I did, however, end up having to pay up anyway on the technicality that chocolate has caffeine in it, and since I had eaten chocolate during that week, I lost the bet.
The reasoning behind the bet was that at the time, at a mere 16, two local Starbucks branches already knew me by "name" and I was already well on my way to caffeine headaches when I did not start my day caffeinated. I had discovered, at the time, something that I know to be technically impossible but nonetheless still true somehow in my very backward psyche: coffee calms me down.
By this I mean to say DOES energize me (or gets me to zero, depending on the day), but since I was about 16, coffee has been a relatively integral part of my stress-management curriculum. I don't know what it is, but throughout high school and very often in college, those afternoons where everything seemed juuuuuust outside of my zone of rational control and I was dangerously close to lashing out at everything and everyone around me, a simple caramel macchiato/latte/hazelnut iced coffee/regular coffee usually did the trick to quell this antisocial and invariably counterproductive urge.
Logically and biologically speaking this should not be true and yet I find it is to this day. And yes, my time as an almost-psych major and then an almost-psych minor tell me that logically yes it's not all that strange it's the placebo effect and the strength of association and blah blah blah BUT I still think it's strange since chemically speaking, caffeine should make me MORE wired and inclined towards high-stress behaviors.
[If any of you hear a slight rotating noise, it's the collective sound of anybody who knew me in high school rolling their eyes that I bothered writing this.]
Mmmm, latte.
I totally know what you mean. And I did roll my eyes, though I appreciate your insights.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to take a trip to New York and you are going to take me to the best coffee place you know.