I did not drink any coffee during my schooling days as school is easy for me most of the time. I am aiming to get by and not excel. No one told me that school was for excelling in. I just studied what I want and never cared about my results.

When I embarked on my first entrepreneurial venture during my university years, I started to drink coffee. Oh god, did I drink… I love the taste of coffee, the after taste, the smell. The taste of coffee is very similar to a cigarette and slowly I replaced nicotine for caffeine. It is easier to break a habit when you have something else to replace it.

My justification for replacement is that it must be a better habit. It will take an insane cups of coffee to be able to kill myself by overdosing.

I soon stopped smoking and become a regular coffee drinker every morning, afternoon and night. It is my preferred choice of beverage. On days that I managed to break my routine and miss a few cups of coffee, the ensuing headache will ensure that I reach for my cuppa (thou I realised that a dose of vitamin C helps in relieving the headache).

Then I decided to stop caffeine.

It is too important a drug to misuse. I am no longer running a 70 hours work week. I am working more like 40 hours a week which require no caffeine injection. But alas stopping is harder than what I have thought.

Now I have nothing to replace caffeine with and stopping is harder than I thought. I have been trying for years and I had constantly failed. The new year is almost here again and here I am trying to break my caffeine habit again. I am on my 4th day of caffeine-free diet and I am drinking mint tea while typing this article in a Starbucks. This time, I think I might just succeed.

My hopes are up that I may just succeed or maybe my resolve will break again.

“The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”

-Bertrand Russell

Ong Wee Hiang