“I can stop anytime I want to!” that’s what I keep telling myself as I pace back and forth past the home of my beloved addiction. I kid myself into thinking that opening the door a little won’t be a problem, “just one last peek!” Then as soon as I look its all over, I reach my hand out and before a thought can even occur both my hands are around that beautiful neck. I proceed to gulp until I nearly pass out from the lack of oxygen. Yup its true, caffeine I am your bitch.
I don’t remember how it ever got started, most likely, it was soda that was the culprit in the first place and has remained my vehicle of choice through out the years. Maybe I was trying to rebel , my parents tried keeping the beloved liquid from me as a youngster. Around Boston , we call the caramel monkey Tonic instead of soda like in other parts of the country, there might be some conditioned response happening as a result but I haven’t seen any statistics to correlate this quite yet. Who really knows, It doesn’t really fucking matter at this point I just know that I like the rush of sugar and caffeine. I like the way it makes me feel! Is that so wrong?!
I could blame society and with good reason. Just take a minute to consider some of the facts. If you were even alive and sentient in the eighties you might remember the Pepsi challenge, or as I call it the COLA WARS. Not since the OPIUM WARS has so much effort by any governments been put into controlling the flow of such addictive bullion. If you think that I might be crazy in calling Pepsi co. Or Coke governments but have you seen what either company actually owns? We could spend much time going over the details but its safe to say they would neither have much problems buying up many small island nations at the drop of a hat. Theirs are more akin to the shadow governments that every conspiracy nut creams over. Anyways, the point is that 80-90% of Americans ingest some form of caffeine every day and those Cola companies are constantly spreading their tentacles out into the furthest reaches of the know world (The Gods must be Crazy made a good point of this absurdity ). Its no wonder that nearly every American fast food joint has free refills, its merely the Cola giants reinforcing their vice like grip on the poor addicts of the land looking merely to ingest some processed beef products. Junkies like me count on this, I have ordered the super size more than once just to down some of that caramel nectar. The real reason that no one is trying to prevent caffeine usage is that our twenty-four hour society would possibly crumble without it unlike tobacco the country needs caffeine junkies. Just think of programmers trying to exist without some form of caffeine if not my beloved Cola. There are whole websites whose underlying theme involves the laurels of a caffeine-derived wealth and happiness. Hell even the government has researched was to keep the troops in ever ready states of alertness. They don’t care that they are junkies…. they are trying to create them!
Once I tried to kick, after the terrible head aches finally passed I was ok for a while. I even tried that health stuff out, lifting weights for two-hours-a-day six days of the week. I cut all caffeine from my diet, no chocolate, no cola, no soda, no chocolate, no tea, and no fun. I went cold turkey from the caramel monkey. Then the inevitable relapse occurred in Hiroshimic fashion. I was with a musician friend of mine and we were meeting up with two other guys at the local all-night-pancake-house. I had ordered a decaf because it was cheap and I was cold. We were there a long time, discussing bands and the like, little did I know that the next seven or eight cups were no longer decaf. I had not had caffeine in almost three of four years. Arriving home that night, the best I could do was to shake violently and was on the verge of hearing voices and hallucinating. Since that night, I have been the concubine of caffeine once more.
I may never be able to quite my habit but I’m not quite sure I want to . It might just be that I will be swilling the Tonic long after I’ve lost my limbs, eyesight and kidney function to diabetes…then bury me in a mountain of coffee beans and tea leaves when finally the rest gives out.

and of course always Coke never Pepsi!