GUS (Gave Up Smoking) is a community support diary for Kossacks in the midst of quitting smoking. Any supportive comments, suggestions or positive distractions are appreciated. If you are quitting, or even thinking of quitting, please -- join us!
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I worked through the weekend, stayed out late last night, and went without coffee this morning, for the first time in many years.
This morning's diary revolved around tea. And tonight? It's a Twin(ings) Tea double header. Let's play two!
In all the excitement over the weekend, I forgot to buy coffee. This is no small oversight. Coffee and cigarettes. Steak and eggs. Batman and Robin. Whoops!
From Hills Brothers to Dunn Brothers, Cafe Bustelo to Intelligentsia, coffee has been a main staple in my diet since I found it to be an effective hangover buffer, and just as importantly, the perfect companion to a cigarette.
I spent my late teens/early twenties in coffee shops, between after-the-meeting A.A. blab sessions, and chilling with co-workers after our second shift at the local pizza joint. One cigarette after another cup of coffee, followed by another topic of conversation, laughter, and another cigarette.
Coffee made cigarettes taste better. Or so I thought. Maybe somebody in the comments can put a finer point on the chemical activity between the nicotine and the caffeine. Both speeded me up. For someone who always felt lacking in spontaneity, a conversational step or two behind everyone else, this was one serious benefit.
Over the past twenty-five years, I have quit smoking a dozen times, and have contended with addictions to alcohol and other drugs. But coffee? Hah. Never. This would be the last damn chemical feel-good option that I would let go of.
And this last weekend, I forgot to buy coffee. Well, not actually. See, I noticed Saturday morning that my industrial-sized can of Yuban was nearly empty. And here I was, heading out the door to help a friend and earn a few desperately needed bits.
You know, now that I am a non-smoker, I considered that maybe... just maybe, I didn't need the coffee anymore. I no longer need that first cup in the morning to make that first cigarette go down more smoothly. Nor do I need coffee to smack the alcoholic cobwebs from the night before out of my skull. But that's the damndest thing. Even though I haven't needed coffee for almost a month, my mornings have been business as usual, making 8-10 cups... half for the thermos, the other half for immediate consumption. Yes, that is a lot of coffee.
And I'm going to miss it. But like cigarettes and alcohol, I can no longer afford coffee on a financial level, and an even deeper level of health and well-being that my java jitters have likely thwarted over the years.
The caffeine stays... in the form of loose black and green teas. Otherwise, I'd have been a certified mess today, capable of nothing more productive than drooling, on my first day without coffee. Tea, it is. Some loose Monk's Tea, a cup, diffuser, and hot water. And reading smartcookienyc's AM GUS diary GUS: A Hot Date and a Cup of Tea before work, thinking "mmm... tea" and "well this is sort of timely."
A video and a picture for the road. I posted this in comments recently, and offer it here again to say, "Thanks, old friend, but no more.... OK, if someone offers me Kenyan AA fresh out of the presser, then maybe." This may or may not be B.S. Which is fine, as long as I'm clear on the non-negotiability of the cigarette.
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Java Junkie (1979, d. Tom Schiller). With Peter Ackroyd, Teri Garr, and Patti Oja.
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