Standing in line at Starbucks yesterday, I suddenly remembered my brother’s description of morning in Disneyland. He told me how each resort sells a “bottomless mug” and at dawn, long before the children raise their sleepy-winkers, the adults drift toward the cafeteria as if it were an alien mothership, clutching their mugs, stupefied, but compelled by something greater than themselves.
In the words of Neil Young in “After the Gold Rush,” “The loading had begun.”
Public service ads urging parents to talk about drugs probably want me to warn my children about alcohol, marijuana, ecstasy, heroin or any number of other deadly mind-altering substances. When I talk about the dangers of addiction, however, I neglect to mention I’m an addict. My abused drug just isn’t on the list…or seemingly any other.
According to the National Coffee Organization, more than 300,000 Americans consume at least ten cups of coffee a day. If I drank that much I could vibrate through walls—my own habit is not quite so severe—but I do have “a problem.” I often wonder where I would be without that wake-up cup, or the one that focuses me, or the quick cup to stave off the lull after lunch, or the trash can-sized cup I seem to be nursing all day.
When she was watching Shrek II on DVD, my daughter insisted I come into the room to watch a tiny moment she’d noticed. In the midst of some mayhem, people flee a soon-to-be crushed Farbucks—firmly gripping Ventis in hand—and run to another soon-to-be crushed Farbucks across the street. She laughed, but I wondered: has it come to that?
I heard recently that, in Chicago proper, you are never more than a quarter of a mile from a Starbucks. When I put my own address into the Starbuck Locator and set it for two miles, I received listings for 68 Starbucks. I don’t want to say much because I’m sure Starbucks has folks who do nothing but look for web references, but where can they go from here? Can anyone possibly drink more coffee?
Well, that warm feeling in my back pocket is my Starbucks card ionized by use. When I cross the street to visit our local Starbucks, I discover two or three equally desperate colleagues, inching forward as if Starbucks served air. We have a new opiate of the masses.
Yet, if you think I’m on the brink of a teary, hair-yanking repudiation of the devil’s juice, you’re wrong. I’m a junkie. I don’t want to quit and don’t see how it’s harming me. In fact, I cling to every jot of evidence of caffeine’s benefits—it’s an excellent training drug for athletes, it improves concentration and learning, it contains anti-oxidants, it may help you stay slim.
Didn’t cigarette makers once make similar claims?
I’d say I’m in denial, but how can you be in denial and know it? Truth is, I meant to quit out of pure orneriness—I’m no corporate dupe—but always have too much to do. It’s just a bad time, I tell myself, for a caffeine withdrawal headache…
…or a three-day nap.
Recently, my daughter asked me what it would be like to take caffeine out of my life, and I realized—I have no idea. I’ve been caffeinated almost constantly for the last thirty years.
Someone is going to have to rescue me. You could stage an intervention, but I’m sure someone would want a cup of coffee. Starbucks, if your spies are out there, listen to my plea. Start closing stores now—maybe diversify into ’shrooms or peyote—save us from ourselves.
The poster above is available here.
Filed under: American Life, Chicago, Children, Coffee, Confession, Culture, Essays, Human Nature, Identity, Life, Musings, Places I Like to Visit, Rants, Society, Statistics, Thoughts, Writing
I loved it and so true !! I am never more than a few feet away from my french press or the coffee maker that grinds the beans AND makes the coffee. Starbucks? the holy grail … make mine a tall, and darkest, richest on the menu. Ahhhhhhhhhh …
So true or so unfortunately true? I’m not sure myself. I sometimes wonder if I should love coffee as much as I do…though I could identify with your rapture too. Thanks for visiting. —D
Coffee puts the system under the strain of metabolizing a deadly acid-forming drug, depositing its insoluble cellulose, which cements the wall of the liver, causing this vital organ to swell to twice its proper size. In addition, coffee is heavily sprayed. (Ninety-two pesticides are applied to its leaves.) Diuretic properties of caffeine cause potassium and other minerals to be flushed from the body.
All this fear went away when I quit, and it was a book that inspired me to do it called The Truth About Caffeine by Marina Kushner. There are five things I liked about this book:
1) It details–thoroughly–the ways in which caffeine may damage your health.
2) It reveals the damage that coffee does to the environment. Specifically, coffee was once grown in the shade, so that trees were left in place. Then sun coffee was introduced, allowing greater yields but contributing to the destruction of rain forests. I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere else.
Thank you and, behalf of anyone who encounters this post, thank you. I will check Kushner’s book out—maybe I’ll get the monkey off my back. —D
3) It explains how best to go off coffee. This is important. If you try cold turkey, as most people probably do, the withdrawal symptoms will likely drive you right back to coffee.
4) Helped me find a great resource for the latest studies at CaffeineAwareness.org
5) Also, if you drink decaf you won’t want to miss this special free report on the dangers of decaf available at http://www.soyfee.com
Well, I gave up caffine when pregnant with first child and did not go back until about 2 years ago when hubby got tired of decafe. We went 1/2 caf/ 1/2 decaf for a while. Now, in school again, I want the full stuff. We don’t drink soda or tea and it is just an am thing. Two cups usually.
I reccomend you go 1/2 and 1/2 on the strength for a while and gradually lessen it. I love coffee and don’t want to give it up in the morning. Make sure you add some fiber to your morning routine though because, er, um, well, you know what fiber is for and that withdrawl could be, um, well, er, hard. haha.
