Do you know those scenes from a movie, in which a person who has only recently given up cigarettes asks a smoker to blow smoke in her face? That’s the way that I felt today going to a coffee shop with my husband. He was getting an afternoon jolt, and I was trying to get a contact high, breathing in the smells of brewing coffee in the air – the deep roasted aroma, the rich and satisfying smells… After a month without coffee, I needed a secondhand sniff.
Giving up coffee was something I never thought I’d do. I loved everything about it – the sound of the beans grinding, the smells emanating from the kitchen while it brewed, the warm feeling of the mug in my hands, and the taste of those first heavenly sips. Better than all of that was the feeling that it gave me – as if I were being catapulted into the day. I went from groggy and heavy to levitating off the kitchen floor, dancing and singing in a matter of 20 minutes. (I’m glad that coffee drinking Cadry wasn’t with me on those first few days without caffeine, I don’t think I could have tolerated her enthusiasm. Of course, if I’ve learned anything from Dr. Who, I know that having both of us there would have caused some kind of time rift in the continuum, but that’s neither here nor there.)
With a lift from coffee in the morning, I was a professional skier sliding up and over a ramp – nothing but wind in my face and a feeling I could get it all done in no time at all. Despite this devotion, I’d kept my intake on the lower end. I’d have a mug and a half in the morning. In the afternoons, I’d often have a cup of caffeinated tea. Maybe once a week I’d pick up coffee at a coffee shop. I stopped drinking caffeine by three or four. I never drank soda.
It wasn’t always that way. In my life I hardly remember a time when I wasn’t taking in caffeine. As a kid I was a fan of bubbly cola. As a teenager I drank 5 or 6 cans a day. By the time I got to college, I’d wake up with soda and fall asleep with soda. Once I was out in the working world, I’d noticed a creep in my pant size and moved to diet soda instead. I drank that for a year or so, and then decided to drop it because of the aspartame. At that point, I said goodbye to soda and hello to coffee. So why give it up now?









