When I was a kid there were two schools of thought when it came to entering a freezing cold pool of water. You could either dip your toes and slowly try to acclimate to the cold temperature, or you could just dive right in and get it over with quickly.
Either way, you're in for some pain. One part of your brain will tell you, "I don't like this; I don't want to do this," and another will be telling that voice to shut up because "this is happening". In fact, we might say that this is the foundation of discipline itself at a fundamental level.
Both strategies of pain management work depending on the person and the level of discomfort we are talking about. I used to be more of a dip-my-toes kind of person at first. In fact, the thought of just jumping into a pool made me cringe. Too much, too fast, too cold. What if the water is so cold that I start hyperventilating? That did happen once or twice when I jumped into a freezing cold pool from the hot tub on a dare. Turns out sometimes the thing you fear isn't nearly as bad as you hyped it up to be once it actually happens.
One might say that the dip-your-toes strategy is a bit more risk-averse. Again, it's not a bad strategy. It's a hedge against things going wrong in the future. Jumping into a frozen lake head first is decidedly a terrible strategy. At the same time the fear of failure can push us into inaction, which is sometimes even worse than the alternative.
A Coward dies a thousand deaths.
Imagine it's not just you deciding whether you want to jump into the pool or not, but rather you're making that decision for dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people. If you tell them to all jump, and then a bunch of them get pneumonia because the water is freezing, guess who they are going to blame? No one said leadership was easy.
So why do I feel so weird right now?
I did not drink any caffeine yesterday or today.
Gotta say, it's a pretty weird feeling.
All you addicts out there can relate.
I used to just be able to quit anytime I wanted to.
That hasn't been the case for over a year now.
Basically I got to the point where I was drinking two pots a day on top of constantly chain-drinking black tea. And it's some of the strongest black tea their is: PG Tips (if know what that is... every cup is like half a cup of coffee in terms of caffeine).
So yeah quite randomly yesterday I just didn't make coffee in the morning, and when I started getting major cravings I just ignored them. Now on day two it's like a battle of willpower, and I plan on winning. At the moment it's quite hard to focus but I figure that's to be expected for at least a few more days.
At the end of the day it's just easier to jump into the pool rather than slowly inch into it. I know because I've tried. "I'll only drink one cup of coffee today," quickly turns into 2, and then 3, and so on. There are certainly parallels to make with alcoholism and drug-use in general. For me it's just easier to commit to quit entirely rather than trying taper off. Of course even as I write this I'm thinking... maybe I'll just make a cup of tea to take the edge off.
Not that caffeine withdrawals are comparable to drugs or alcohol, but it is something to be sure. If your body is acclimated to filtering through a massive amount of chemicals every day and all of a sudden that flow of chemicals just shuts off completely... it's going to throw your body out of whack in one way or another.
I'm not sure how I was able to conflate addiction and cold turkey strategy into risk aversion and jumping into a pool or not, but there it is. Blame it on the zero caffeine coursing through my veins. You know what? Maybe I will make that cup. What could possibly go wrong?
