Yesterday, my son asked me if I’d ever written anything while on drugs.
I said I’d tried to write while drunk, but it hadn’t worked.
And then I added that writing well — really well — on drugs is, as far as I could tell, rare.
I didn’t give examples, but there’s amphetamines. W.H.Auden depended upon Benzedrine (swallowing the cotton balls from inside of nasal inhalers). And it’s hard to think of the Brat Pack writers of the 1980s without thinking of massive cocaine consumption.
(This is leaving aside the huge subject of alcohol, as brilliantly covered by Olivia Laing in The Trip to Echo Spring.)
My son sounded disappointed. I see it as my job to disappoint him. Especially on the subject of drugs.
But since our conversation, I’ve been thinking about coffee.
Perhaps I should ring him back and say, It’s almost unheard of for anyone to write anything without drugs of any sort. We’re all on a mild buzz.
Coffee is everywhere.
And the links between coffee and writing are constantly enforced.
In countless memes —
And positive reinforcements —
The entire Starbucks brand seems based around imaginary novelists who need caffeine and somewhere scruffy/bougie to write.
If I feel forced into any kind of monoculture, coffee-consumption is it.
Don’t misunderstand, I love coffee.
I anticipate the next cup, sometimes before I’ve finished the current one. I treat myself to expensive — cough — oat flat whites. (I know, I know — the shame of such obviousness.) In fact, expensive oat flat whites are my main afternoon treat.
And after I drink a strong cup, I can sit there and write four or five pages in my notebook.
My spine has been straightened, my eyesight clarified, and my heart has been readied for throbbing.
But then, a couple of hours later, there’s the gloom, the generalized anxiety, and the growing sense that whatever I manage to do with the rest of the day, it will never be enough to justify my existence.
Tea at four o’clock, save me.
Perhaps I’m blaming coffee for my existential crises, but my existential crises are really very jittery.
At some point, says the addict, I will give it up.
But I am suspicious of the monoculture. And I don’t like habits I can’t give up.
Maybe I’d write better, or at least differently, if I weren’t mildly buzzing.
In fact, here’s a promise.
This summer, I’ll stop drinking coffee, at least for a couple of weeks.
And I’ll report on it here.
I'm 70. The England in which I grew up had tea breaks in the workplace. We were proud of our tea drinking. Americans had coffee, we had tea. There were songs on the radio about the joys of tea drinking. Tea was a prominent part of our national culture. I miss that sense of Britishness which we used to have. That feeling of being united by the jolly cup of tea. We used to call it "the cup that cheers", "the British cuppa", "Rosy Lee". Now I feel that the country has become nothing more than an extension of America. Coffee makes people jittery and nervous. Tea gives a gentle lift to the sensibilities. I remember when MacDonald's hamburger restaurants came to Britain in 1979. I went into the one in Wimbledon and ordered a take-away cup of tea. I was shocked that they didn't have any. They had opened a restaurant in England and they didn't have tea. They only had coffee, cola or "root beer". We had been invaded by people who did not understand us. I will never surrender, I will fight them on the beaches. I'll continue as I am: not only teetotal but also tea total.
Just watch out for unexpected side effects.
I once flounced from an online writer’s group of people I really admire - then had to slink back in when I realised my ill humour was founded on inadvertent decaff drinking in a holiday let.
Left the apartment, drank real coffee - order restored.