Meditations of a coffee hound

I am not choosy or a connoisseur in any way. I have stopped pretending that coffee tastes better with the addition of milk and or sugar. Milk happens rarely and sugar is only added if I need a little bit of extra energy, otherwise I drink it straight up. As long as it doesn’t taste of chicory.


Empirical rationalism sucks. If I follow the numbers, if I track the minutes and hours, to get to the point where my observable and repetitious behaviour produces a truth, the most important aspect of my life, with the exception of my family and sleep, is coffee. Not music, not books, not this column. Coffee. Where’s the magic in that? As I said, empirical rationalism sucks, ‘big time’.

That being said, coffee is an empirically significant part of my life. It is the opener to my morning, it punctuates my day with moments of comfort and whenever there is a crisis, it is one of my twin crutches, alongside a cigarette, as I work things out. It also helps to keep me awake. Given the fact that I could give a hibernating bear a run for its money, even during midsummer, this is no small benefit.

Strangely enough though, in spite of some four or five cups that go down my throat every day, coffee and I don’t agree. If I take too much caffeine or take large amounts in relatively short periods of time, for instance three or four espressos in less than an hour or two, my heart races.

It is a very disquieting experience, but a bit of moderation has meant that I have been able to preserve the habit. Just don’t leave me near an unattended coffee machine.

Caffeine dependency has been a part of my life for at least twenty years. It started with tea at home. But good tea is expensive, and when I moved into my own place I discovered that it cut into my beer budget, so I had to cut back on the tea.

The agency at which I worked provided a solution in the form of a client deal which involved cases of cola at cost. As breakfasts go, none felt better or produced the incredible surge of energy than those three or four cans of cola did, no matter how unhealthy they were.

I started thinking hard about that ritual when a sudden absence of cola due to a receptionist who forgot the week’s order produced a near psychotic incident and a desperate rush to a shop in order to be functional enough to make a deadline.

Then came the coffee, the coffee machines, the vast numbers of cups that produced the racing heart and the realization that I had to exercise moderation, even in my most excessive moments of caffeine drenched hedonism. Today, it’s four or five cups, no more, except on special occasions such as visiting other peoples’ offices, walking through town and wanting a bottomless cup, visiting friends, eating out or whenever else I feel the urge.

What about tea, I hear you ask. Tea is still a somewhat special item. I hate cheap tea. It’s very hard to fake decent tea, the way coffee manufacturers can hide a poor coffee with flavouring. And anyway, tea is a comfort for cold evenings and civilized moments. It doesn’t feel suited to those itchy, hairy, half-lucid moments between waking up and shaving.

It is also not possible to make a quick cup of tea, especially when I realize that the fleeting colours of sunrise would be so much more pronounced and wonderful if I had a cup of something hot in my hand to help me keep my eyes open.

I am not choosy or a connoisseur in any way. I have stopped pretending that coffee tastes better with the addition of milk and or sugar. Milk happens rarely and sugar is only added if I need a little bit of extra energy, otherwise I drink it straight up. As long as it doesn’t taste of chicory.

So there you have it. Coffee produces in me all the symptoms of dependency. It has a physical effect, it is not easily substitutable for any other form of caffeine, it makes the sunrises seem rosier and the occasional work crisis more manageable, and it has a bad effect on me if I overdo it.

Perhaps, like all other addictive substances, it deserves its own drive to put a halt to its insiduous effect on the moral fibre of society. Perhaps too many people are wasting precious hours and frittering away their incomes in coffee shops.

It might even, like all prohibitions and illicit pleasures, make my morning cup taste that much better.