I think people who drink caffine sodas have a much hard time. I have heard a mountain dew or orange crush habit is very difficult to break because of the sugar tie in too.
xx good luck. I NEVER go to starbucks because they are evil. They are like McDumbasses…everywhere like the plague.
xx
I SHOULDN’T go to Starbucks. They are indeed evil. I have gone down to half-caf, and that seems to help—except on those days I think it entitles me to drink twice as much. Caffeine is a strange drug—good when it is right but so hard to calibrate. One tiny bit over my limit and suddenly I’m so jangled I can’t think… and anxious.
Soda is not my thing. I don’t think I’ve had a soda in a few years. I guess I should be glad I don’t have ALL the vices, only 378 or so. —D
The Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks is also a Lewis Black standup bit. He points out that the only angle from which you could see only the second Starbucks is if you were coming out of the first Starbucks. You step out of one, finishing up your coffee, and think, “I’d like another cup, but I don’t want to take the trouble to turn around.”
I’ve seen that routine—it’s hilarious. What I like about Lewis Black is the sneaky way he inches up to hitting hard. He’s right about Starbucks locating near Starbucks. Two of the ones in my neighborhood are two blocks away from each other. Sometimes when I’m walking to school, it seems as though I’ve just walked out of one when I pass the other. I don’t stop at the second one, though. I’m not that bad. —D
When I was teaching, most of us teachers were main-lining dreck coffee out of the staff-room coffee urn. Since those days I have had that monkey on my back, however as principle I don’t support Starbucks. Too pretentious, McIsh, too may fluffy coffee drinks, yech. Coffee is pure black joe, and adding foam, caramel, chocolate shavings is merely gilding the lily. Give me coffee in which my spoon stands straight up without external support! G
I do go to Starbucks but never order anything fancy—just black coffee and nothing in it either. I have gone to half-caf. I heard someone ask the other day for one-quarter caf and then the person after him asked for a “black eye,” which is apparently two shots of expresso in a tall coffee. I’m afraid that would send me into shock. —D
Like Cole, I kicked the habit during each of my pregnancies. After the first pregnancy, I stayed off for about four or five years (which got me through my second pregnancy). I felt great. I drank herbal tea or just hot water. I still say I’ve never been as healthy as I was when I was pregnant. (But that’s also because I was exercising, eating well, and not drinking any alcohol.)
I don’t know why I even went back to all my vices, but I did. And coffee is the one I love the most. I look forward every morning to my French pressed coffee, my heated milk, the warm mug in my hands, the taste of the cafe con leche. It’s ritual, it’s warmth, it’s quiet time for me. All those cliches in that one flavored coffee commercial (I forget the name, the international powdered coffee brand) — that’s me.
Fortunately (since I’m sure it would cost a small fortune), I don’t do Starbucks unless I’m on the road. The closest to me are actually too draining a drive through heavy traffic. And my small village doesn’t allow chains, else we might have one closer.
Be grateful you don’t have a Starbucks near. At school, subbing for a colleague or doing some extra duty will be rewarded by a Starbucks card of five or ten dollars (or more) and then I can’t let the money go to waste, of course.
I think the ritual is a big part of my enjoyment of coffee too—though I sometimes wonder if I’m mistaking pure conditioning for ritual. My daughter loves the smell of coffee and hates the taste. I hope it stays that way for her and wish the smell was all I needed. I can’t smell it without wanting it though, and how could I ever avoid smelling it? It seems hopeless. —D
I don’t drink coffee.
Sorry.
I’m envious. —D
I’m not sure I want to be ’saved’ from this one. There’s so much to coffee in addition to the actual drink; The familiarity, the ritual, the time-out, the break in the day, the coming together for a cup….
I enjoy the ritual, familiarity and company too, and that contributes to my ambivalence. I wonder if coffee is an all or nothing proposition. Right now, it seems all-plus, and I wonder what an addiction specialist might tell me about whether an addict can control consumption. I’m compromising by going to half-caf…my methadone. Thanks for visiting! —D
I think I need to go to a ‘half-cup’ on so many other things, that coffee finds it self way down on the list.
Wait. What are we, if we’re not battling to get all things in life down to the ‘half-cup?’
I hear you. I’m just trying to navigate the addiction part of the equation. It’s tough for me to have a bit of a habit with anything! —D
Coffee is a sacred rite for me. I flirted briefly with the notion of switching to green tea after not drinking coffee for a week when I had the stomach flu this past fall. My reasoning was that green tea adds to health and would give me a substitute for the daily ritual….but it was not the scent of green tea that I recall from the immense percolator in the church of my childhood, not the potassium rich brew that nourished my teenage angst and fueled the last minute inspiration necessary to get my first degree in college….
I know exactly what you are saying—it’s the associations I have with coffee that have made it so hard for me to kick the habit. I have switched to half-caf, but that’s all the progress I’ve managed. Like you, I’ve found no solace in tea. Thanks for visiting! —D
If you want a boost of energy and great taste then go for coffee. If you like to relax and not too much caffeine in your veins then drink some Chinese tea.
I’ve always heard that tea’s caffeine has a different effect than coffee’s caffeine—I don’t know WHY that would be so, but a friend from the UK told me so, and that means I have to believe it. Thanks for visiting. —D