Abstention Project: Quitting Cold Turkey

Abstention Project Throughout the past month, I decided to give up SunDrop. I have noticed throughout the past few years that I have become quite dependent on the drink, and without it I get very bad headaches and cravings for it. From class, I learned that the caffeine in it is what causes my body to want the drink and become addicted to it. This process was very difficult to me and I found it to be much harder than I expected it would be. The first week of the abstention, I found that “quitting cold turkey” is much more difficult than I first envisioned. Growing up, I always had the idea in my head that if someone wanted to stop something, all they simply had to do was stop. From class, I realized that this is not true, and even more so
from this project, I learned that it feels as if it is nearly impossible to do. As I started to ween myself off of SunDrop, the first day was the worst. I had a terrible headache and felt tired all throughout the day. As the days continued that first week, I started feeling better and better without having to have a drink. I completed the first week without having a single SunDrop at all, but as the days went on I felt myself craving one more and more. While I didn’t feel my body need one, I could tell my taste buds and mind wanted one. The second week of the project I only allowed myself to have one or two SunDrops. The more I allowed myself to have one, the more often I felt like I deserved one. When I saw other people drinking any kind of soda, I could feel myself leaning towards letting myself have one. The rest of the project, I did drink SunDrop, but I have limited how many I’ve had by a large amount. I would estimate that I would previously have about 10+ cans a week, and now I only have maybe 5 depending on where I am or if I have any available to me. To prevent any more relapse if I had to do this project over again, I would get rid of all of the SunDrop that I had in my refrigerator before it started to prevent myself from drinking it. I would also carry water with me in the first few days to drink instead of SunDrop when I felt myself craving one.
I think this project really helped me realize that addicts have to truly grasp their addiction and have to want to change rather than someone telling them they have to change. While my “addiction” is not very serious in relation to other addictions such alcohol or drugs, I can tell that I, myself, did not truly want to change and it harped my ability to quit. I believe I could definitely quit drinking SunDrop all together if I tried hard enough and truly wanted to just as an addict of something more serious could do the same. This project has prepared me to work with people of addiction in the future in a sense that it will help me realize not to expect people to be able to quit everything as soon as they start the quitting process. Addiction is something that is very hard to overcome. I have experienced a family member battling the journey of addiction and rehabilitation and it was a long and tedious process. Through my own rehabilitation and relapse, I see that it is much harder than I first realized it would be. Overcoming addiction is a something that anyone should be proud of because it is a rigorous process.