I stopped drinking coffee quite a while ago, back before the onset of double mocha lattes and West Coast Roast. It wasn't that I thought drinking coffee was more debilitating than any of my other habits, but I found myself chugging down enough coffee every morning to give my hands a slight palsy shake. One side effect of giving it up was that it immediately improved my handwriting, and if you've seen my handwriting, you know that's a definite benefit.

Still, not drinking coffee can be socially problematic. When someone wants to get together for coffee, I feel obliged to mention that I don't drink it any more, even though getting together for coffee is more of a euphemism for sitting down somewhere in order to talk silly. In some cases, saying that I don't drink coffee gets equated with the idea that I have no interest in talking silly or that I have better things to do. Rest assured that even if I do have better things to do, sitting around and talking silly is one of the best ways that I know to procrastinate. Once we get that misunderstanding straightened out, I sit down to talk silly and drink something else while my talking-silly associate drinks coffee.

Over the years, I've noticed that drinking coffee involves some ritualistic behaviour which non-coffee drinkers can find a little eccentric. For one thing, no matter how bad the coffee tastes, most hard-core coffee drinkers will still drink most of it. They'll grit their teeth and make faces at the cup with every sip, but they'll choke down as much of it as they can while they complain about it. Considering how much they have to shell out for some kinds of coffee, it's kind of understandable that they would want to keep drinking it for as long as possible, but sometimes I wonder if a glass of water and a couple of caffeine pills might have been a better choice.

Another thing that happens is that once the caffeine in the coffee starts kicking in, there is a tendency to talk faster and faster, making it sound like they're getting extremely excited about whatever they happen to be discussing. There have been occasions when I've wondered if people are becoming obsessed about the price of tomatoes to the point where they might try to get a few friends together and swarm their local grocery store.

I guess if you want to have a good revolution, you should make sure there's lots of coffee.

I noticed that when I quit drinking coffee, I had headaches for about a week. This, I assumed, was what happened when you went through caffeine withdrawal, and I've been told by others that they suffered far worse symptoms when they quit. I also noticed that my cravings for sweets went down after I quit drinking coffee, which makes me a really lousy target audience for donut shop advertising.

Oddly enough, though, there are times when I enjoy watching other people drink coffee, much like an ex-smoker occasionally watching someone really enjoying a cigarette. Even though I don't drink it, if I can't smell coffee brewing in the morning, I find it hard to believe that it's time to get up.

Once in while, I get up in the morning and think about gulping down a cup of really bad coffee just so I can complain about it and shake out the cobwebs a little faster. Then I start thinking about that little shake I had in my hands and how agitated I might sound talking about the price of tomatoes. Then I pour myself a glass of orange juice and try to wake up without it.