When I was in high school, I began drinking coffee in the morning to help wake me up. I soon became dependent upon it and found that if I didn’t have at least one cup of coffee in the morning, I’d be groggy and unproductive all day long. By the time I was in my later years of college, I required about half a pot of coffee and was so unable to function without it that I had trouble even preparing it in the morning. I’d have to get it ready at nighttime and set the coffee maker on a timer.
I was in college when I began studying Christian Science. I loved the possibilities of what I was learning, so when I read the sentences dealing with coffee in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (see pp. 80, 406), I very much wanted to be obedient to the spiritual truth I was learning and stop drinking coffee.
While in college, I twice attempted to quit, but failed both times. Later, I realized that I’d failed because I was trying to use human will to force myself to stop. But as I’d begun to learn from my study of Science and Health, human willpower doesn’t truly heal.
