An Unrecognized Addiction

(This is not my cup of coffee.)

Right now, I am sitting in Starbuck. It is taking a lot of will power to sit here without ordering something caffeinated. You see, I am a caffeine addict. I have been for most of my life. People think I am being silly or being overdramatic. For me, I am making a healthier choice. With the years of abuse of drinking that dark liquid magic, it started to take a toll on my kidneys.

In the early days, say around three, my grandparents got me hooked on that seductive substance. The recipe was a quarter cup of coffee mate, a good portion of sugar, then fill the rest with coffee. I used those proportions for the rest of my life. We had a joke if the caffeine didn’t kick in soon, the sugar would.  In my college years, I would start off with a sixty-eight-once cup of coffee. You know the kind of cups you could get at a gas station labeled big gulp. By the end of the day, I would have consumed five to six pots of coffee, if not more during exams.

Drinking caffeine contributed to several health problems. Weigh gain, darkening of the skin/teeth, but the most noticeable was the in the formation of gout. In short, gout is a form of arthritis. At times it could be mind-bending painful. With the amount of caffeine intake in a day, my kidneys could not process all the purines out of my system. These purines would find their way into my blood system and migrate to my joints. There they would attach themselves to my tendons and dry out. The process formed crystals. When my body notices these said crystals, it looked at them as a foreign object. My body would attack those locations and produce the by-product of inflammation. The body does not know when to stop swelling. This is where the pain comes from. There is no off switch. I heard scary stories from other people where their skin ruptured from over swelling. By Gods' grace, I did not have to experience that.

Later, I discovered that the same purines that ran thru my bloodstream also stored themselves in my fat cells. This became evident when I would take a notion to lose some weight. Gout would come back with a vengeance. I could not for the life of me figure out why it came back when I was eating the right way. During an exercise regimen, I would lose large amounts of weight. Then, wham, a major gout attack. What I did not know at the time was my body would release stored purines from my fat cells back into my system. It became so bad that I could not even eat some basic foods like pinto beans, organ meats, fried foods, and even fructose corn syrup. These foods contained varying amounts of purines. Combine that with my large caffeine addiction it created a recipe for disaster of pain.

As with any addiction, I had denial. I ignored the signs. The one sign that I could not put aside was kidney pain. When walking, it would buckle my knees. 

Thus, I have become caffeine free. I am trying to heal my body. My kidneys will never be the same as they once were. But they are better than they have been in a long time. I have noticed that I can eat more beans now which is a good thing since I have become vegan. The addiction to caffeine will always be there from me like any other addict. Addiction to any substance varies between addicts. For some, it may be hard drugs, alcohol, sex or even sugar. Yep, I said it, sugar, because everyone is addicted to it in some form. I pray that I will never laps again. In the meantime, I can take refuge that I am making progress.

You may wonder after all that, why am I sitting in Starbuck writing. I like the atmosphere.

By R. P. Smith 2019.