katzenjammy press

Today is my first day back from the slough of viral gastroenteritis. It is deeply unsettling when my normally-iron-clad gut turns on me. Barring  a two-year infatuation with amoebic dysentery when I lived in the Philippines, my digestive system has always been my ally in adventure, cheerfully plowing through spicy, fatty, alien, and just plain dubious chow without complaint.

Still, I know what do when the gastric hammer drops. Two days of Pepto Bismal, saltines, herbal tea, and watered-down ginger ale, combined with vast amounts of sleep, sent the intruder on his way. And today, the payoff: the first cup of coffee in three days. Perhaps this is how smokers feel when they first light up? A sort of light-headed clarity of vision, a lift in my mood, a warm sensation of well-being?

I wasn’t always a coffee drinker. I didn’t really drink it at all as an undergraduate in college, partly because I worked jobs with odd hours and kept an irregular schedule, partly because all the coffee in that time and place (West Texas, the late 70s, pre-Starbucks) sucked. It was when I started grad school in 1984 that I learned the uses and precise dosage of caffeine: one 12-ounce Styrofoam cup of student union swill translated directly into a three-to-five page essay. Since I had several of these to write each week, I soon developed a practice, if not a habit. The coffee wasn’t any better, but I could see the point of it. I used it as a working drug, though, rather than as a recreational one.

Fast forward a few years to another grad school, this time in Boulder. The student union coffee sucked almost as bad as that at Texas Tech, but carried the same utility. In Boulder, though, there was an authentic coffee house, The Trident, channeling a beatnik vibe and dispensing coffee that even the snotty European exchange students deemed acceptable. I staked out a table next to the old cast iron woodstove and worked my way through cafe florentines, cappuccinos, lattes. The milky, smoothly bitter drinks greased a path into my brain for the volumes of information I was packing in. When I walked out of my comprehensive exams, I could already feels rafts of knowledge cutting loose and sailing away from me, and I realized I’d never have that many facts at my disposal again. But it was great while it lasted.

My chemical romance with caffeine faded during the ensuing years of child-rearing and career-building. I’d stop at whichever coffee shop was convenient to the office, fill my big plastic Brewing Market mug with coffee, and sip  it over the course of the day. While I climbed the professional ladder reasonably quickly, nothing about the process required the kind of mental quickening I’d come to associate with coffee. I enjoyed the taste, and the sensation. But I wasn’t—I’m still not—addicted; I can skip the coffee without headache or the other common withdrawal effects.

That said, I now make a point of drinking my two cups of strong coffee (or, in summer, one glass of iced toddy) each morning. For me, I’ve discovered, it’s a simple yet powerful antidepressant. As we draw closer to the winter solstice and the sun drops ever lower in the sky, that chemical goosing of my CNS is tremendously helpful. Probably light boxes or selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors would be as effective. Caffeine works for me, though. And unlike the other remedies, one can build a story around coffee, participate in the fetishistic worship of what no one (yet) condemns as a drug-delivery system.