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The caffeine addict's dilemma; depicted here in a honey-cardamom latte made by the wonderful Mark at Maha's
I have a caffeine habit which I ingest through the medium of coffee. I’ve tried to reduce my consumption via the method of substitution; tea, hot lemon water - even chaga mushrooms. Nothing compares to the hot, swift kick of coffee. How many times have I risen, exhausted or hungover; dreading the day that lay before me. How many times have I then prostrated myself before coffee’s altar, begging for alchemical salvation. I started my abusive relationship with coffee out of necessity. I was in journalism school and I took up drinking coffee at the same time as smoking, quickly becoming a caricature of the disheveled reporter; pacing back and forth outside the newsroom. I stopped both smoking and working for newspapers, but I still fuck with coffee.
A place that has good coffee will stay in my memory for years. I’ll return to old neighbourhoods just to stop by the local coffee shop and wander around aimlessly while I drink it. There is even a specific Tim Hortons in the east end of Toronto that manages to be slightly better at brewing then the rest of those awful, franchised pits of desperation.
The whole world shares in my addiction; coffee is a multi-billion dollar industry that has altered human civilization immeasurably. Entire nations owe significant portions of their economy to coffee production and trade. It’s an exploitative industry, rife with colonialism and slave labour. The top ten nations that consume coffee are all in the northern hemisphere and are predominantly white. Its production promotes monoculture in some of the worlds most biologically diverse areas. But what else is new, right? To merely exist in today’s global capitalist nightmare is to be complicit in exploitation and suffering. But that is a discussion for another post.
I still love coffee even though it treats me like shit. It can quicken my heart rate, dehydrates me and even stains my favourite clothes. Not matter how many times I attempt to cut out (or at least cut down) my coffee intake, I still come crawling back every time - eventually. Maybe if I were to wander off into the woods to live a hermit's life, then maybe making tea out of birch fungus might one day become an acceptable substitute. Until then, I will probably continue to embrace that sweet, troublesome bean juice as long as I can get my hands on it.
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