&#034A cat has absolute emotional honesty; human beings, for some reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.&#034 –Ernest Hemmingway

Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like without caffeine. I mean, would I be a saner, calmer, more stable person than I am now? Or does the caffeine actually help to keep me in a sort of strange balance where I can tell difinitively when I am awake and when I am tired? When I was young, I hardly ever got caffeine other than the occasional cup of tea that Mom would make with milk and sugar. I never used to like soda, but when I hit high school, Mountain Dew became a staple in my life and I even tried coffee for the first time (on an airplane, the only place I&#039ve ever drunk coffee for some odd reason), so caffeine began coursing through my veins on a much more regular basis.

By the time I hit college, I was addicted. I drank a lot of Mountain Dew (I hate all dark colas, root beer included), and eventually even had my first kidney stone probably as a result (and while I was working at the library no less!). So, I decided to cut back on the bitter elixer that helped me through more all-nighters than I care to count. It worked for a while, cutting back to one soda and/or one cup of tea per day. Um… That didn&#039t last too long. I&#039m back to drinking tea and (now) Mello Yello on a fairly regular basis, though I do desire to seriously quit eventually.

The way I figure it, my caffeine addiction is somewhat heriditary. Grandma Nolan was hooked on coffee from an early age of eight, and as wonderful as she always was, she was kinda dingy in the mornings before her first cup of Maxwell House with sacchrine and instant creamer. <Shrug> So although not everyone in my family is addicted to caffeine, enough of them are to make me believe there&#039s some biological imperative keeping us craving the drug.

So, what would I be like without caffeine? Would my life be dramatically different in any way? Perhaps had I fought off the peer pressure to drink sodas, I would be a more confident, more out-going person than I am now. Maybe I&#039d be mayor or the head of a huge corporation. Perhaps it would just be that I&#039d be more physically fit as a result and would be a ballerina or an astronaut. I mean, I could have been president, you guys! This stuff is ruining my life!! Oh wait, no, no it isn&#039t. See? The thing is that it&#039s early in the morning and I haven&#039t had any tea or soda yet. I&#039m just not thinking straight. I need caffeine.

Posted: May 13, 2004 at a caffeine-less quarter to nine in the morning.