I’m grateful for a cold, windy morning. I’m grateful for a chance to do better on the coffee tomorrow. I’m grateful for the chance to do a little better on everything. I’m grateful for getting out of my own way. I’m grateful for what needed to happen. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Impossibly, it’s Friday.1 Last Friday, I introduced you to the greatest “Friday” song of all-time: “Living it Up on Friday Night.” This week, as I wrote this winding ode to really not much of anything, we eventually found our way to this song and it’s probably important that you watch this video:2
Consider this a Low-Risk Trust Exercise (and I’m 100% not Rick-rolling you)
If you’ve been reading these for a while, you probably have an idea that I might be kind of “fussy” on the topic of coffee. This is because I am. Like alcohol, coffee was not a thing in my house growing up. My mom drank Lipton’s tea and my dad had the occasional mug of Folgers Freeze-Dried, that was about it. I started drinking coffee in college, my first time might have been out of one of those old automat-style vending machines outside the reading rooms at the Memorial Library at the University of Wisconsin.
You would insert your money, make some selections about “cream” and “sugar,” press a button, a thin styrofoam cup would drop, there would be a brief delay, the valve would open and a thin stream of brownish coffee would drizzle into the cup. At some point, if one of the “cream” buttons had been pushed, a nozzle on the right side would spray the “cream” into the brown liquid in the styrofoam cup. The machine was mesmerizing, the coffee was really, really terrible. At some point that year, I acquired a grinder and a pour-over contraption and I’ve never really looked back.
I have a very set coffee routine these days. I mostly use the Vienna roast beans from the Agata & Valentina at 79th and 1st. I grind them when I get up, the setting is right at the '“Coarse/Medium” border. I boil water in a kettle and use a french press. I let it steep for quite a while sometimes. This is because it’s super early and I’m kind of still a little foggy. I think it’s pretty delicious coffee—it is pretty strong and maybe slightly bitter, but in a way that comes from repeated character tests— and I don’t add anything to it.3
My very well-meaning brother often sends me lovely gifts of coffee and I sometimes feel compelled to try them and that happened earlier this morning. It’s an El Salvadoran coffee and, I’m sorry, I just don’t like that fruity-flavor. If I wanted that kind of flavor in my coffee, I’d use that horrible Hazel-Nut stuff that I keep in the refrigerator for my daughter’s visits.4
When I was in rehab the first time, I quickly petitioned for the right to order my own pods for the then au Courant Keurig machines. I’m going to give away one of my secrets for getting favors granted: Pledging to maintain absolute and total secrecy about the granting of the favor. My request eventually seemed reasonable, or my good-natured but near-constant wheedling got annoying enough, and it was granted on that condition of total secrecy, because it’s going to be a real pain if all of the guys in the house start wanting to have their own coffee pods.
The nose that appeared under the edge of the tent was that of the Camel that would be delivering packages directly to our house from Amazon. You know what happened next: There is no way to keep secrets from all of those snoopy alcoholics and addicts and pretty soon Amazon was setting up a distribution hub in the parking lot. There were a few other coffee pod orders, then people started setting up entire pantries and there went the right to discreetly order coffee pods in rehab.5
Sweet dreams and flying machines, in pieces on the ground
There was another time when coffee very nearly saved my life. In the horrible inter-regnum before my washing up here in New York, I had decided to do a quick, “touch-up” stint at a specialty rehab in LA. The pandemic was still in full force and when I arrived to check in, somehow the idea that I was going to fly on an airplane from Florida to California had not entirely registered and there was now a concern that I might have been exposed to covid. When I asked how I had been expected to get there…
Anyway, it was determined that if I wanted to do this program I was going to have to go to another place for a week to make sure I didn’t have covid. This was the summer of 2020 after all.
People, this is when I was really at my bottom.
I had nowhere to go and was holding on to 8 months of shaky sobriety. I was back in another rehab and when I got out, all I knew was that I was collecting my belongings in Florida and moving into a sober house in New York. That’s where the plan ended, Labor Day Weekend of 2020 was the most distant viewable point on the planning horizon.
