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It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong.

Ex-Mormon tries coffee

Even though I’m no longer a Mormon, I still act like one in some ways. I still haven’t drunk alcohol (ever). Never smoked or tried illegal drugs. I guess arbitrary religious rules can exert quite a hold on one, especially rules pertaining to food and drink. Or maybe I was just never curious. Either way, breaking the Mormon “Word of Wisdom” still seems terribly transgressive. Sex before marriage? Yes, please. Deny the holy ghost? Why not? But trying coffee? Whoa, that’s really out there. Totally badass, yo.

Miss Perfect, my girlfriend/partner/fiancée, does drink coffee, and at a café once I timidly ventured a slurp of her demon drink. I say “demon drink” because it tasted like it came out of the ass of one of the legions of hell. No, wait — you know how you burn an entire pot of beans, and then you have to labouriously scrape it out to clean it? It tasted like the water at the bottom of the pot.

“That wasn’t very good coffee,” said she.

I thought it was probably a flawed concept from the beginning. Sure, you could make it taste okay if you added enough sugar and milk. But as Sandra Boynton said of carob, the same argument could be convincingly advanced in favour of dirt. I thought I’d stick to chocolate as my bean derivative of choice.

But I kept taking the occasional slurp (and making the occasional face). Some people say you can push past it. It got better.

And so when we found ourselves in Seattle, we sat down with a Starbucks latté and a Cinnabon, and I found myself sampling more than usual of the brew. The aroma reminded me of supermarket trips when I would eye the forbidden coffee beans (lined up in plexiglas containers, singing their tiny sirens’ song) with trepidation and fascination. And this time the taste, bitter by design, was just right for cutting the extreme sweetness of the sticky buttery bun. Complementary.

I could never do a whole cup though.

10 Comments

  1. It took a while, but now I absolutely love coffee.

    Go you for trying the demon drink that keeps people out of the celestial kingdom!!!

  2. I still don't like coffee, but I've begun taking my chai without sugar (gasp), and sometimes without milk. I'm starting to wonder if chai is a gateway hot drink.

  3. This is basically how I feel about most of the drinks the WoW prohibits…Coffee and tea both taste pretty bad (and every time I try some variety of either, people insist, "Well, that just wasn't a good kind" or "You just need to find the one for you.")

    I feel the same about the wine and beer I've tasted. People insist, "You just need to find the right kind for you." Yeah, and go through a bunch of ones that taste horrible in the process?

  4. Yes it is awful, amazing how many people brainwash themselves in to 'liking' naturally bad tastes. Beer now tastes 'nice' to me (and I still recall how bad the first one was!).
    Reminds me of when I was a smoker as well – I convinced myself I enjoyed that activity too. Considering what else I had self-brainwashed myself into was the first step to breaking from Mormonism!

  5. I'm with you on coffee but Daniel you gotta get drunk.

  6. I think there are much nicer mood altering substances than coffee.

    But what I can never understand is why does it smell so delicious but taste so disgusting? Bitter, nasty, black stuff.

    The only what I like coffee is when it comes as "Coffee Icecream", "Coffee Cake", or "Coffee scroll".
    🙂

  7. So I'm going to be another one of those dorks that tells you that you may not have had the right coffee, because here's this ex-mormon's coffee experience:

    My first coffee was a hazelnut latte at a posh coffeeshop where my coffee-loving friend always hung out. It tasted just fine to me, good even. Then from there I figured I just liked coffee. No big deal, this stuff is good. So I go to my new job and I fill up a cup of standard office coffee. "Gee, this tastes like ass juice," I remarked to myself. I suddenly didn't know if I truly liked coffee or not.

    It wasn't until I went to another nice coffeeshop and got a straight americano with no sugar or cream and liked it that I finally realized that some coffee is just shit, and some is good. Starbucks I think is somewhere between the two. Since I'm in Seattle, I'm never far away from a decent cup.

    I'm absolutely amazed that you haven't tried alcohol yet. It was really weird at first, but after you test the limits a little to see how fun it is and how much it sucks in the morning, it gets kind of boring. I don't know why people spend $8 per glass for this stuff at restaurants. Basically, breaking the forbidden drinks portion of the WoW is a little anti-climactic. It takes quite a bit to get drunk, and you usually do not have the money or the patience to go that far. One or two drinks does absolutely nothing to "calm my nerves" or give me a buzz or anything. You could easily spend $25 for drinks at a bar before you even feel any effects. It's so boring and overrated in the recommended safe quantities and so easy to avoid getting drunk that it seems so weird that Mormons furiously avoid it like poison.

  8. Coffee is like alcohol in that no-one drinks it for the taste, they drink it for the effects.

    Most people's first coffee and first alcoholic drink taste bad to them, yet they keep doing it anyway.

    It's the drug. It makes you feel happy or buzzed or reduces your inhibitions, and then our brains associate that feeling with the taste.

    I like the smell of coffee, can't stand the taste. If I am feeling REALLY, REALLY, REALLY tired, I might buy one at a coffee shop, or make one at work (very rare, less than once a year event- which is why I don't have any in the house) and I will choke it down, with plenty of sugar and milk, but it is purely for the effects. About halfway I am pinging of the walls and have tremors in my hands.

    I drink decaff tea in winter, cause it's good to keep me warm, and with sugar, bearable in taste.

    I sometimes drink alcohol. Sometimes in winter to warm up I'll have a whiskey & OJ, or if I'm going out with friends to celebrate a birthday or something. Always the pre-mixed loaded with sugar to mask the awful taste kind, and always for the effects.

    And I've never had any rules telling me not to drink any of it. Life atheist.

    Giving yourself an addiction to coffee (or alcohol or smoking for that matter) will only necessitate withdrawals coming off of it.

    Nothing should be off-limits though.

    signed,
    Completely Boring apparently.

  9. If you can't find a beer that suits you…try a craft beer. Bud, Coors, Miller…those don't even qualify as "good" beer. Yes, they will get you drunk if that is what you are after.

    Sierra Nevada, Stone, Avery, Deschutes…plus dozens of others…make beer that is flavorful, interesting, conversational and will still give you the buzz. I rarely get drunk and a "big" night of drinking for me is ~3-4 beers.

  10. Homemade Cocoa-Joe is a good gateway to the hard brew. Start with a heaping tablespoon of Swiss Miss – tiny marsh’mos optional – in a half mug of – hell, anything, Folger’s crystals for Chrissake, it don’t matter at this point. Back-fill with hot water and scrounge together a disguise for your first sneak down aisle 6 – yeah, you know what I’m talkin’ bout, Satan’s aisle, that’s the smell.

    Start scoring nickel bags of Arabica – Mexican, Brazilian – start with a light roast and move to dark and back off the Missy Swiss as you go. I was down to a half teaspoon in double dripped Chock Full O’ Nuts New York Roast by week 7 and was knocking it down straight by 9.

    But soon I needed something more. Ethiopian Robusta. Whoa! Great hit, but forced me back to a pinch of cocoa – this time Cocoa-Via, dark, no sugar, $1.10 a packet (but the falvanoids support cardiovascular health).

    Fast forward two years – I’ve lost my temple recommend, I’ve lost my faith, I’ve lost the annoying half of my family … but I’ve also lost a lot of weight and I’m kickin’ ass on the commodities floor keeping it real doin’ shots of Death Wish espresso – all – day – long.

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