’ve never really had any substance addictions, but I do have some behavioral addictions. At the moment, I’m recovering from an addiction to YouTube. It kind of snuck up on me over the last year or so, and I ended up spending a significant number of hours of my day on the YouTube app.
Adam Savage did a video about this (which, ironically enough, I watched on YouTube) where he said that just establishing any limit at all will make a world of difference. It doesn’t matter what the limit is. There just has to be a limit of some kind. So I set up a screen time limit that blocks the YouTube app on my phone between midnight and noon. I still end up taking a YouTube break in the afternoon, but it doesn’t eat up my whole day like it used to.
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Interesting. I’ve never had that type of addiction, although I’ve heard of them. I’ve sometimes wondered if I have an overall internet addiction. Luckily my job requires staying connected throughout the day. But it often takes effort to break away and read a book or watch a movie, even when after work hours and nothing interesting is happening on the internet. But I suspect that is less intense than the actual addictions people have for things like social media, gambling, or Youtube.
Good to hear the limit setting is working. Best of luck on keeping it under control.
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“ataraxia, which is a state of tranquillity or equanimity“
Fascinating, I was just rereading some of Spinoza. My sort of god. and I too seem to have acquired a lack of suffering. Which seems indeed to equate to ataraxia. Meditation and a belief in a vague approximation of Spinoza’s god seems to have worked wonders. I wonder if Spinoza was tranquil? Hmm, I must check it out.
More relevant on the subject of addiction, it has plagued me often in my life. I have an highly addictive personality and for me, even paracetamol can become addictive.
Oddly enough though my experience with psilocybin greatly reduced the addictive tendencies of my personality. I found that not only did I NOT want to take psilocybin, but that I also did not want to take ANY mood altering substance.
My endless meditation has further strengthened my distaste for addition to anything. Other, perhaps, than to meditation itself. Obviously there is a physiological side to addiction but in my case at least once I had decided to quit any substance, the road became very smooth.
Whenever I have given anything up, it has always been cold turkey. And with no substitution. It has worked but it’s a tough road.
In any event, congratulations. One day at a time as they say – chortle. At least your addictions seem to have been relatively harmless ones!
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Thanks. I’m lucky I never fell into the smoking trap, and while I skirted the alcohol one in college, I was probably safe because I never really enjoyed drinking, mainly doing it to fit in. But caffeine in one form or another was a pleasure going back to childhood. I just always struggled to keep it moderate.
I’ve gone the complete cold turkey route myself several times. I can do it, but just find it appalling. And it probably depends on just how much of the substance you’re taking in, and what else might be going on in your life at the time. Work right now has been too stressful for me to be miserable for months with withdrawal.
Glad you’re finding peace with Spinoza’s god. From what I remember reading about Spinoza’s life, he suffered a lot of censure in his time, which probably detracted from whatever peace of mind he might have found in his theology. Early modernity, even in the relatively tolerant enclave he lived in, wasn’t a good time to be too far outside the mainstream.
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