Aside from an occasional serving of coffee ice cream, I was largely indifferent about coffee through college and law school. If I felt I needed a caffeine boost of some sort, I just had something like a Coke. It wasn’t until after I graduated from law school that I started drinking coffee beverages and even then it was only flavored lattes. I didn’t become a regular consumer of the hard stuff (straight coffee) until after I turned 30. I now require about 20 ounces of the stuff per day.
Before I was completely off bottle-feeding. I was a fat little thing, apparently, and the doctor advised my mother to water-down the milk, but I didn’t like it that way…so she made very, very dilute coffee. Then, when I progressed to real food and cup-drinking, milky coffee just continued to be a staple.
In a food diary kept in high school, I was drinking about 13 cups (instant coffee) a day as an average. Fortunately, I’ve never liked it with sugar, or it’s likely I’d have become pre-diabetic a lot younger than I did!
Somewhere in my early 20s a switch got flipped and coffee just sort of went out the window, not to reappear until my early 30s when a Hudson’s Coffee franchise opened up locally, bringing with it REAL coffee. Mmmmm, Hudsons.
These days (mid-30s), I like to start the day with a strong black coffee from our home espresso machine. I may or may not have another cup over the course of the day, but I’m pretty much a water or decaf tea drinker. Guess I mostly got it out of my system in the first 20 years. 
ETA: As 6’ tall female I can only assume that either the old wives’ tale that coffee stunts your growth is mistaken, or else I was originally destined to be a circus freak.
College age here also. As a kid I never saw other kids drinking coffee, and the one kid I knew who admitted to drinking it seemed quite weird at the time.
I became a coffee drinker late in life, when I was 38. It was all the fault of a woman that I had just started dating. I had a crush on her for years, and seemed like a dream that I finally was going out with her. One night, after dinner at her house, she asked if I’d like some coffee…
I didn’t even like coffee, but of course I said yes. At the time, I would have drunk just about anything to spend an extra hour with her. The evening ended up quite nicely, thank you very much. So, had a positive reinforcement to go along with the effects of caffeine.
Even after a horrible break up, I still have coffee every morning and it’s all because of her.
When I was a kid I thought the taste of coffee was vile. I got over it in high school. I think I was about 14 when I started drinking vending machine coffee, and about 15 or 16 when I started drinking coffee prepped at home.
Born in 1980. Growing up, I always loved the smell of Grandma’s coffee and dreamed of the day when I could drink that forbidden adult drink myself. Of course, whenever I was given a taste of the bitter black brew I thought it was disgusting.
Around 15 or 16 I started drinking frou-frou Starbucks type drinks. In the mid-nineties Starbucks was in it’s prime, and coffee house dates (complete with poetry readings and folk singers) were the hip thing for artsy fartsy teens.
For day-to-day caffeine, I used to get into tea. In my pretentious youth it seemed more British and therefore much better (I’m still convinced most adamant tea drinkers are just being pretentious like I was.) At some point in late high school I got a lot busier, and starting knocking back a cup of coffee- which my school cafeteria sold- before class. I always drank it black- probably in part to imitate my grandmother, and in part because I just think sugar tastes gross in coffee. Near the end of high school I developed pretensions about addictions and quit drinking caffeine altogether for a few years.
It wasn’t until college that I got serious about coffee. I moved in with my espresso fanatic boyfriend who had a nice Swiss espresso machine. I started pulling a shot or two when I had to do an all nighter. I grew to love that special buzz that to this day only a shot espresso can bring.
But then me and espresso-boyfriend broke up and I was left with no machine. So I bought a french press and started drinking regular coffee- usually a big cup in the morning and maybe a small cup in the afternoon. I went on hiatus in Cameroon, where even Nescafe was a luxury (though I did eat my share of kola nuts…blech.) In China it’s been off and on. Real coffee is out of my price range and even Nescafe is expensive. Green tea makes me shaky in a way coffee never does. So I just drink what I have when I can get it.
So yeah, thats, uh, my caffeine journey.
My mother used to have a photo of me in my high chair, drinking from a coffee cup (she may have it still). Apparently, I liked to drink it cold.
Strangely enough, I don’t really like coffee now.
We also used to dunk cookies in my parents’ coffee. I wonder if I would still like that. I’ll have to give it a try sometime.
When I was a kid, like first grade or even younger, my grandmother would let me have coffee with lots of milk. I grew up in Virginia and my grandmother was really country and apparently it was common to let kids drink coffee. That was the late 60s, early 70s and I just kept drinking coffee.
Congratulations!
(Started drinking it regularly just out of high school, when I got the 6 am shift at a bakery)
Sometime in my teenage years, I think, although it didn’t become a daily habit / addiction until college. It made me feel all hip and grown-up, but unlike booze and cigarettes, it was a perfectly acceptable vice to indulge in public and around adults, which was a plus.
Then in college, I was night manager at a student-run coffeehouse – no pay, but all you could drink. It was at that point that the stuff started to run in my veins instead of blood. I don’t think I slept for four years 
I’ve drank coffee since I was 3 or 4 years old. My mum made instant coffee with warm milk for us. I switched to regular instant coffee at probably 6 or 7, but continued to add milk and sugar. In my teens I cut out the sugar due to acne fears. When I started to work, the only whitener available was the powdered stuff. After reading the ingredients and seeing aluminum sulfate listed I decided I didn’t want to ingest a dozen or so teaspoons of this stuff a day, so I switched to black. Thankfully drip coffee makers came out back then and you could brew “real” coffee in about as much time as it took to boil the kettle. I cannot stand instant coffee at all now.
My mother likes her coffee with tons of milk and sugar, and as a toddler I would drink most of hers if given the chance. So, instead, she just started making me bottles of coffee. Though I have no recollection of it, I would apparently wake up, stand in my crib, and shout “Coffee! Coffee!” for a time. I doubt this was the result of a physical craving for caffeine, as my coffee would have been highly diluted. It was just a nice breakfast treat.
I still enjoy coffee (and grind the gourmet beans myself and everything), but I generally don’t drink it every day.
I started drinking it – and by the pot – in college, and that was the start of a beautiful lifelong relationship. I have fond memories of one 24-hour diner near campus that kept the free coffee flowing all night for students during final-exam week.
Forgive me if this has been mentioned and I missed it, but I recall hearing when I was little that drinking coffee could stunt children’s growth. That seemed to be a widespread belief where I grew up, but I’ve not heard that for years.
Started drinking it at boarding school, when I was 15, with lots of sugar and creme. Kept drinking it light and sweet while working in New York. When I moved to Chicago, I started developing my taste for Guinness, and as a result, I started drinking coffee black, no sugar. I also noticed that I got too jittery, and the caffeine was not great for my blood pressure, so now I drink decaf black coffee whenever I’m out, and caf at home, since my wife won’t drink decaf.
I started drinking it in the last year of high school, because I’d heard it sped up your metabolism. I don’t remember when it become something I enjoyed; now I love really strong, fresh-ground black coffee untainted by milk or sugar.
Like many others, when I had a very early morning job. I was around 25 and had a 6 AM job. Been hooked ever since.
About the age of 20.
“I like my women the way I like my coffee–cold and bitter.”
Around age 2 or 3. Of course, it was as much milk as it was coffee. I distinctly remember drinking coffee out of a sippy cup.
As a teenager I might have a cup on the weekend, but not regularly. Now that I’m in college, I have a cup whenever I have to get up early (meaning, before 10 AM) for classes (which is 4 days a week right now).