Think Happy!

Preparing to Quit Coke

When it came to finally kicking my Cola habit, there were only really a few steps to take. However, before I was ready to drink my last Coke, there were a few preparatory tasks I had to get done. (The very first one, before you move on to any below is to consult your Doctor. If you can, get a full medical while you’re at it.)

Cut-Down

This is, for me at least, a controversial point. In the next post in this series, I’ll suggest that cutting-down is a bad idea when you are quitting for good. However, in the short-term, it will prove helpful.

You can start really simply by deciding not to drink after 8pm, or before 10am. Even if you’re not quitting, this has got to be a good choice.

Pick a day a week to be Coke-free. (WARNING: Buy-in some paracetamol!) Put a limit on how much Coke you’ll drink a day or a week and stick to it. Then, next week, lower it.

Also, decide not to drink Coke in front of your kids. You know that you don’t want them picking up your habit. In fact, while you’re at it, do you really want Coke in your house?

Empty the Fridge!

Before making the decision to quit for good, I decided that I would cut-down by refusing to keep Coke in the house. So, I would either have to go to the shops every time I felt a temptation, or I would have to limit my Coke drinking to when I was out.

It became a real pain in the backside to pop-out whenever I wanted a Coke - and that’s the whole point of this step!

Find a Substitute

The next task was finding something that I could substitute for Coke temporarilly. In the next post, I’ll suggest that this is not a healthy long-term solution, but in these pre-quitting days it was a help.

The idea is to simply alternate between Coke and your substitute, so that you are soon having half as much Cola as you were before. My strong advice is to choose a non-Caffeine and/or non-Fizzy substitute.

Stop Impulsive Drinking

If anyone reading this is as addicted to drinking Coke as I was, then you’ll know exactly what I mean by impulsive drinking. It’s suprisingly easy to pour-and-drink-and-refill a glass of Coke without even thinking about it. I would drink it when I wasn’t thirsty, when I felt bloated, when I was having trouble sleeping, when it was flat - even when it was warm! I was drinking it just because I could.

One of the benefits of the steps above is that they slow down your consumption. They make you either have to go out and get a Coke, or pause and calculate if it’s time for a Coke or a Substitute.

There are two further useful tactics to employ to slow down impulsive drinking:

1. Keep a written record of each Coke you have. This is useful anyway (for the shock factor!), but it will slow you down and force your mind to register what you are doing, if you have to write down how much Coke you are about to drink, what time of day it is and why your want it.
2. Find a substitute activity. This is really simple, but surprisingly effective: When you feel the urge to have a Coke - do something else! Walk around the block, do some gardening, spend some time on the exercise Bike. The more active the better. If you still feel the urge after your activity, go ahead and have that Coke.

Have a Test-run

I quit Coke for Lent one year and look back now and marvel that I ever took it up again afterwards. However, it was a handy preparation for the day when I finally decided to give up Cola for life.

If the idea of going without Coke for 40 days makes you come out in a cold sweat, build up to that by not drinking it for a weekend. If you can do a weekend, why not try alternate weekends? And if you can do alternate weekends, go for a week. Then alternate weeks…

Social Drinking

You may want to combine emptying your fridge with taking a decision to stop drinking Coke, except for at special occasions. So, in the few months leading up to quitting, I would only drink Coke at Weddings, family parties, special nights-out at the Pub and so on.

In fact, between emptying the fridge and reaching the Social-Drinking-Only stage, I had already decided not to buy Coke any more. That meant that even on these special occasions, I would only drink it if someone else was buying.

Decide to Quit!

As mentioned above, I wouldn’t recommend “cutting-down”, as a long-term strategy, to anyone. It’s useful in these early stages, but it gives you a psychological get-out that you can always fall back on. One of the most helpful steps I took was simply deciding not to drink Coke any more, ever again.

I set the date of July 15th, 2004, (the day before my 30th birthday) as the day on which I would have my last glass of Coke ever. After that date, I would be a non-Coke drinker.

That last line is vital. I wasn’t trying to quit. I had quit. Drinking Coke was something I just didn’t do. Wear Cardigans, Eat Quiche, Drink Coke. Not me. (This is a point I will return to in a later post.)

So, whilst it can be helpful to cut-down as you work towards your deadline - as many of these steps have been helping you to do - it is detrimental in the long-term to think of yourself as someone who is cutting down. And it is actually much harder to go from a Cola-addict to someone who drinks it in moderation, than it is to go from an addict to a non-drinker.

If you really want to quit, do it. Don’t give yourself a get-out.