Everything it seems I like’s a little bit stronger, a little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me

The other day I was reading an article on smoking cessation in Allure, and it talked about how if, on average, a pack-a-day smoker spent $4.50 per day on cigarettes, that expenditure would amount to more than $1600 annually. At first, I was rather pleased with myself for not finding cigarettes even remotely addictive. Which is actually sort of weird considering I find just about everything else in the universe addictive. Apple cider mimosas, grilled cheese sandwiches, Nip/Tuck, and the chiropractor are recent examples. I have, to put it mildly, an addictive personality. I'm not capable of liking anything a normal amount. I either am completely enamored of something for a negotiable but almost always finite period of time, or I am indifferent to it. Perhaps, knowing that my addictions are overwhelmingly cyclical, it's just that the cycle of addiction for cigarettes is unusually short. I get drunk, I chain-smoke three or four of them, and I'm done for two months. The added bonus here is that generally when this occurs, the person who actually bought the cigarettes does find them addictive and forces me to keep them once we are done, so my annual cigarette expenditure is a big fat zero.

Then it occurred to me that just because I do not indulge in one expensive vice does not mean that I don't have other, equally expensive vices. For instance, I like coffee. Maybe you've noticed. This is one addiction that seems to be enduring and indeed intensifying through time. I started drinking coffee here and there as a teen in a futile attempt to stunt my growth. Once I got to college and was confronted with a Starbucks every seven feet or so, it was like a snowball effect, and it reached a fever pitch when I discovered that caffeine is an extremely effective way to manage ADD when Strattera causes severe nausea. These days, I start my day at home with a big mug of the darkest roast I can find at the supermarket. I follow that with a Venti Americano from Starbucks. I used to eschew the coffee at my office, but a few weeks ago we got a very fancy new machine that allows you to select how many ounces of water you'd like it to filter through your little K-cup, effectively allowing you to be nitpicky about strength, so I've taken to brewing a four-ounce cup and a six-ounce cup into the same mug. Then I start in on the Diet Coke. And then there are weekends: while I still start out with a mug or two at home, if I'm out shopping or wandering or doing anything that lacks structure, I'll easily go through two or three large Americanos from various cafes while I'm out. And those cafes do not ever include the relatively cheap Dunkin' Donuts; the only item from that wretched chain that will ever pass my lips is their pumpkin muffin, although even that is unlikely now that they've begun haphazardly splattering questionable bright orange frosting across the top, like they've let Jackson Pollack loose in the kitchen with a supply of festively tinted royal icing.

I'm not exceptionally sensitive to all the caffeine. That's probably thanks to the aforementioned ADD. It focuses me instead of making me manic. I'd have to drink a lot more than I do (which I'd imagine is a lot to begin with) to start shaking or get a headache. It's not the consumption that's the issue. It's the cost. Say I pick up ten cafe drinks per week. The cost varies at the Starbucks near my work, because sometimes they charge me the regular price and sometimes they charge me for a doppio espresso and sometimes they don't charge me at all. Then on weekends I usually go to Diesel or Sherman Cafe or whatever independent cafe I happen to be near. So if, roughly, I'm paying $2.75 per, and I'm spending about $10 a month on coffee to brew at home, that works out to more than $1500 a year on coffee. That's ridiculous.

If I quit coffee and set aside what I would otherwise spend on it, I could buy the status bag of my choice and have some left over.

Of course, often the coffee is taking the place of breakfast or, on weekends, lunch. So when you factor in the fact that I'm not spending all that hard-earned cash on food, it really evens out. There, I feel better. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so if I want an Americano for breakfast, I ought to have one!

While we're on the subject of addiction, let me just say that one thing I do not find addictive, or even especially effective, is Vicodin. My doctor, horrified at my admission that I was averaging 5000 milligrams of ibuprofen a day, prescribed it to me for what has now been confirmed as sciatica. She advised me to take it in the evenings to help me sleep, and to keep the ibuprofen to a more reasonable 3000 milligrams per day. Here's the problem with that course of medication: sleeping is not the problem. Sitting in an allegedly ergonomic yet still massively uncomfortable chair all day is the problem. Thanks to the ADD, the Vicodin does not make me drowsy or out of it in the least, so I've been taking it once in the morning and once in the early afternoon, accompanied by five Advil, and then just the Advil at night. But...I guess it's making some difference, because the pain is manageable as opposed to so acute that it makes me want to scream. But it's not what I had imagined. I mean, I've read so many stories about people getting so addicted to painkillers that they have to go to rehab, and I'm like, really? I don't know, maybe my body is just like, "Opiods? Eh." Guess I don't need to bother with heroin now.

Also on the subject of addiction, the fact that my injury is sciatica and thus does not have a firm timeline of when I can expect it to improve means that I am resigned to an indefinite stint in exclusively flat footwear. Prior to all this, I owned a grand total of one pair of cold weather-appropriate flat shoes, which were elasticized all the way around and cut into my sciatic nerve at the ankle, thus rendering them not an option. So this has allowed me to develop a new, hopefully temporary addiction: flats. So far there has been a pair of knee high boots, a snazzy new pair of Chuck Taylors, and four pairs of variously dressy and casual flats. I'm not happy about it, but if I must avoid heels for the foreseeable future, I might as well do it as stylishly as possible. And it isn't so bad, really. I only cried in one shoe store, and when Marshall's had the single pair of shoes I was coveting for fall on clearance in my size (black patent leather shoe-boots with a leopard print cuff and a four-inch stiletto, sigh) I wisely left them on the rack, thereby saving myself $49. Still, that doesn't mean I won't occasionally be found staring longingly at my shoe rack, anxiously awaiting the day when I will stop having acute pain radiating down my entire right leg. This is getting really depressing. My mom always tells me to laugh, because if you don't laugh you'll cry. But you can only laugh so much, and I would really like to be able to spend my evenings comfortably doing something besides laying in bed with a book and a heating pad. Ugh.