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Frequently Asked Questions:
Why coffeebased?
I was in junior year in high school. I wanted something simple enough to be easily memorable (my old yahoo id was coffeeuke37869 and BOY did I regret having something that complicated) and I figured I was being clever with the play on carbon-based to coffeebased.
Also, there's a biochemical joke in there. I used to joke that my DNA contained caffeine molecule bases instead of guanine. Look it up, they look strangely similar at first glance.
Are you only addicted to Starbucks coffee?
No. But I like to drink it for several reasons:
1) It is pretty convenient.
2) The coffee they serve is consistent. Depending on the drink, it can be consistently horrible or consistently palatable.
3) When I make my own coffee, I tend to OD and ruin any chances my body has at a normal day.
4) Instant coffee, while convenient, consistent and easily measurable, gives me a migraine that completely outweighs any pleasure I would have received from drinking a cup of coffee. It is probably due to a preservative they use, and no, I will not have any brand you think is good because I probably don't care about your opinion enough to risk feeling a nuclear bomb go off in my skull.
5) I've got good memories of Starbucks.
What makes you think that you're addicted to caffeine? Why can't you just quit / give it up / get over yourself?
I've got a coffee mustache.
I want to sleep early tonight, so I took the easy route. Just a few espressos to make me feel mellow. There's nothing like the comfort of a lifelong (fine, a very short life's worth of long) addiction to make one feel safe. I'm not very routine-based but there are just some little habits that make my life recognizable as mine.
I get asked a lot about caffeine's stimulative properties and their indirect relationship with a person's ability to relax. Usually with raised eyebrows and a suggestive smirk indicating that the asker thinks that I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Often liberally drenched in condescension.
I'd draw them the mechanism of caffeine's action on the adrenergic receptors of a human body cell but it'd be wasted on them. I don't like pulling out the Biology, motherfucker, do you speak it? card that often but when I do?
Priceless.
Anyway, what people often forget is that the human body's reaction to different chemicals is case to case basis. And this reaction is not entirely physical. Now, I'm not a psychologist, so I can't explain exactly what happens in my head that translates caffeine into safe and loose but it just boils down to the repetition of a habit and its eventual effect on the way a brain is conditioned.
You know, Pavlov's dogs and those rodents that'd rather orgasm than eat.
Of course, I DO still feel the stimulant effect of caffeine eventually. However, this takes over five espressos or in plain brewed coffee terms, two to three liters of coffee brewed at a 1:3 ratio of water to coffee. Yeah.
Well, caffeine's relatively safer than smack and blow and crack and e and any other of those trendy drugs. It's also socially acceptable. It's not like I'm blowing secondhand caffeine into other people's face or pawning my jewelry just to snort some coffee grounds. I can even buy it on most street corners in Makati.
But that's just rationalizing. I pretty much have the same basic problem as any person dealing with addiction: I want it bad enough that it messes me up when I can't have it.
Now, most of us have seen/read Trainspotting. [If you haven't, hie thee to a mediastore (or an torrent search engine) and get cracking.] I have to admit that the withdrawal I experience isn't as bad as Ewan McGregor's, but this is only because I've never had any reason to actually go completely cold turkey.
Any compelling reason anyway. I've had a handful of false starts, mostly ending with me (or the people around me) giving in within a couple of days. I can be a right bitch when I'm deprived of coffee. And it's not just normal PMS-y bitchiness, the kind that this Starbucks-culture has inoculated into these poser freaks who claim to depend on coffee to get through the day without mangling people. Those kids are just feeling the aftereffect of minor addiction, the irritability caused by the high-contrast "low" a user gets when they're new to their drug of choice.
I act horribly because I am in actual physical pain. It starts off with a low-grade headache. And then I get the shakes. Both are easy to ignore, especially if one is busy. The nausea that comes afterwards, not so much. Usually the nausea is coupled with a cold sweat and a alternating prickling/numbness that spreads all over my body. Except in some part of my brain which insists on being stabbed with a non-existent laser sword thing.
By the end of two days without coffee, I'm usually kneeling before the porcelain god and throwing up whatever I'd managed to eat together with the fuckton of water I had in preparation for the vomiting. When voiding one's bowels violently, it is important to rehydrate, rehydrate, rehydrate. Unless you want to end up with an IV in your arm. And as someone who's had enough IVs in her life, not all necessarily related to a surplus or lack of coffee, I would like to tell you that you don't want that shit.
Drinking coffee (the non-OD inducing amount) makes me feel normal. It doesn't make me feel perky or energetic. It doesn't make me hyper. It makes me feel like I can deal with everyday, normal things.
Oh yeah? Well, I'm more into coffee than you will ever be, okay?
Okay. I think you aren't addicted to coffee, just the attention. Also, you suck and I used to be like you until I tried quitting for the first time, when I was in grade school. Get out while you still can. LOL
But I drink Starbucks every time I CAN. Doesn't that show how addicted I am?
No. Just... no. Also, please don't aspire to any kind of drug addiction.
Well, I think you're the poser!
You're entitled to your own opinion. Now, go away.
