Coffee? Meth?

I started drinking coffee in 9th grade. I went to a hip private school where at recess every morning at 10:00 the cook put out muffins or coffee cake or even cookies, and coffee. There must have been other beverages but all I remember is the coffee. (And I am totally embarrassed at how upscale this sounds--the COOK? at my PRIVATE SCHOOL?--but hey, that's how it was and I am who I am.)

Anyway, there I was, and there was the coffee, and there were the cool 11th and 12 graders drinking the coffee, and who was I to resist? Luckily I did manage to resist the cigarettes because I thought they were disgusting. But coffee was an easy cool, especially when my friends and I discovered coffee shops (long before cafes, and even longer before Starbucks) where I soon found myself spending lots of Friday afternoons and weekends and even (sorry, Mom) the occasional weekday when I was supposed to be at school.

Fast forward to my freshman year of college. More coffee. A dining hall where I thought I was being healthy because all I ate was salad bar, bread and butter, and yogurt, granola, and maple syrup. Margaritas on Friday and Saturday nights. Fifteen more pounds.

I went home the summer after freshman year determined to be healthy and thin. I cut out caffeine and sugar and I started seriously running. (Don't worry, this story is not going anorexic. That's a place, thank goodness, that I have never even remotely approached.) I lost my fifteen pounds. I looked great. I felt great. Eventually I started eating sugar again, and sometimes I gained weight and sometimes I lost, and usually I ran and sometimes I didn't, but I never went back to caffeine.

The thing was, I didn't feel like caffeine had ever done anything for me. It didn't keep me awake; it was just something social and warm to drink. So when I needed warm and social, I had decaf. In the morning, I drank a big glass of water (I still do). It wasn't a big deal, even when I married Mr. Caffeine himself. He had coffee, all the time; I didn't.

These days I have a lot of work. I also have a lot of crazy days at work, the kinds of days where what with the phone calls and email and appointments and meetings, actual work hardly gets done. Then I always try to leave early to get the girls, and in fact I have to leave to get the girls because childcare ends. So I end up bringing a lot of work home with me. A lot. Like hang out with the girls, dinner, baths, bedtime, bed, and it's 9:30 and I have three or four or five hours of work to do.

So one night last fall, I asked Sam to make me a latte so I could do my work. A real latte. With caffeine. And all of a sudden, I got it. I got why people love caffeine.

I worked for four hours straight with total clarity. I didn't get distracted, I didn't get frustrated, I didn't do bad work because it was late at night. I rocked. I was the queen of work. Then I lay in bed and couldn't fall asleep. But oh my god it was so worth it because the work had gone so well.

A few weeks later, I did it again. The work went well again. But then I lay in bed for hours, unable to sleep. The next day I had a headache and a stomachache and felt all twisted and wrung out. And I decided I couldn't do it, that the aftereffects weren't worth it.

Last night, I had so much work I thought my head would explode. And it had to be done by today. I said to S that I guessed I shouldn't have a latte. He, fully aware of the breadth and depth of the work, said he would just make me a small one. Knowing, in my heart, that I could not possibly achieve the work on my own, I agreed.

So I drank the small latte. I stayed up really late. I got the work done. I didn't need to eat my usual late-night half carton of Ben and Jerry's. But it wasn't the same. I wasn't the super-efficient dynamo of work. I didn't have that sense of superwoman wellbeing. Sure I was awake, but I felt kind of disgusting the whole time, and I was my usual checking-email-too-often slacker self. Then of course I couldn't sleep. This morning I still feel kind of disgusting.

Only three times and already the effect is wearing off.

Forget coffee--next time I'm going straight to meth.