I have no desire to smoke weed, snort coke, shoot smack, sniff glue or huff gas. I don’t over-eat, over-drink, gamble, nor do I blow my life’s savings on internet porn. Nicotine has no power to entice, and never will.
But caffeine…how I tremble before the gods of the coffee bean (quite literally, if it’s been a few cups), and obey their commandment: Drink gratis, and copiously, of the Green Mountain instant gourmet brews that come in little tinfoil-sealed pastic tubs of powdered goodness, rendered hot and perfect from the magical machine displayed like an altar enshrined in our caffeteria. Go back, again and again, until the thrill of the bean makes you sweat and palpitate with pure double-esspresso-induced ecstasy…or is it more of an anxious, nearly convulsive fit of randomly firing nerves?
And oh, how they punish me if I do not do as they command. As the melancholy torpor of withdrawl sets in, the slow, almost nauseating sensation of pressure in my skull begins its throbbing torment, until I am rendered nearly immobile for the pain and lethargy that afflict me, my face cradled face-down in my hands, my fingers massaging uselessly in an attempt to lessen the pain. No amount of sleep and analgesic can spare me enough from the torture of the dreaded two-day jones, and I am forced to crawl back on my belly to the steaming cup of java salvation, humiliated and barely alive.
Crunch times (like now) are all the worse, as I pass long and productive days guzzling whole café-style carraffe’s-worth of French Roast, until I feel the very hair on my head is dancing like windblown grass, and I collapse into bed fish-eyed and vibrating beneath the sweaty sheets. I awake after the third night of four hours of fitful, REM-free sleep barely coherent, bleary, wild-haired, zombified junkie staggering down the stairs to reanimate myself with a fresh cuppa joe.
WHY do they not regulate this stuff? Crack? HAH! I laugh at crack cocaine! Angel dust, China white, all of them! Mere gateway drugs, lightweight kids’ stuff for pantywaisted wankers. What need have I for crystal methamphetamine when I got the coffee bean and all its activatingly magical charm?
I’m a slave. D’ya hear me? The shit owns me. I want to stop. I need to stop. But the headaches! AAaaah GODS the HEADACHES! Don’t be like me! Don’t end up like this, a wretched, quivering, demented freak with bloodshot eyes and a left buttock that won’t stop TWITCHING. Don’t even drink the decaf; that’s just how they reel you in, you see, the pushers. “Baristas” they call themselves, but they’re bastards, all of 'em, endentureres and enslavers of mankind. For profit. For PROFIT! They’ll sell a man’s goddamn soul for a shiny nickle, and he’ll hand it over gladly for the next cup. Don’t be like me. Drink your lemonade, enjoy your red wine. Resist the sweet aromas and the frothy hiss tugging at you like sirens drawing mariners in to be pulverized on the shoals. When they wave that mug beneath your nose, you run; you run your ass off. Take it from me, a sad old addict who ain’t got cause to lie. Save yourselves.