Stress Is Best

A day without coffee is like a hey what the f*ck are you looking at?

Friend Of the ‘Stack and all around awesome bud Holley drinking from a genuine Keith Bergman coffee mug

When this essay posts, I’ll be in the middle of a stress test, walking on a treadmill and having a radioactive tracer injected into my bloodstream for imaging.  I did part one last week, where you just sit in a room for twenty minutes and then they do the imaging, but now comes the harder half.  It’s nothing serious, just part of the nonstop routine maintenance you do when your aorta gets all dramatic in your early 30s but then you keep on living.

It’s not so much the treadmill part, although that can be an issue for a lot of patients.  Much like a colonoscopy, the real hassle isn’t the procedure itself, but the prep.  And the prep for a stress test involves avoiding caffeine for twenty-four hours.

As I write this, it’s almost 4:30pm.  The test is at 8:30 tomorrow morning and lasts for two hours.  Did I set an alarm for 7:30 today, Sunday, to ensure that I could get up and suck down a couple cups of coffee before (and possibly a few minutes after) the deadline?  Friend, you know the answer.

Caffeine is the alpha addiction for me, the one that’s snaked through the largest portion of my life.  When we were kids I remember my mom and dad drinking hot tea for the longest time, but by the time Dad, my sister and me moved into the apartment at 6^th and Fair Avenue, it was a coffee household.  I couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13 when I realized caffeine made it possible to stay up too late and still put in the legally required minimum appearance at school.

I was soon putting back enough coffee (and soda back then) to give myself whopping caffeine withdrawal headaches anytime I went without for too long.  In one memorable instance, I wrecked my overnight senior year visit to the University of Toledo by not planning ahead.  I got so sick I was vomiting in the bathroom of the honors hall during orientation and had to be rushed through registration so we could leave early.

I used to manage as best I could and keep NoDoz or Caffedrine (a self-explanatory brand name that I believe is no longer made) around for a quick hit.  When I drank heavily, I’d sometimes double-whammy myself into a ruined day by passing out, oversleeping, and waking up well into the throes of a withdrawal headache garnishing the standard-issue hangover.

As I’ve spent the last few decades glacially steering the ship toward being a functional adult with his shit together, stuff like booze became less prevalent, pop has become an occasional and usually regretted indulgence, but coffee’s been my ride-or-die.  Many of the promotional images we designed for my comedy career involved me drinking coffee.  I sold mugs with one of my jokes on them.  I would hit the road without spare underwear before I left town without my giant 12-cup Thermos.

The closest I’ve come to regulating my intake was to finally start acknowledging that if my sleep schedule was perpetually out of whack, that maybe the unhinged amount of stimulant I was dumping down my throat at all hours might have a little to do with it.  For some reason, it’s common among us chronic coffee-as-a-personality folks to say, in the face of God and man and all science, that “it doesn’t even affect me anymore!”  You know, the way a fire will burn long enough that dumping gas on it won’t even do anything.  Sound logic from real thinkers!

Now that I’m not on the road or working comedian hours, it’s been easier to stick to a schedule of getting up early, sucking down a pot of coffee over the course of the day, and cutting myself off around dinnertime, or ideally even a little earlier.  That, and regular walks, have made a lifelong sleep issue more or less go away in a couple months’ time, and I’m still dazed by the whole cause-and-effect of it all.  Results?  From consistent application of better habits?  Sorcery!

I’m not sure today’s abstinence will lead to a headache by morning, or a hard time sitting through the two-hour office visit knowing I have a Thermos out in the car waiting for me (because you know I’m going to do that).  I am noticing some sleepiness, and I took a good nap this afternoon, but I was up early to get those last-minute cups in, and that was after going to see a show last night.

The real problem is the thinking about it.  It’s like smokers constantly fumbling for that phantom cig.  I don’t sit at this desk, doing this work, without that mug next to me, and everything feels off-kilter without it.  (You can’t have decaffeinated drinks or chocolate during this time either, so tea and cocoa are no help).

What’s more, the second you’re told not to have something, you want it more, so I’m now fantasizing about diving into an Olympic-sized swimming pool full of bathwater-temperature medium roast and just soaking up caffeine through every pore until I spontaneously combust.

I’ll be fine.  It’s a minor thing.  I’m not fasting, or hooked up to monitors, or in pain.  I can have a couple beers after dinner.  This is a manageable inconvenience that I would have turned into a high-decibel death march fifteen or twenty years ago.  I can marvel that I’m handling it like a relatively normal person even as I reach for a mug that isn’t there for the fiftieth time and daydream about diner breakfast tomorrow at a place where my cup never gets past half-empty.

BREAKING NEWS: the glove featured in last week’s essay has moved!  I found it on the sidewalk about half a block away from where I took its last photo.  It’s too far to have been casually picked up and thrown by a lawnmower or swept off to the side by a landscaping worker.  Did an animal grab it and run off with it for a short distance?  Did a person think “free glove!” and get down the street before realizing their folly?

Some people have to get high on marijuana to dwell on things like this.  I just have to go walking on an empty stomach before breakfast.