Why coffeebased?
I was in junior year in high school. I wanted something simple enough to be easily memorable (my old yahoo id was coffeeuke37869 and BOY did I regret having something that complicated) and I figured I was being clever with the play on carbon-based to coffeebased.
Also, there's a biochemical joke in there. I used to joke that my DNA contained caffeine molecule bases instead of guanine. Look it up, they look strangely similar at first glance.
Are you only addicted to Starbucks coffee?
No. But I like to drink it for several reasons:
1) It is pretty convenient.
2) The coffee they serve is consistent. Depending on the drink, it can be consistently horrible or consistently palatable.
3) When I make my own coffee, I tend to OD and ruin any chances my body has at a normal day.
4) Instant coffee, while convenient, consistent and easily measurable, gives me a migraine that completely outweighs any pleasure I would have received from drinking a cup of coffee. It is probably due to a preservative they use, and no, I will not have any brand you think is good because I probably don't care about your opinion enough to risk feeling a nuclear bomb go off in my skull.
5) I've got good memories of Starbucks.
What makes you think that you're addicted to caffeine? Why can't you just quit / give it up / get over yourself?
I've got a coffee mustache.
I want to sleep early tonight, so I took the easy route. Just a few espressos to make me feel mellow. There's nothing like the comfort of a lifelong (fine, a very short life's worth of long) addiction to make one feel safe. I'm not very routine-based but there are just some little habits that make my life recognizable as mine.
I get asked a lot about caffeine's stimulative properties and their indirect relationship with a person's ability to relax. Usually with raised eyebrows and a suggestive smirk indicating that the asker thinks that I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Often liberally drenched in condescension.
I'd draw them the mechanism of caffeine's action on the adrenergic receptors of a human body cell but it'd be wasted on them. I don't like pulling out the Biology, motherfucker, do you speak it? card that often but when I do?
Priceless.
Anyway, what people often forget is that the human body's reaction to different chemicals is case to case basis. And this reaction is not entirely physical. Now, I'm not a psychologist, so I can't explain exactly what happens in my head that translates caffeine into safe and loose but it just boils down to the repetition of a habit and its eventual effect on the way a brain is conditioned.
You know, Pavlov's dogs and those rodents that'd rather orgasm than eat.
Of course, I DO still feel the stimulant effect of caffeine eventually. However, this takes over five espressos or in plain brewed coffee terms, two to three liters of coffee brewed at a 1:3 ratio of water to coffee. Yeah.
Well, caffeine's relatively safer than smack and blow and crack and e and any other of those trendy drugs. It's also socially acceptable. It's not like I'm blowing secondhand caffeine into other people's face or pawning my jewelry just to snort some coffee grounds. I can even buy it on most street corners in Makati.
But that's just rationalizing. I pretty much have the same basic problem as any person dealing with addiction: I want it bad enough that it messes me up when I can't have it.
Now, most of us have seen/read Trainspotting. [If you haven't, hie thee to a mediastore (or an torrent search engine) and get cracking.] I have to admit that the withdrawal I experience isn't as bad as Ewan McGregor's, but this is only because I've never had any reason to actually go completely cold turkey.
Any compelling reason anyway. I've had a handful of false starts, mostly ending with me (or the people around me) giving in within a couple of days. I can be a right bitch when I'm deprived of coffee. And it's not just normal PMS-y bitchiness, the kind that this Starbucks-culture has inoculated into these poser freaks who claim to depend on coffee to get through the day without mangling people. Those kids are just feeling the aftereffect of minor addiction, the irritability caused by the high-contrast "low" a user gets when they're new to their drug of choice.
I act horribly because I am in actual physical pain. It starts off with a low-grade headache. And then I get the shakes. Both are easy to ignore, especially if one is busy. The nausea that comes afterwards, not so much. Usually the nausea is coupled with a cold sweat and a alternating prickling/numbness that spreads all over my body. Except in some part of my brain which insists on being stabbed with a non-existent laser sword thing.
By the end of two days without coffee, I'm usually kneeling before the porcelain god and throwing up whatever I'd managed to eat together with the fuckton of water I had in preparation for the vomiting. When voiding one's bowels violently, it is important to rehydrate, rehydrate, rehydrate. Unless you want to end up with an IV in your arm. And as someone who's had enough IVs in her life, not all necessarily related to a surplus or lack of coffee, I would like to tell you that you don't want that shit.
Drinking coffee (the non-OD inducing amount) makes me feel normal. It doesn't make me feel perky or energetic. It doesn't make me hyper. It makes me feel like I can deal with everyday, normal things.
Oh yeah? Well, I'm more into coffee than you will ever be, okay?
Okay. I think you aren't addicted to coffee, just the attention. Also, you suck and I used to be like you until I tried quitting for the first time, when I was in grade school. Get out while you still can. LOL
But I drink Starbucks every time I CAN. Doesn't that show how addicted I am?
No. Just... no. Also, please don't aspire to any kind of drug addiction.
Well, I think you're the poser!
You're entitled to your own opinion. Now, go away.
