I'm a drug addict

Yes, it's official. When I became a third-year medical student, I had to get up at 4:45 every morning to be at the hospital by 5:30 so that I could pre-round on my patients. So I needed a little something to help me get going so that I didn't keel over fast asleep in the middle of examining a patient.

Tea wasn't doing it for me. It's too hot, so it takes too long to cool down until you can drink it and it doesn't have enough caffeine.

So I discovered...coffee.

Hello, everyone. My name's Mike.
(Hi, Mike)
I'm a coffee addict.
(We love you, Mike).

I used to be proud of the fact that I didn't drink coffee. I considered coffee drinkers to be drug addicts, even if the drug is mostly harmless. But now I'm one of the rank and file who lines up each morning to pour some of my money into the evil corporation known as Starbucks. It's no longer a surge of energy in the morning to bring me up to the hyperspace mental speeds required for the practice of medicine...it's simply that I can't think straight without my morning 16 oz (that's almost a half liter, folks).

But, as you all know, I'm not the type to be half-arsed about anything. By golly, if I'm going to be a coffee drinker, I'm going to do it right. So I started to study coffee. Did you know that there are two kinds of beans, Arabica and Robusta? The former is the finer, found in specialty coffees like Starbucks and the latter is found in commercial blends like "Folgers." Or did you know that adding a pinch of cardamom to the coffee in your drip brewer makes a new and interesting flavor? Or about all the different options there are for brewing coffee?

Not only am I a coffee addict, I'm a friggin' conniseur.

It's sad folks. It's really sad.

I've no idea what that's like as I've never drank tea or coffee. Always thought they both tasted foul, but then again I thought that about alcohol too the first time but that didn't stop me...

strange....

Ahaha! That all sounds way too familiar! I literally used to stand in the kitchen at college and laugh out loud at all the poor saps lining up, mug in hand, nervously twitching as they waited for their morning dose of coffee. But as soon as exams hit I found myself right at the back of the queue... mug in hand

And here I am at 1:30am on a friday night, sitting in my room drinking coffee as I try to stay awake doing an assigment which was due in yesterday. It's the only thing keeping me going. Viva la coffee.. or something.

Welcome to my world! Hah hah hah hah! Hah hah hah hah! HAH, HAH, HAH, HAH!

Yes..enough..

Mike, would you like me to really get you going?
I used to work at a Starbucks (very short lived stint let me tell you), and there was this list on the back wall of the subcatergories of beans, which countries they come from and about their flavors.
How about what many different spices do? (stick a vanilla bean and part of an orange rind in your filter and see what happens!)

I too was one of "those" people, but after awhile it really does have an effect, shakes, pounding heart, etc. One of my dance troupe mates has banned me from drinking coffee before rehearsals because it really gets me on giddy, silly, hyper-mode. My brain works fast enough already. I guess I don't need to speed it up!

Welcome to the Rat Race!

you should try something called "yerba matte" to substitute your coffee fiending.

it's a pick-me-up as well...but it doesn't give you the jitters and it's a little like drinking herbal tea.

i'm not saying that i don't drink any coffee but i really like yerba matte it's a lot easier on the system!! you can find it in most health food stores!


-sarah-

coffee?

Steady on tiger, you'll be shooting up herroin soon!

mmmm tea. how about that tea. coffee! ah coffee is insane bla this is a stupid post, pah

tea contains more caffeine than coffee.......

but you'll be in real trouble when you discover espressos

Do I detect the beginning of a very long arguement about the relative caffeine strength of tea and coffee?

stick to beer - it contains alcohol - need I say more!!

not to make you groggy masses salivate with glee(oh, wait that is why), but look at this:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/drinks/3261/
can you say yerba mate enfused organic Arabica coffee beans.

(also check the site for other caffeinated treats

I used to think coffee tasted awful, until I had some REAL coffee!

Then I realised there was one huge difference bewteen instant coffee and REAL coffee.

Sure, there are differences in the REAL coffees too, but the difference is that soem are nice and some aren't.

Where-as (in my opinion) ALL instant is crap!

Hello my name is Frost and I'm a coffee addict actually I'm a conniseur too.

I'd like to welcome Mike to the cca (coffee conniseurs anonymous)

Hello my name is Frost and I'm a coffee addict actually I'm a conniseur too.

I'd like to welcome Mike to the cca (coffee conniseurs anonymous)

So far i have not yet been "taken" in by the coffee and tea fiends.

i like tea, but its hippy tea - plenty of caffeine tho!

i also drink soda/pop whatever you want to call it when i need that afternoon boost.

you guys be careful, the coffee of today is much stronger in its psychological effects than the coffee of 20 years ago and recent reserch suggests it is indeed a 'gateway' drug. i for one would be weepy if you all became crackheads.

thats right ... coffee is nothing to PLAY with!

no only is the purity highly variable from source to source ... but the quality of the average "hit" has increased to the point of being addictive after your very first try! beware of people offering free coffee.

BEWARE!

I dont get it?
Does no one drink coffee simply because they like it?
Thats why i do...
I am actually a really good morning person so its not like i need it to wake me up, but i drink it because i like the flavour and the texture of it as opposed to something like tea.
You guys are over analysing this
Any One agree??
M

(Oh and, BAD MIKE. Dont pay Starbucks to **** you over - you can do that yourself )

i do like the taste of coffee... it reminds me of when i was a child and used to drink my mum's coffee when she wasn't looking... maybe that explains a lot of my present behaviour. but then again, i sleep VERY much now, perhaps the effect has worn off... who knows

Was it explosive diarrhea??

hahahaha, thanks, its nice to be back

And I tend to get people to discuss their bowel movements, I don't know, its a gift.

but coffee, dear lord that'd be nice right now. I'm more of the mocha/flavored coffee fiend, I have yet to fall in love with the plain stuff.

