Might as well face it

Greetings and salutations, mis amiguitos. I hope this morning finds you well, and I hope that the coffee finds my brain very soon or this could get messy. I've only written as Pre-Coffee Peter (affectionately known as PCP) once before, and I'm pretty sure it was even more disjointed than usual. One very good thing has already come from this paragraph though: I was going to write about something completely different but have caused myself to veer off into another direction. I love it when that happens. It makes my dwindling list of things to write about stop dwindling for a day. Today, we shall be dwindle-free.

Today's story is about my relationship with coffee. Wonderful, loveable, kind coffee. Like with many relationships, there have been some rough patches, but love conquers all. Let me start by taking you back in time. Oh yeah, did I mention that I can do that now? It's a pretty powerful tool, so I try not to overuse it.

As a child, instant coffee was always around. Even at a fairly young age, I enjoyed the taste and would sometimes have a cup of decaf while watching a Laker game with my family. I guess the real positive association started back then, sitting with my family as Magic, Kareem, Worthy, Byron, Rambis, A.C., Coop, and the rest of the crew tore up the Western conference. It was a golden era, and an awesome time to be a kid in L.A.

Once high school came around, I was drinking a cup of coffee every morning. My parents' house has a special tap in which near-boiling water comes out, and it just made the java-imbibing process way too easy. I never felt that the caffeine was having any real effect on me, and I tested this theory at times. On weekends, my friends and I would sometimes go to Denny's and split some appetizers or desserts and just generally hang out. Yeah, we were real party animals. I'd get coffee, and it quickly became a challenge to see how many cups I could have in a given night. I remember having nine one evening, and then I went home and fell asleep half an hour later. I don't know if my body was just in shock, but I wasn't even slightly jittery.

And then, one night while staying at a friend's uncle's place in San Diego during our winter break, the wheels came off. I had about seven mugs of strong coffee, and then I wasn't feeling so hot. It hit me hard, and I even felt a little pain where I think my kidneys reside. I laid on the couch all night in discomfort and hoped I'd be ok the next day. I wasn't; I was worse in fact. My head was pounding like it never had before, and I spent the next three days basically glued to the couch with my hand on my head in hopes that it could somehow relieve the pressure. I was having serious substance withdrawals.

They say that for heroin users, the ritual of preparing the drug and everything pre-use is a huge part of the actual addition. I fully understand how that can be the case. When I have a warm mug in two hands and slowly bring it up to my mouth, it's a feeling that I can only describe as comforting and right. That said, I made a decision right then and there: no coffee for six months. No regular, no decaf, none of the hot brown goodness that had brought me so much joy. Six months from that date would be my high school graduation, and that seemed to make sense somehow. After that, I would make a decision on how to proceed.

Time passed, and I handled it remarkably well. Coffee still smelled great to me, but I had no problem sticking to my guns. The hardest part was that drinking coffee had become such a part of my identity that I felt a little like a stranger to myself. When the night of graduation rolled around, I treated myself to a single cup of decaf. I had proven that I could do it, and that was my reward. Going forward, I would drink only in moderation.

During college, I started drinking a cup or two again every morning, but no more benders in the evenings. I wasn't addicted again, and I say that because I didn't have coffee on Saturdays or Sundays and got through them without any headaches. After college though, we had a coffee maker and it became an everyday thing again. I still only drank it in normal quantities, but I could feel the onset of a headache coming if I slept in on Saturday and didn't brew some joe right away.

I think that's where I am now. I drink coffee daily and love it, but I feel the effects and limit myself to a normal amount. I will sometimes have a little more in the morning or an extra cup in the afternoon if I'm particularly dragging, but I don't get crazy. I know that with a good bottle of Advil, I could stop drinking coffee again whenever I choose, but I don't see myself making that choice unless a doctor strongly recommends it. It's just too good.

Hello, my name is Peter, and I loves me some coffee. Have a great day, friends. If you have anything at all that you feel like sharing, ptklein@gmail.com is just the place to do it.