To quit or not to quit... that is the question

I'm an addict. I have been for 23 years. I blame the Christian organization who took me on a short-term missions trip to Brazil where the water was unsafe and my addiction was only $.07 per dose. That's right... it's Coca-cola. I felt I was choosing between the lesser of two evils...

...the second evil in Brazil being "Antartica: Guarana", a (ten times) caffeinated carbonated drink made from the guarana berries of the Amazon rainforest. In the middle of the Brazilian desert (45 degrees and no shade), I could drink 15+ bottles of Coke in a day. And so it began... years of addiction to this black beverage.

Why does this matter? It doesn't I guess. At least it didn't until last Sunday. I was talking to a friend at church and she told me that she picked Tuesday, March 13th as the day that she would quit smoking. God was working in her life to speak to her that He could give her the motivation and the strength to call it quits. She picked a friend to have the same quit-day as her. Since I haven't asked her about writing this to the rest of you, she will remain anonymous for now. I'm certain that there are women in this church who are upholding her in prayer in this really tough decision that she's made.

At the moment that she told me that she was going to quit smoking, I felt the tug of the Holy Spirit about my own addiction. He was saying, "you can quit, too". I have tried gazillions of times to quit drinking coke and moved from classic to diet to c2 to zero. I know how hard it is - I am truly addicted. I've heard testimony of "life after coke" and read the literature about how it eats away your stomach lining. I still haven't been able to call it quits.

Nonetheless, I couldn't get the words to come out of my mouth to tell this friend that I would join her in her quitting. I wished her all the best and said, "I should probably quit drinking coke at the same time, too", but I couldn't commit to it.

I talked to Kate (my 15 year old daughter) about my addiction to coke. She doesn't like it. She knows that it is bad for you and wishes I would quit drinking so much of it. On a stressful day at work, I can down 6 or 7 cans. And so, I quit. Right them and there. On Sunday, March 11th, I decided that I was done drinking coke.

I haven't even told my friend from church about it. I don't think she'll care that much - she's in the throws of her own withdrawl - except to know that I committed myself to praying for her as she quits smoking. The way that God reminds me to lift her up in prayer is each time the yearning for a coke comes into my mind (approximately 400 million times a day), I pray for her to have the strength to trust God for His strength and courage to do what she knows is right.

Quitting drinking coke is nothing like quitting smoking. I've heard that the withdrawl from nicotine addiction is worse than the withdrawl from heroine addiction. I'm not pretending that my longings for the black beverage are anything like her longings for nicotine. I'm just using my own experience to prompt me to prayer for a friend who is stepping out in faith in a huge way.

This is very similar to how fasting works. In a way, I'm fasting from coke - with no intention to ever drink it again - and using that fast to pray for a friend on her journey. When you fast from food or TV or desserts, etc., the longings and pangs that you have because of your lack of having that in your life can be turned into the promptings to uphold another in prayer.

I'm entering day four. I am thinking about coke at 8:30am. I'm wishing I could have one right now. I'm praying for my friend. Boy, has she had a lot of prayer in the last hour since I woke up. I know that some of you are thinking how sick it is that I'm even thinking about coke this early in the morning. Ya, it is. I'm asking God to turn this addiction-breaking into something for His glory. It's an ugly part of my life - one that I don't proudly write about, but I want to share it with you because it's a bit of a picture of how the verse works, "when I am weak, then I am strong".

Thoughts?
Any encouragement from those of you who have successfully broken the power of addiction?
Quit smoking? Quit coke? Something else?

What about fasting? Have you tried it?
Have you found it to be a trigger to remind you to pray?