Ive always thought I had a potential for drug abuse so I avoided coffee to. My general rule of thumb is to only use it once a month, maybe twice. I find it's more effective anyways because you don't build up tolerance. Ofcourse I do have a problem with bingeing, so I used to straight out eat 8 or 9 scoops of coffee (this blend was made for coffee machines so one scoop was roughly equal to two cups of coffee)

I came into class twitching and going absolutly nuts. But I really think most people over exagerate the powerfulness of caffine. I think it's like any other drug, you get what you want out of it. Which leads me onto another random subject. Don't you think sleep depreivation is a drug? I definatly get some interesting benefits from it. Like I haven't really slept for more then 5 hours over the past 3 days, and those weren't 5 hours of restful sleep, and ive only had a few full nights of sleep all summer really. But I have huge amounts of energy but no attention span to accomplish anything. I used to believe sleep was totally unnecesary because I couldn't be bothered actually takeing steps to control my sleep habits. So I think my brain reversed it's self. Because I seem to get more and more awake the longer I deprive myself of sleep. But really my perception of reality is so skewed I have no idea what's going on half the time. Some psychology buffs here would probably call that a manic episode, and maybe even try to diagnose me with bi-polar disorder. Ive decided I don't belive in disorders anymore as they are just a result of a society that had to many crazy people and not enough ways to deal with them. When pokeing holes in their heads and zapping them with electricity didn't work they thought hey lets start profileing them so they came up with names like nymphomania and borderline personality disorder, and flawed personality disorder. Then they were like hey lets hardly do any more research into the actual disorders and try to focus on applied therapy. So they changed the names, and sub divided many of the disorders into even more disorders, but the fact is they still had over saturated psych wards and psych hospitals and people were slipping through the cracks left and right. Now a days they actually treat you like an individual (if they know what they are doing) and only use the disorders as guidelines, and hopefully they don't even tell you that you have said disorders because a lot of people can develop hypochondriac tendancys pretty fast when you start slinging medical terms at them and they don't fully understand the theory. Now we have cool guys like doctor phil who actually know what they are doing and spend some time and effort makeing it reasonably understandable for people to understand. Doctor phil didn't invent this method but he certainly applied it better then everyone else. Those other psychologists were a bunch of snobs who were afraid to go outside the world of acadamia to acomplish anything. The reason it doesn't seem like we have any super geniuses anymore is because so few people are well rounded these days. The school system is so hard that it's easy to cop out and focus on one area and block the rest out. Davinci tried to block the rest out but in his day and age he had to be a bit more independent. I think anyone is capable of being very close to the great people in history if they have an open mind, it's just you wont be famous these days because there is so much communication (some of you might be years from now)

But I think it is much better not to be famous, and to never try to be famous because then your ideas are more pure, even if they are half baked stupid nonsense like this whole thread. A lot of the master minds of our time have had what some people would call underlying mental disorders, and they were persecuted for that because they thought outside of the box. But did you ever think that maybe everything they thought of was actually really stupid? I mean many of them were drug addicts one way or another, so their brains were being abused from lack of sleep or to many random beatings from their parents. I think deep down under those guys were like people who mod their cars or computers to go faster or look cooler. Usually those mods actually destroy the cars because they put to much wear and tear on them. I think some of the masterminds of the world deliberatly abused themselves and allowed themselves to be abused so they could mod their brains, they just didn't really realize entirely what they were doing at the time. But some of them lived pretty balanced lives after they got done kicking their brain around, just like some people who after they drive their car into the ground fix it up and baby it for the next 20 years, despite the fact that there ar ebetter cars on the market. There are better brains on the market these days, and some people who are un-recognized master minds of sorts need to pass the torch because they have been pushing their brain to far. I think george bush pushed his brain to far when he was about 5 years old and he kept pushing it past the limit untill he completly wrecked it. His intentions are good, but his brain is being lubricated by the wrong things, mainly old dirty oil passed on from his father, the stuff has been sitting on the shelf to long and is full of random polutants. Time for an oil change george bush (by this I mean time for a new election, not time for some poor misinformed buddy to stand at the fence of the white house and take random pot shots at the president with a 9mm pistol chambered with the cheapest rounds off the shelf of walmart. even though the guy probably knows he can't possibly hit george bush because of the way the lawn is landscaped, and just the simple mathmatics of the balistics of cheap 9mm pistol ammo. But his brain needs an oil change to, probably more badly then george bush.

Does my brain need an oil change or do I just need sleep? I also figured out another simple fact. This is the first time I have tried to take a nite cap to sleep, and it's just worked me up even more, so half ways through this post I started getting a little intoxicated ontop of the sleep deprivation. If only I trusted my own judgement I would have spared you this terribly long rant.

Hey pele or whoever may delete this because of whatever I missed when I tried to edit it, please PM this to me befor eyou delete it because I want to read it when I get some sleep.

BTW mike your totally an inspiration.

i dont drink i dont smoke, i dont drink coffee, and i only drink tea at work, i am adicted to life, and to breathing, what kind of group do i go to?