I have the idea stuck in my head that coffee isn't really good for me. Yet, it seems that in ways it really is. I am a better person if I have a cup of coffee in the morning. Just one cup of coffee changes the way I go about my entire day. The change is somewhat subtle. There aren't quite words to explain what happens in my mind. It's not simply that I have more energy. Not at all. In fact last night proves that. On my days off I don't do a good job of having that one cup of coffee. Now that I have a lot more days off I've been drinking less coffee with the end result that I'm ...sort of dragging through my days but it's not quite correct to define it as if it's a lack of energy.

Coffee is a real bonafide drug that keeps my mind just turning away from negative stuff. I literally take a few gulps and my mind feels like it's in a swirl of enporphins. And I feel as if it helps me ignore some essentially negative aspect of reality. An aspect that facing isn't doing any good whatsoever. Just grinding the life out of me.

I've drank a cup a day maybe on average for a couple years now... And I feel as if in a sense I dragged through years of my life before coffee.

It tastes like chocolate to me. This I guess because my sense of taste doesn't quite work correctly. I once made a pie and accidentally used salt instead of sugar. Perhaps a person with a normal sense of taste would notice their mistake on the first... possibly second bite. I ate two large pieces and just noticed I felt a bit sick to my stomach.

Not much sense of smell, I can barely smell a 'code brown' at the hospital or a colostomy bag. Otherwise I usually just imagine I smell things that aren't actually there. And the sense of taste I guess is somehow connected to smell.

Anyway yesterday, I went without my coffee and just felt out of sorts. Again I only drink maybe a cup a day on average. That's not much. I don't think it's withdrawal. As it's an 'out of sorts' feeling that I recall having continously when younger before I ever touched coffee.

Of course right after the post about sleeping so good, my sleep hadn't been quite as good. So then I drink half a cup of coffee and I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me. I almost immediately feel better. And then I fall asleep for 5 hours. Coffee as a sleep aid? (Sigh) My body is too weird. Too impossible to figure out.

I have to get more of into a habit of drinking coffee. Though I hate to be dependent on any kind of drug. The truth is though I just do better, so much better. I defeat the existential nihilism in me when I drink a bit of coffee. Not by thinking more clearly. The opposite. My mind becomes distracted by minutae(sp). Lots of things pop into it which I focus solely upon instead of having a part of me standing back and holding on to the bigger picture in all it's awful glory.

But I have this idea that coffee surely can't be good for my health. And so I hold back. I might not even average a single cup a day.

And, one thing I've noticed is that the quality of my fingernails has changed. They seem a tad bit brittle. I think it's most likely a lack of calcium. Maybe in part because I've been eating a lot of spinach instead of broccoli lately. (The acid in spinach counteracts it's calcium). But maybe the coffee also plays a role...

I think I need to make sure to have one, maybe even two cups of coffee a day. Right now I've just woken up (5AM). Hmmm, but I had half a cup at 9:30pm last night and I am still feeling it. I'm very definitely blocking out the existentialism (the big picture). I'm not thinking about my place in the universe. Not thinking about what my existence is. What I have to show for my life. What few real friends I have. How I'm a lemming holed up in a shack. Not thinking of the truth of what 99.9% of interactions are. Etc. Yeck. Just thinking all about coffee. Now off to eat some broccoli and read a book. In a few hours the existentialism will creep in and I'll have some coffee.

Hopefully better understanding how the coffee achieves it's positive effect won't cause me to overcome it.