Giving up caffeine is a horrible experience. I’ve been trying since I came to China to quit drinking cola and coffee and have failed miserably in every attempt over the past three years. Today is the end of day two of my final attempt.

This time feels different. Unlike previous attempts, I didn’t want Coke immediately after the headache started. I planned my withdrawals to have the smallest impact on my classes as possible so I can weather the heavy parts over the weekend. I have no classes on Thursdays so the first day of no caffeine was Wednesday. I have classes in the morning but I’d had a coke the night before, so the suffering didn’t start until yesterday afternoon. Today I was in too much pain to do much of anything but I still managed to get up and go out to lunch. Tomorrow morning I have two classes and then the weekend starts. I plan to take extra naps and have also stocked up on icewater (I have 5 half-full bottles in the freezer).

If I fail again that means I’ll go back to Canada still addicted to caffeine, which is definitely something I wanted to leave behind in China. I can’t fail again, it’s too important.