If you just have to have your morning cup of coffee, you may be addicted to caffeine.

You are dependant on a chemical when you become sick from not being able to take it. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that when some regular coffee drinkers are suddenly deprived of their morning fix, they suffer from headaches, fatigue and depression and are unable to function at their usual level of efficiency. Students may be unable to learn and writers may not be able to write. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association described one worker who made costly errors and another who kept her head on the desk in a dark room. Most of the people withdrawing from caffeine went to bed early.

Moderate use of coffee, tea or soft drinks with caffeine is not harmful to most of people, but caffeine can make you shaky, raise blood pressure, cause irregular heart beats or interfere with sleep. If you have these symptoms and want to stop drinking caffeinated beverages, doctors recommend that you stop cold turkey at a time when you don't need to function at your best for a few days. The headaches, fatigue and depression should pass in a short time. Nobody should associate caffeine dependance or addiction which is relatively harmless with alcohol or nicotine dependance which have severe health consequences. Each year, misuse of alcohol causes more than 100,000 deaths in the United States and smoking causes more than 400,000 deaths.