Dear Wally:
I think I may be a coffee addict. I literally feel plastered to the bedroom wall in the morning until I have had a few cups. And lately it’s taking more (and stronger) coffee to achieve the same results. Without coffee, there is zero morning productivity, predictable constipation and all around grouchiness. I am afraid to quit and afraid to not quit. I’ve become the ass , as it were, chaffing under Juan Valdez’s poncho covered, coffee bean filled saddle bag. Here’s how bad it’s gotten: Starbucks closes at 10pm. When I drove home late last night I had serious thoughts about hurling a brick through the plate glass window and looting. And I don’t mean the cash register.
-Got a Problem
Dear Got:
Yes you do. First piece of advice: Don’t go busting up a Starbucks. The coffee in prison is weak and cold and you’ll have to join a gang to get any.
It is ironic (no?) that I myself am reviewing your cry for help within the walls of an internationally known coffee empire. Let us call it the Mothership. Let us say it hovers over all humanity and let us say it casts its menacing green and white shadow on us hapless pawns . Finally, let us say that the place is friggin packed.
Let me take you on a trip, not unlike the one the Dickinsian Ghost of Christmases Future did to old man Scrouge. Come with me to this place and consider that there is an empty chair in this madhouse (besmeared with coffee stains) waiting for you if you don’t change your ways.
There’s an elevated amplitude of energy in this frenetic place. I’d say dynamic but that suggests presence across a spectrum of highs and lows. There’s only one speed here, and ma’am, it is hyper. Clanging plates, loudly dropped spoons, nervous giggles, fingers impatiently running through forelocks of hair. Pacing, snorting, huffing. Banal comments about the weather. Wedding rings being twisted at 60 rpm. Wringing hands. Agitation. It’s like an asylum.
And I’m the only one drinking decaf, apparently.
To my left, a young, itchy man mostly sits. He speaks in short, choppy sentences and scans the room like an ex-con. He clutches a venti mocha-chino and slides it around like he’s a goalie in an exciting air hockey game at little Joey’s Bar Mitzvah . His right leg bounces up and down under the table incessantly as if he were pumping the imaginary accelerator of a neglected farm truck to get it to start. It is impossible to not notice (and not eavesdrop) as his flailing arm and full body twitches are borderline spastic. His voice is pitchy and his whine piercing. These are the bite marks of addiction.
If Aliens landed and took him as a specimen, I’d be embarrassed for mankind.
He makes a scrappy, high octane plea to his luckless, well-presented female date that The Empire Strikes Back is the best film EVER. (No, seriously). Based on recoiling body language, and a few of her subtle verbal clues (like “I’m sorry, what’s your name again?” and “Ummm , what time do you have?” ) this prowling coffeehouse advice columnist / sleuth can reasonably deduce that it is a first date. And thanks to the unleashed horsepower of his mega sized coffee, the unfortunate way the conversation has been unilaterally hijacked to Hell, this sleuth can also safely wager this will be a last date. And coffee is to blame. Lots of it.
Sound familiar??
Wait. For Godsake he now looks like he’s playing ‘Whack-a-mole’ at the carnival with his uncontrollably bucking , steel-tipped workboot.
Cut it out, dude. You are making ME nervous.
Over there, at the ‘fixins’ bar, a cross- eyed (bag?) lady leans the full weight of her upper body on the blond maple countertop. She coos to the heavy cream container like it’s a furtive lover as she coaxes cream into her mug. Then she sighs a deep post coital sigh. Rightfully so, people are cutting a wide swath around. This too is the picture of the coffee addict.
In the corner, a large man is holding his belly and groaning. Diagnosis? Coffee guts. This happens when you’ve baldly ignored your limits. The sloshing inside feels like oily bilge in a trawler getting swatted around on the North Atlantic in November.
Is this who you want to be? I can’t imagine the answer is affirmative.
So learn from the Ghost of Coffee Addiction Future and change your course. (insert rattling chain sound HERE).
Towards that end, I have scratched out a self-help empowerment script which I implore you to use in moments of weakness on your journey to liberation.
You: “Coffee, go. I do not need you. You are dead to me. (insert Howard Dean-esque primal presidential scream HERE). Your rich, sensual, roasted aromas repulse me. Your once comforting womb-like warmth is now frigid and unwelcoming. The sweet ritual of being with you for a few precious, calm moments at the start of my day is now tedious and under it I labor.
“Where I once regarded you with the sunken, red-rimmed eyes of a junkie, I now look at you through bright (insert your eye color HERE) eyes with contempt and disgust. Your attempted manipulation of me is child’s play in the face of my newfound resolve. “
“Feeling awake is a trick of the mind, not a trick of body chemistry. “ (Keep telling yourself this particular line) “You are a poison not an elixor.. I don’t need YOU to feel alive any more than I need a finger in the light socket . Coffee, GO . I will pick up with your anemic bastard cousin decaf and we’ll make the best of it, even if it means gimping.”
-Good luck,
Wally
Got a question for our advice columnist or just want invite him out for a cup of coffee to re-iterate that he has no future as a motivational speaker? Email him at cwn4@aol.com
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