The Starbucks People Won’t Like This

Hi, my name is Agnes and I am a coffee drinker. I have been a coffee drinker since 1998. My relationship with the coffee was the typical right of passage, really. I graduated college and went straight into the corporate world, which included a long commute. I became a coffee drinker on day 2 of my first full-time job in June of 1998. It helped wake me up and adjust to a schedule that my body had never before experienced. A college student schedule is far different from that of an over-worked rookie in the advertising business in San Francisco. I had my stainless steel travel mug that held 16 oz. of the good stuff. The amount never really increased, with the occasional trip to Starbucks for my favorite white chocolate mocha fix. This was the norm for many years. That is until last December.

I was visiting my parents over Christmas. I had my usual cup of coffee in the morning, a little bit of breakfast, and headed out to the grocery store with my mom. Suddenly, I got all jittery and my heart started to race. I tend to have a little bit of anxiety whenever my body does something unpredictable, and the combination of caffeine-induced jitters and anxiety resulted in me wanting to crawl in a corner and rock back & forth until it went away. This happened every morning for 2 days until my mom suggested that maybe I cut down to ½ a cup of coffee in the morning.

This seemed to help. At first. But after a couple of weeks it started up again. WTF! I was already cutting down! I attempted to stop cold turkey. Unfortunately, that’s when the coffee withdrawals started, especially the life-stopping headache that no amount of Advil could tame.

So now I’m down to ¼ cup of coffee in the morning. But guess what? The jitters are back. I can’t win. Do I face the jitters and drink less and less until I’m down to a teaspoon a day? Or do I go cold turkey and face the hammers in my head? Why is this stuff legal?