by Murray Brozinsky

I quit coffee. It was not so much the caffeine but the acid that got to me. At first I thought it was the caffeine, but switching to decaf gave me the same heartburn, only now I was too lethargic to call my doctor instead of hyperactively paging him, complaining of chest pains. I have quit before. Once I lasted nine months. I was in Hawaii, on the Big Island, sitting at the Jackass Café. The irreverence of the name fades once you learn they donate ten percent of profits to save wild donkeys on the island. The café sits at the edge of a coffee plantation. I could smell the beans roasting nearby. Just one cup, I thought, for the jackasses.
 
Immediately I was back to ten cups a day. What’s the big deal, you may ask. It’s not like I am addicted to crack cocaine or heroin or nicotine or even alcohol. It’s not even like I am addicted to coffee; I drink decaf for Christ sake. Anyway, that’s what I tried to sell my therapist. She wasn’t buying. 
                       
“Coffee represents the fuel you need to feed your fast-paced, type-A lifestyle,” she said.
 
“But I drink decaf,” I said. 
 
“We are speaking in semiotics,” she said. “Coffee possesses strong symbolism in our culture, and it is the symbol that is the important thing. Symbolically, you are addicted to the bean, with or without caffeine.”
 
I noticed she drank Grande Lattes during our sessions, but I held my tongue. That was her problem not mine. I wasn’t shelling out ninety bucks an hour to talk about someone else’s symbolic, symptomatic sickness.
 
I like my coffee black, no sugar. Perhaps that’s what made my addiction so stark. It was like drinking ninety-proof whiskey from a bottle swaddled in a brown bag. Nobody thinks you a drunk for drinking whiskey sours. Grande Lattes, Vente Machiattos, Double Tall Americanos, and Mocha Frappachinos are the whiskey sours of coffee. The ‘speed demon’ is in there. Shrouded in milk, foam, sugar, and Babel, he seduces them. His siren calls sing to them and they follow his song, like a Pied Piper, to Starbucks where they wait in line for thirty minutes or more to drop four dollars or more before being tossed against the rocks.
 
Like Odysseus I tied myself to the mast, since no man can resist the Sirens’ sweet song. I tore up my stored value card. I avoided street corners wherever possible. I joined the Republic of Tea, which symbolizes peacefulness, relaxation, Zen. I feel myself slowing down; I am more in control, the symbol altering reality. Yet I must be vigilant. The ‘speed demon’ calls to me still, as he calls to us all.      
 

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