I have tried not drinking any, but the inability to focus and headaches mean that trying to cutback seriously puts my job at risk.
Hey, I've been there.
How do you consume your caffeine? Black coffee or something else?
If you're drinking coffees with a bunch of cream and sugar, or energy drinks, you're addicted to both caffeine and sugar. Try quitting one at a time. Slowly switch to unsweetened tea/coffee so that you're getting your caffeine but not blasts of sugar. Even if that's all you do it's an improvement in mood/energy. Once the sugar thing's stabilized you can think about tapering down the caffeine. YMMV but if you do it over the course of a week or so you should be fine.
If you're drinking diet soda energy drinks with no sugar... I still feel like these have a lot of the effects of sugar because they trigger a lot of the same chemicals in the body. I think these artificial sweeteners have their own weirdly addictive properties.
I'm guessing you drink the zero-cal Monsters because you don't like the taste of coffee or tea? Don't worry, you're not alone. =)
I'm going to make a suggestion. If you want to break the Monster addiction you might think about exploring cold brew coffee. It's not the same as brewing a pot of coffee and throwing it in the fridge. With cold brew coffee, you just soak the coffee grounds in water over night. What you get is extremely concentrated coffee, with like 4x the caffeine of regular coffee, but with a ridiculously smooth taste, lacking the acridity/acidity/whatever of regular coffee... a lot of people who don't like coffee enjoy cold brew coffee.
Just remember that it's very concentrated stuff, 1/4 cup of cold brew coffee has the caffeine of an entire cup of coffee.
It's also a lot cheaper than Monster; you just use regular old coffee from the supermarket, you're gonna save like $50 a week.
But anyway, that's one possible way to tackle the addictions separately. Monster --> cold brew coffee --> single addiction that you should be able to beat just by tapering the dosage over time.
How do you consume your caffeine? Black coffee or something else?
If you're drinking coffees with a bunch of cream and sugar, or energy drinks, you're addicted to both caffeine and sugar. Try quitting one at a time. Slowly switch to unsweetened tea/coffee so that you're getting your caffeine but not blasts of sugar. Even if that's all you do it's an improvement in mood/energy. Once the sugar thing's stabilized you can think about tapering down the caffeine. YMMV but if you do it over the course of a week or so you should be fine.
If you're drinking diet soda energy drinks with no sugar... I still feel like these have a lot of the effects of sugar because they trigger a lot of the same chemicals in the body. I think these artificial sweeteners have their own weirdly addictive properties.
In any case... good luck!!!