Coffee: My Benevolent Addiction

Latte art: It tastes as good as it looks. Even better, in fact.

While too much of anything can be bad, I think that coffee is for the most part a benevolent addiction. For me, it helps spur creativity and keep me in tip-top mental shape. As an artist and an intellectual, I appreciate the coffee shop as a center of thinking, a mental gymnasium for me and my creative peers. It’s not just about the drink itself. My addiction revolves around coffee shops and coffee culture.

Starting Young

I can’t remember my first cup of coffee. I was too young to recall it. My grandparents used to serve it to me all the time. I’m not sure if my parents were too pleased with their kindergartner drinking caffeine, but I loved it. I used to mix my coffee with chocolate and/or ice cream. (My mom claims I once mixed it with root beer, but I don’t remember that.) This was back in the 1980s, well before there was a Starbucks on every corner. Sometimes I wonder if I could have led the 1990s café craze if only I had been a little older.

Getting Hooked

I started going to coffee shops in high school. I wasn’t the most socially adept teenager (to put it mildly), so I usually went alone. That was how I discovered the creative aspect of the café. I started doodling and writing and found that the caffeine combined with the crowd really fueled my mind. Oddly enough, I started with iced tea. Perhaps the coffee was too intense. But slowly over my college years, I became hooked. At least as bad habits go, it’s not all that bad. There are certainly worse addictions.

Do you have your own benevolent addiction? Maybe something like tea or energy drinks, or maybe an obsession with exercise? Let me know your experience in the comment section.