Adventures In Coffee

Now, having a job and chronic fatigue means lots of brain fog at work. While as a rule, you're not meant to have caffeine with this kind of chronic illness as it tricks your body into thinking it has more than it does and you suffer more because of it, the Spoon Shortage page on Facebook is always posting coffee memes. This, along with a year of serving countless coffees to people (most whom would rather have it with cake than tea?!) has triggered curiosity in me. Why do people love coffee so much? If I have some to get me through a shift I have to do anyway surely it'll help more than hurt? Can I actually find coffee drink I can get past my nose, into my mouth and swallow?

Previously in my few attempts at trying coffee, the smell invaded my nose and made me gag before the mug could even touch my lips, let alone tip some coffee into my mouth. After exploring the refrigerated Freefrom section in Tesco I discovered iced coffees, already made, with chocolate. Now, if there was a gateway coffee drink for me, one without nose-invading steam and CHOCOLATE would be the one. So after a while, I bought a couple.

It took the Easter holidays for me to turn to coffee to function okay at work, and I tried the Mocha first, as it was the most chocolaty. 

I was (for some reason) surprised how strong the coffee taste was. I was expecting it to taste like coffee chocolates, or my Latte lip tint from Lush or something, but it really was coffee with a chocolate, not the other way round. It reminded me of the first time I tried lager. I didn't like it, of course I didn't I was 12. When I swallowed it my nose scrunched because it was so gross, but I soldiered on and sure enough, my nose stopped scrunching and I became accustomed to the beery taste. So, with this in mind, I slurped on. After just a couple of gulps the coffee taste made less of an impact every time I swallowed and I managed to drink the whole bottle without hating it. I then wished I bought two of the mocha bottles rather than a mocha and a cappuccino to get used to the taste more, but hey ho, I'm hardcore.

Only a few days after that I tired the cappuccino version. It was a very similar experience to that of the mocha; “Oh, wow, it really tastes like coffee... wait, why am I surprised? Drink on, I can handle this, drink on. Drink drunk. Okay then. Not horrendous. Not amazing. Coffee.” I do think I shall be sticking with my chocolaty, cold coffees for a while before braving warm ones. Or even non-chocolaty cold ones for that matter. This is partly because I rarely come across coffees I can actually drink and partly because I am a wimp. Hot black coffee is what's most widely available to me at the moment and that really is the deep end. However, if I find myself in a proper coffee shop I may have to brave the warmth for a nicely flavoured, properly prepared “milk”y drink of some sort.

As for the caffeine factor I can't say I noticed whether it helped me feel more awake or function better because I forgot to take any notice and the same goes for whether my payback increased. I'm sure, at least, I felt better because I had drank some coffee and that's meant help. Which is why I am likely to continue this adventure into the land of coffee in the future. You can come along too, if you like.

Do you have any advice for starting to drink coffee? Any would be greatly appreciated!