Adam Oster, Novelist

An interview with Jeff Goldblum recently revealed how the actor decided to cut coffee out of his life because he felt it was a mental crutch, something he needed in order for his brain to work. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more true statement.

I used to be a five+ cup a day kinda guy, needing to have a constant drip of caffeine into my bloodstream so that I could continue to function until the end of the day. I had a difficult time turning down a cup whenever it was offered to me, even when I would be at a restaurant and someone would suggest an after-dinner cuppa. This was at the same time when I was drinking multiple Dr. Peppers a day as well, which means that me and caffeine were inextricably linked.

Nowadays I’m down to just two cups a day in the morning (they’re pretty big cups though…). Sometimes I have some of those Crystal Light w/ caffeine drinks in the afternoon, but it’s probably been months since I’ve even had any of those in the house. Which means that the Adam of today has significantly less caffeine in his diet than the Adam of even a year ago.

However, I too have found myself in the same boat as Mr. Goldblum on many occasions, thinking that I should probably give up the good old black stuff. In fact, I’ve managed a few times in my life to cut out caffeine from my routine for brief periods, usually when I’ve determined that I need to do whatever I can to fix my insomnia. But those were always intentionally short-lived diets, never expected to be something I would stick to.

However, back at the start of the pandemic, in good old March of 2020, I was actually at a point where I was ready to give it all up entirely. At this point I had severely cut back on my drinking and had moved away from most chemical dependencies, leaving me only to the morning cups of coffee that I find myself needing so badly. And I was ready. I was ready to finally remove myself from my dependence.

But something about having the kids home 24/7 while you’re still trying to work and do school put all of that on the back burner. In fact, all of the forward momentum I had made on things like drinking also slid back. I found myself going back to my old ways of coping with stress and depression.

These are all things that I’m actively back to working on being where I was in March of 2020, but the one thing that I find myself struggling with more than any of it is, well, coffee.

Because I do find it as a mental crutch. I can barely open my eyes in the morning before I have my first sip, much less actually think through complete sentences. I grunt orders at my kids while they slowly get through their morning routines to get off to school, wondering if I’ll ever actually be able to wake up.

And I don’t want to pretend that I’ll suddenly be a morning person simply because I cut out coffee, but I would like to think that perhaps, considering how much of a different person I become after taking those first sips, that I might, at least, be able to be more like me if I could cut off the dependency.

So, in light of Mr. Goldblum’s interview, I’m starting to think that perhaps it is time to once again head into the unknown.

But it might not be until after I finish college…