Hi Suma, You do have my utmost sympathy with your addiction to caffeine, coffee and tea. It must be difficult to live in India and not drink tea! "What to do?".

Well the obvious things are to:

1) Start reducing intake slowly and set yourself a targeted regime of slightly less each day and monitor your intake levels and reaction. Have a paper on the fridge and tick off the cuppas as you consume them. Be a strict referee! All strategies will take time to show up-be patient.

2) Drink de-caf (not my choice but may be a good stop-gap).

3) Drink a glass of water either before or after each "cupper" at your "tiffin" or "tea and tab nabs"!! This one should not be too difficult hopefully.

4) Drink organic products if available to you. There are pesticides in tea that worry some tea drinkers and these will not be helping you possibly.

5) Switch to dandelion, chicory or malt type coffees-takes a while to get used to but that first one will clean out your liver etc. (a detox in a cup).

6) Not sure if you drink milk in your beverages but I am interested to discover if that changes the acidity in tea and coffee I.e. neutralizes them (?).

Let us know how you get on. Please be detailed in your feed back - some folks are not and just say "Thanks I am feeling "tickety boo" but that is not very helpful to others!! Cheers, wish you well. Michael

Hi Suma, Micheal has some great suggestions. Decreasing your intake on a sliding scale, focusing on drinking organic tea/coffee, and finding if you're lactose intolerant are good pointers. Being a lover of fragrant 'filter' coffee, I sympathize with your predicament. If it were me, I'd also focus on making my body more alkaline. First thing in the morning and last thing at night, have water with the baking soda and apple cider vinegar ( please refer to EC archives for exact measurements) drink. Have it before lunch too. Within a few days you should start feeling relief. Also avoid all acid producing foods - no processed or fried foods. I would also consult a good Ayurvedic or homeopathic doctor.

Also take a good Multivitamin/Mineral supplement plus a mineral complex of Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc. Coffee or Tea with all the Caffeine is only slightly good for improving energy and stamina, so take an herbal supplement of any of these tonics Ginseng, Ashwaganda, Foti. 500mg L-Tyrosine daily will help a bunch.

Hi Suma,

I tried to give up coffee for decades without success. And then, after I managed to get through the initial die offs from taking Lugol's iodine and managed to work up to 50 mg/day (on the third try), I no longer felt the need or urge to drink it anymore. That said, to be fair, when I try to do certain types of work, I still find myself usually feeling drowsy and needing to drink coffee. However, otherwise...

I also think Michael's suggestion to try switching to a caffeine-free Chicory or Dandelion alternative is a great one. One reason why you need the caffeine in the first place (as with me and most of the rest of us these days) is probably that you're loaded with toxins. And drinking an alternative beverage with dandelion could kill two-and-a-half birds with one stone: I.e. help get you off of the coffee and caffeine and help you detox at the same time (by helping you remove existing toxins and by stopping the consumption of additional toxins and the associated self acidification).

Here's a highly rated, health looking coffee alternative that I'd like to try myself (although it's only for the health benefits since, much to my surprise, I don't miss the coffee taste at all):

https://www.amazon.com/Dandy-Blend-Instant-Beverage-Dandelion/dp/B000SMN0DO/ref=sr_1_6_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1484634427&sr=8-6&keywords=coffee+substitute&th=1

Best wishes,

Harry

P.S. You might also want to research Borax therapy and detoxing in general, including how to reduce the toxins you take in on an ongoing basis. I mention Borax therapy in general since I gather it's supposed to be on the very short list of ways to detox fluoride which I suspect may be one of, if not the primary, culprit causing your fatigue (as well as mine) for all of these years and putting us on a disease path that none of us should be on.