Dear Future Self

Dear Future Self,

Hi Future Josh, it’s Josh from the past, writing you a letter, as recommended by our therapist. She’s pretty great, isn’t she?

Anyway, I’m writing to you, that version of ME that will inevitably want to fall off the wagon in the future. What am I talking about?

Why, dear boy, I’m talking about your drug problem. Not hardcore drugs like pills or powder, not even softcore drugs like cannabis, which is now available in every New England state other than New Hampshire.

I’m writing to you about your coffee problem.

I know, I know. A coffee problem? From the outside looking in, it seems pretty silly to even refer to drinking too much coffee as a “coffee problem.” But in the interest of full transparency, we have to refer to it as what it is for you: a problem.

You like stimulants. Always have, and probably always will. The wild days of the 1990s are far behind you, but that warm cup of coffee seems to follow you wherever you go. You no longer smoke or drink anything, and as tempting as it is to have your morning ritual, I have to give it to you straight.

You’re a whackjob when you drink coffee. Granted, your default state is “whackjob,” but coffee is like tossing gas on that fire. It’s just not good for you.

But why the letter? Because apparently you forget that coffee is bad for you. You understand brain chemistry to a certain degree, but you always seem to forget that coffee becomes too much for you.

It’s the original gateway drug. We should remember that. Caffeine is a drug, as much as the addicts of the world want to say otherwise. Growing up, all your teachers would tell you that pot is the first “gateway drug,” with the threat that it would always lead to harder, more dangerous substances.

Boy, were they wrong. Coffee is the first socially acceptable stimulant you were exposed to. Your parents drink it, your aunts and uncles drink it, your grandparents drank it. Coffee doesn’t kill a person with lung cancer like cigarettes, and it doesn’t destroy a person’s life like heroin, so what’s the big deal?

Well, it’s the first drug that’s socially acceptable that stimulates you, offers you a high of sorts, then gives you a crash. It’s always that crash that gets you, and considering the people you come from, you have to remember how addictive of a personality you have. You are, as you’ve found out, an “all-or-nothing” kind of person.

And you don’t just have one cup of coffee. You drink a lot of coffee because you grow desensitized to it, and you somehow can’t keep yourself from that 3 o’clock coffee. When you have that, you go from a little wired to completely strung out, stuck in full-on fight-or-flight mode.

You’re not a person with anxiety, but you do become an anxious person.

I know, I know. The world is full of people who claim to have anxiety, all while clinging to their iced coffee. You see them every day, and I too wonder if they know how excessive caffeine can mimic anxiety. Your life made a lot of sense when you discovered that fact, remember?

But we’re not here to police other people’s behavior, we’re only writing this letter to police our own. You’ve been a person whose weight has fluctuated over your life, and the last couple of times you’ve yo-yo’d, do you remember how coffee was the culprit? You don’t take sweetener, but you don’t drink it black, and those liquid calories count for something.

Never mind what caffeine does to release stress hormones and cortisol in your body. You have a round and soft middle, and that’s what caffeine is supposed to do by causing the release of cortisol in your body. Your hormones get out of whack, your blood sugar goes weird, and strangely, you stop moving and exercising when coffee is in your life.

Also, aren’t you sick of running from one cup to another, like a donkey chasing a stick? It’s been the first morning chore for a while now, and as much as your parents might seemingly be able to drink coffee at all hours of the day, you can’t. But you’ve tried, and paid the price.

Those headaches weren’t fun, were they? The third day in, no amount of water, magnesium, or ibuprofen would touch it. How silly, when your body doesn’t need caffeine. Humans have survived for thousands and thousands of years without coffee, and all those humans had plenty of energy to get through their days.

Remember how, when you’re finally free of the stuff, you have enough energy to get through the day? Isn’t it nice to not have to pee and pee and pee all that coffee out? You’re already much more hydrated than you were before, and your belly is already feeling a little lighter, isn’t it?

Remember, Future Self, how much you don’t want to be dependent on anything in life, aside from oxygen, food, and water.

I’m writing this to you because eventually you forget all this. A friend invites you out to coffee, and you’ll think to yourself, “Oh, I’ll just have one cup.” You get hyper, you appreciate the buzz, and before you know it, you’re pulling into every Starbucks and Dunkin’ in a three-county radius you can find.

And then every restroom after that.

You’re a fiend, my friend. We can consider ourselves lucky that you’ve recently had an epiphany about how to get through your life, using the force of belief. Belief, more than feelings or facts, will create or destroy a person’s life like nothing else, and you’re lucky that you just realized that. If you believe you need coffee to get through the day, you’ll need coffee to get through the day.

If you believe you don’t need it, you won’t need it. And you, out of all 8 billion people on the planet, are better off without it. It tweaks your adrenal glands, and every slight annoyance soon becomes some huge mountain of misery.

I’m going to post this publicly, but it’s all for you ol’ boy. Why post it publicly? Well, there’s something to be said for accountability, and there’s a lot to be said about letting others know that there may be underlying causes behind problems in their lives, even if they are socially acceptable.

You’ll get a lot of kickback for posting this, though. Many coffee lovers will be quick to defend their love of coffee, inadvertently validating the point you made about belief above. Many people will believe they need coffee, and they’ll drink coffee, and they’ll be strung out and annoyed at almost everything in their lives.

Many people won’t have the ability to question the propaganda they’ve received all their lives, nor the commercials that have brainwashed them. You’re no better, though, my man. You’re a 47-year-old man writing a letter to your future self to remind yourself how insidious those messages are, because you’ve also been convinced that coffee was necessary to get through your day. You’ve been programmed plenty, along with everyone else.

And this is a ritual, this letter. It helps cement the psyche that will eventually terrorize you down the road, trying to convince you that you can have just one cup and that you’ll be able to quit any time. Your psyche and your brain, whether you like it or not, can be quite the terrorist.

And we don’t negotiate with terrorists. Not if we want the best life.

All my love,

Josh from the Past