Dealing With Addiction (To Coffee)

By

Iced skinny caramel macchiato. Venti.

I’m writing this as chills are being sent up my spine, the empty Starbucks cup next to me. I grab the cup and slurp up the last few brown drops hidden beneath tiny ice cubes. Soon I’ll take off the top and throw it back like I’m a freshman at a frat party, trying to get drunk off of the legal drug that supposedly can make some people hear voices.

I never drank coffee before I worked for the federal government. I had the occasional tea, but prided myself on never having drank a cup of the brown stuff in my life. Boy, how things change. On my way to the metro, a Starbucks was on my route, its mermaid creature singing sweetly for me to come in and drink its nectar. That bitch.

Finally, I caved.

What emerged was an addiction. I started off with a grande caramel macchiato, which for a few days, made me feel like I had mainlined an Adderall 25 XR circa 2007. It was the high with no blue snot. I didn’t have to clean up blue dust that stained my porous desk. I didn’t have to sketchily find a credit card and chop up a pill that I’d bought from some dude at the local DKE frat, which could have been a fucking aspirin for all I knew.

Then, it stopped working. I’d have a grande, and I still felt tired. So I had no choice but to up my tolerance to the ultimate in Starbucks size: venti.

No longer do I feel like I’m just high on Adderall. Now I’m just straight up high. I’m at a dubstep show on stage with Rusko as he turns out some sick shit and I’m dancing like the Wobble girl. Mary Kate’s texting me about a gnarly afterparty, and Kreayshawn is driving. I haven’t eaten in three days and I’m SUPER skinny, and my hip bones are protruding and I’m a sample size small. Opening Ceremony is trying to get me to design a line of clothes for them and Chloë Sevigny says I’m her style icon. Stephen Dorff wants to know if I want to go to Hawaii for the weekend. I tell him “sorry, Stephen, but I’ll be binge (coffee) drinking with Britney.” There will be no faux suicide attempts this weekend. I’m making ‘fetch’ happen, and I’m replacing Ryan Seacrest as the host of American Idol; I’m also a contestant and I’m the winner.

I’m writing this, dreading that soon the buzz will wear off. In January, Starbucks cockteased me by saying they were coming out with the trenta—916 mL of fantasy-inducing goodness. They told me it was coming out May 3. Yet, it’s June, and still no trenta. No coffee cup that’s bigger than the human stomach. No coffee that can force me to literally not eat all day. No coffee cup that can hold a bottle of wine.

Sure, some of you are calling bullshit. “I drink coffee all the time and I’m fine!” “Your tolerance is really low!” “Caffeine isn’t a drug!” Fuck you. Coffee is my Four Loco without the hangover that makes me want to torture myself like a fucking Saw character. Starbucks is my supplier, located conveniently on the corner near the metro with the dog shit on the sidewalk. The Hispanic man who makes my coffee smiles as he hands my drug across the counter, like he’s saying “enjoy your morning, bitch! Thanks for buying enough of this shit to pay my weekly salary!”

Coffee makes the bitch at my office tolerable. I can slap on a fake smile and pretend she’s not a horrible human being, and I can listen to Nicki Minaj without feeling like a sellout. I can crank out bullshit assignments at 8 a.m. Coffee makes me feel like fucking Grace Jones as I walk down the office hallway. I might work for the government, but I’m the biggest legal drug buyer since ugly hippies discovered salvia (RIP).

If you don’t drink coffee, you’re stupid. Get on my level.

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image – Calgary Reviews