Something I used to do is make a big pot of coffee and sip on it throughout the day, which was very hard to regulate (and it was also just too much caffeiene). Now I make a single cup of coffee in the aeropress and I use 16 grams of beans which i weigh manually. And I only have one cup of coffee in the morning instead of multiples throughout the day.

Point is, weighing beans and using the aeropress helps me keep my dosage consistent so I don't go overboard.

Decaf is pretty good these days; When I don't feel like ditching the actual cups of liquid I swap over. It's certainly what I reach for in the afternoon if I want another coffee for whatever reason. Might be another option if you still enjoy the ritual of coffee making and consumption.

Recommended brands? I bought some Blue Bottle decaf and I still didn't like it, but of course there are a lot of variables.

Being in rural New Zealand; I'd be amazed if we had the same product options for decaf.

Perhaps (respectfully) this is not good advice? In my experience a “sense of control” over one’s addiction only serves to keep it alive.

If you have demonstrated the ability to quit any time you want, is it an addiction? Or a tool you find useful?

The technical term is "dependency". Caffeine causes physiological changes, and withdrawal is unpleasant.

I've tapered caffeine successfully by measuring out instant coffee. This works pretty well for managing the physical effects of caffeine withdrawal, or at least spreading them out. Basically, I 1) committed to only having the same exact amount of instant coffee, at the same exact times, every day, and then 2) every so often, reduced it a bit. Then I switched to a very moderate amount of decaf (which, yes, has a little bit of caffeine in it, but not enough to cause me problems).

I did this because I was getting withdrawal headaches most mornings, which is an unpleasant way to begin the day- I wasn't even drinking that much caffeine!

Caffeine doesn't have a strong psychological addiction, but it's physiological withdrawal symptoms are bad.

I have not found a drink equivalent to a coffee to drink in the morning. This is my psychologic addition.

All these fake coffees (I’m looking at you, chicory root) taste like ash-trays from the grimiest bar in town.

Ginger shots made at home with some orange juice or apple juice help a lot.

Maybe for you it doesn't have strong psychological addiction, but for me it certainly did.

I never really liked coffee, but I drank it at work just as a pretext to talk to other people.

I didn't have a coffee maker at home at that time. So I started getting headaches on Sunday. I made the connection eventually, after my headache completely disappeared 20 minutes after drinking a cup of coffee with a friend.

This appears to be a pretty common scenario.

I second that recommendation. I've weaned off caffeine multiple times using that method.

Just be careful not to double dose when taking the pills.

It's telling that both people recommending this method have seen it fail multiple times.

While I'm not aware of efficacy studies of different methods of quitting caffeine, cold turkey seems most effective for nicotine and a few other stimulants.

The irony isn't lost on me, but we're recommending a method to safely wean off the substance to prevent having withdrawal symptoms, which have prevented me from coming off from caffeine in the past.

I wouldn't frame starting up again as a failure. Quitting short vs. long term are two different things.