Bean Addicted

It took anoth­er city to expose my addic­tion. It wasn’t because Christ­ch­urch is on the decaf. It’s because Christ­ch­urch had an earth­quake. It was the day after the shake, 9 in the morn­ing. The city was in ruins. People were queuing for drink­ing water. I was on a mis­sion to find caf­feine. I’d been search­ing for an hour already by the time I spot­ted a motel along a main road. In the worn-out din­ing room, a crappy machine filtered out brown water. It barely passed as cof­fee, but finally I could think straight and start working.

That day I decided to kick cap­pucci­nos to the curb. I’m now a born-again anti-caf­feine cru­sader. I’m on a mis­sion to turn you off the mocha. In the tra­di­tion of all good self-deni­al fads, we’ll ded­ic­ate a cal­en­dar month. We’ll call it OcSober, because, let’s be hon­est, cof­fee is the equally power­ful twin of liquor.

Whiter teeth, fresh­er breath, more money. Just a few of the bene­fits of for­go­ing the flat white. But, be pre­pared. Sober­ing up is tough. Caf­feine with­draw­al is now lis­ted in the Dia­gnost­ic and Stat­ist­ic­al Manu­al of Men­tal Dis­orders. Sounds ser­i­ous. Experts strongly advise against giv­ing up cold tur­key. No one told me this.

On the day of the quake, I was only “mod­er­ately addicted” to caf­feine. Five out of ten is what I scored in an online ques­tion­naire. I might’ve lied a little bit to skew my score. Lying is com­mon among addicts. Any­way, I was only drink­ing a couple a day. I ration­al­ised my habit for weeks after the quake. Then, I binged on three espressos in an hour and nearly fain­ted. The next day I quit.

I tore up my ‘buy ten get one free’ cards. I tipped my bag of organ­ic, single-ori­gin espresso blend down the sink. With­in hours my mind was a thick glug of cof­fee grind I couldn’t think through. Every­one around me star­ted act­ing like dicks. I retreated home. I found more dicks there. The next week was a slow mara­thon of depres­sion and dicks. My sad eyes and drawn face made Gol­lum look healthy by con­trast. I had no energy, my muscles ached, my head throbbed. Then one day it was done. I bounced out of bed and raced through the day. I went to the gym and sprin­ted 10 kilo­metres in half an hour (I think I just lied again). I slept soundly that night and have ever since.

This month, let’s remem­ber the Women’s Cam­paign Against Cof­fee of 1674. Those brave Eng­lish women began this battle against Beelzebub’s bean. Alone every even­ing — their hus­bands cavort­ing in London’s cof­fee houses — they united and wrote a peti­tion. Why, they cried, were their men determ­ined to “run a whor­ing after… a little, base, black, thick, nasty, bit­ter, stink­ing, naus­eous Puddle-water”?

This OcSober I’m 44 months clean. Sort of. I have fallen off the wag­on a few times. But can you blame me? This is a dif­fi­cult city to live in if you want to stay off the joe. There are 17 cof­fee estab­lish­ments along Lamb­ton Quay alone. And there’s the smell. On a cold Wel­ling­ton morn­ing noth­ing smells — or tastes — bet­ter than a cup of puddle-water.