I’m not sure why I decided to stay. I thought about just saying f*** it and then trying to make my way to NY and see what happened. But that was the old serpent voice and he didn’t have much punch left. To be honest, even the serpent’s heart wasn’t really in it anymore. Instead of saying “f*** it, we’ll see what happens," I said, “yes, we’ll see what happens.” That’s an important difference.6 Calls were made and soon I was in an Uber headed out to the desert. We arrived at the rehab about an hour later.
It was a converted motel and had originally been of a playful Spanish design. Each unit had a fenced, rectangular courtyard in front, with a single metal chair and table and a bit of an overhang that provided shade until about 9am, after which it became mostly unsittable until evening. This was an operating treatment center and there were about 20 or so other folks on the “campus,” But since I was there on a covid protocol, I was restricted to my motel room and the courtyard. My meals were delivered by someone dressed in an ersatz hazmat suit. It seemed like something straight out of the Andromeda Strain.
I had occasional conversations across the courtyard wall with my neighbor, who was also awaiting a negative covid test before he could begin rehabbing. I cadged cigarettes from him and not to sound ungrateful, but why do meth addicts always smoke such shitty cigarettes?
I determined this was a very, very shitty situation; this pre-rehab, early detention. It occurred to me that if someone was looking for a way to drive home the point about how completely alone I was, well, this was a very effective way to do that. When I first arrived and began to grasp just how shitty this was going to be, I started to come a bit unglued. I decided to unpack and see if I could turn off the alcoholic hamster wheel for a bit.
I had packed up most of my belongings before I struck out for California and had taken one big bag with me for my rehab adventure. The other bags were now in storage awaiting my eventual Florida exfiltration. I began unpacking and putting things away and guess what I found? My f****** french press and a bag of ground coffee. My ex had “helped” me pack a bit and wanting to make sure there were no traces of me left anywhere, had stuffed the french press and my now-hated coffee into one of the bags—and that just happened to be the bag that had just made the trip with me.
I can’t tell you about the feelings in that moment. I was scared and alone and really sad. I was in the middle of literally no-where and in an institutional setting that had many similarities to solitary confinement. But now I had my own coffee. I know I laughed out loud and I know I felt like I could definitely do this. I also firmly believed this was my higher power at work—
”yes, it’s going to be pretty shitty, but here, you can have your coffee.”
So I did it. I read a lot, watched like seven Netflix series (weirdly, mostly about Vikings) and I convinced the hazmat food guy to bring me a large styrofoam milkshake cup with boiling water every morning, first thing. And suddenly, there was a bit of a bright spot in my day. My morning routine involved making the pot of coffee and sitting out on the metal chair in my desert motel courtyard. I’d smoke the cadged cigarettes and tried to keep the feelings of panic at bay. I drank the coffee I made and figured out how I was going to get through the day.
I tested negative on the 6th day and went back to LA. When I got there, the brilliant guy who ran the place laid me bare in front of the group very early on. He correctly identified me as the smartest guy in the room and asked if I was so smart, why hadn’t I either managed to get sober or killed myself already? I managed a stammered, “I don’t know,” and he got right in my face, “You have something and you could help a lot of people, so don’t be an asshole and kill yourself.” And then he moved on to the next person and I moved here to New York.
I mean, maybe the coffee wasn’t the only thing that saved me. But I’m not sure that’s a question that really matters anymore.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
Why do you even write things like this? It’s not only highly possible, but it happens on a very regular schedule. Some might call it “Weekly.”
Yes, you’re supposed to click on that. My therapist helped me to understand that the terrible feelings of complete unmoored, soon to be catastrophic free-fall were actually just “little trust falls.”
I’m not 100% sure we’re talking about coffee.
It’s just such a puzzle when they are so like you in so many ways, and then a difference like this…
Yes, I’ve used that line before. Fun Maybe-Fact: I’ve always heard that song was written in rehab! Also, heard the same thing about “Love in an Elevator.” Please do not confuse that song with this one: This is the song I mentioned above that you didn't listen to.
Yes, I talk to myself using the somewhat-royal “we.”
Ever tried switching to tea?
My takeaway...If we didn’t find ourselves in the shittiest circumstances ever, we may never turn it over and discover our higher power at work. Thanks for that today. Great read.