In the 2000s and early 2010s I developed a 3- to 4-can a day Diet Dr Pepper habit. Our nurse-practitioner advised me to cut it out; she said she wasn’t satisfied with the studies of consuming that much artificial sweeteners at that level over a long period. So I stopped.

It wasn’t hard. Quitting smoking was hard.

Sometimes I still want a diet soda, and then I have one when I do. Not often. A few times a year. Diet soda isn’t meth, a little every now and then won’t harm you.

The moral of this story is that not every bad habit is hard to break. Sometimes it’s not a moral struggle and life-changing experience. Sometimes you get a habit of doing a thing on the regular, and then you get credible information it might not be good for you, and you stop doing that thing.