Carolyn Explains it All: Coffee won’t kill you, right?

I know that the epigraph is really the domain of intense works of fiction, but I feel moved… I know that the epigraph is really the domain of intense works of fiction, but I feel moved to include one here.

“My pleasure and my pain. You’re my infection. Disease you burn my vein. My fate is frozen, it’s a destiny you fix. I know you’re my addiction. You’re the way I get my fix.” – Pale Devine, My Addiction

“Why everything that’s s’posed to bad, make me feel so good?” – Kanye West, “Addiction”

Let the story commence.

Last year around midterm season, I gathered my textbooks, sat down at my desk and faced off with the daunting mountain of readings I’d been putting off studying for weeks. The pile stretched toward the sky. I eyed it from the bottom, like Jack and the Beanstalk, and I knew I didn’t stand a chance.

Caught in the grasp of desperation and determined not to fail out my first semester of college – seriously, there were a lot of readings – I gulped, grabbed my ID, and headed down to Common Grounds for a cup of coffee.

It’s important to understand that I really, really hated coffee. So, in the words of that little girl from the “my BFF” commercials, this was a pretty BFD – Big Freakin’ Deal.

But that fateful fall evening in 2006, I knew I had no choice. So I approached the counter, ordered one of those fancy-pants concoctions (a caramel macchiato, if I remember correctly) that is one part coffee and nine parts sugar and milk, handed over an arm and a leg and returned to battle.

I was drinking coffee.

Back in high school, if I complained that I was tired, my dad would often suggest that I drink some coffee. But whenever I would take a sip from his, the following words came out of my mouth as I forced myself not to spit it back into the mug: “Ew, no!”

Then my dad would tell me that when I got to college, I would learn to love coffee. No way would I make it through four years of finals weeks without coming to rely on the stuff. Uh, gross.

After my first macchiato, though, it was a quick downward spiral. Dads really do know everything, and every time I had a test, I found myself ordering the drink without hesitation. By summer, I was drinking cups that were half actual coffee, half milk, and roughly 95 packets of sugar – even though I was definitely not doing any studying.

Back at school now, my roommates and I share a coffee maker. I use it almost every night after dinner, to brew piping hot, non-flavored coffee before I tackle my homework. I add just a couple of sugar packets and a reasonably sized spoonful of milk before consuming it. And when I go to the Starbucks in the Cathedral or Towers, I order a black coffee instead of something swanky and as a normal coffee drinker, I just tamper with it a teensy bit before I drink up.

Unfortunately, being coffee’s biggest fan has come with consequences beyond those I imagined. I knew to be suspicious about my own maturity if I ever became a coffee drinker. Coffee is meant to be drunk by people who are calm and sophisticated: two adjectives that will probably never describe me. And I do raise an eyebrow in that regard. (Am I growing up or something? What is this?)

But I didn’t expect to feel so guilty about my