I have a love/hate relationship with coffee. I have been conditioned by Folger’s ads to have a Pavlovian response of, well, heightened alertness when I smell the stuff brewing. I would like to believe I am a coffee snob (only Peets or Coffee Bean when I was in coffee culture mecca LA) but the reality is if it is more coffee flavor than burned out water taste then I am all in. My consumption is hardly pathological – it is typically one cup in the morning with milk and Splenda. All part of my routine, the master plan of my day.

I visited the dentist in December. He was a new guy. From Macau. Chinese in the face but when a Portuguese accent. As is de rigeur with these biannual visits I was told to floss more and to lay off the coffee. I looked at my teeth in the mirror prior to going to the dentist that day. They were the most yellow that they have been. I would like to attribute it to the coffee (an easy scapegoat) but my consumption has remained consistent. I realize it is because of the water. I know that my teeth have gotten more yellow since moving to Asia and now was unbearable. Dentist salt washed my teeth and got out the stains – but I realized that it was time for a change.

So relatively cold turkey I gave up my coffee. And I have lived to tell about it. It is relative because I was vacationing in Laos and Vietnam and had the local coffee there (especially in Vietnam where coffee is mixed with condensed milk). Towards the end of the trip I was getting a bit sick and subsequently slept the entire next day after my arrival in Macau. I think this aided to get me off of my headache inducing caffeine addiction as I essentially started over with a clean, refreshed slate a day later.

What have I learned from this? That the nebulous claims of coffee being bad for you are not enough for me to kick the habit. Yet vanity, as a means or an end, IS enough of a motivator.

Blah. Enough navel gazing for now.