I worked on a piece yesterday and no matter how I tweaked it I didn't like it.
Being naturally lazy, my first, second, third, and fifteenth impulse was to continue to work on it, which I did, with the intent of salvaging it, but in the end I couldn't remove the flavor or aroma wafting from the thing and I thought that if I did publish it it would taint my writings, my body of work, forevermore as if in the future somebody would point to that particular one out of everything else I'd ever done and say “This is where artists fail, right at this point! They cross a line and that's it! You can never trust them after that!” or some wild claim and since I'm all about reputation and ethics and trying to do the wright thing through my wrightings (a little nod to fellow intrepid pioneers Orville and Wilbur there) I would be seen as doing the wrong thing or having a proclivity to do so and my readership would drop off and I would be labeled as 'that guy'. 
     But what if? What if I did publish that piece, which started out innocently enough and after all, it is Thought Of The Day and that was the thought train I was on. Can't fault a guy for that, eh?
And who's to judge as to how it would be perceived? Perhaps it would be just the thing for some people and by not publishing that work I would be denying those ones the opportunity to see things perhaps in a different way. 
    That sort of thinking didn't remove the flavor, though, of the piece in my mind, me thinking that I could have done better. 
    But so what? It's just words, water over the dam, flowing into the past, there for a moment and gone- unless I somehow write a classic that ends up gracing the shelves of every library in the land. 
     Articles, essays, and Thought Of The Day do not necessarily quality for such distinction however. These writings are meant to be fleeting things that someday may be compiled in a tome as a body of work that hopefully inspires and may even qualify for something like that. TOTD gives evidence that I did do something with my life other than watch SportsCenter and eat Almond Poppyseed muffins and drink craft beer like any other Joe. 
    So, after all that, here's 'Before Coffee, After Coffee', version 16, for your reading enjoyment (or not). Either way, it's only for a day.

Before Coffee, After Coffee

     Before Coffee (or 'B.C.') this morning I was heavily in thought about the opioid epidemic. The stats on this are truly alarming. The number of overdose deaths in the U.S. hit 70,000+ last year, which is the number of people in a medium-sized city or more guys than were killed in the Vietnam war. 
     A large portion of these overdose deaths were caused by Fentanyl, an extremely potent pharmaceutical developed to control pain. Used by anesthesiologists, this scary drug has made its way to the streets and can quickly take you out. The lethal dosage is ridiculously small, 2 milligrams, or enough grains of the stuff to cover the date on a penny. 
     This nasty white crystalline substance has got to be hugely troublesome for law enforcement 'cuz you can just forget about the movie cliche where the cops bust in and there's a pile of clear plastic bags containing a white powder, one of which the lead detective cuts open with a penknife, dips his finger in the powder that has spilled out, and tastes it. "Yup, it's cocaine" he mumbles. 
Do that with Fentanyl and "Bam!" you're on your way to the morgue.

But, an hour of searching Wikipedia and other such research sites later, I'd had my fill of the opioid crisis. This closely coincided with the After Coffee (A.C.) period, which perked me up a bit and cleared all those nighttime sleepy clouds from my mental sky. I hadn't wanted to think about the opioid crisis but morbid curiosity, shock, alarm, dismay, and WTF?! reactions to this bizarre social situation had to be experienced by social scientist me and once that was done, and enough coffee had been ingested, I took on the usual sunnier outlook that is the hallmark of A.C. time. 
'Cuz there's a big difference between B.C. and A.C., you know. 

Before Coffee I'm stumbling about, rubbing sleep out of my eyes, trying to remember the dreams I'd had the night before; perhaps I'm obsessed with this idea or that, but After Coffee I'm on much more level ground. You could say I need the stuff, that coffee is my 'drug of choice'. I could be a tea drinker, one that concocts a morning smoothie, a water drinker, or I could be the kinda guy that slams an energy drink for breakfast. Or I could, as some others do, start my day off with a soda, or a shot. But no, coffee it is for me. I'll pass on the hard stuff.

Through the ingestion of coffee I become alive, fully functional, and ready to meet my day. 
    It's just the way I am. I'm a creature of habit in this regard. It's my morning routine. I'm sure you have one too. My routine is unlikely to change, though at times I have strayed from it. Experimenting, they call it.

I tried to live the 'Before Tea, After Tea' lifestyle, back in the day when tea was all the rage. It didn't take. 
     I never wandered far into energy drink territory. After a foray or two I knew I was not that kind. I didn't like the idea of lighting the fuse on an inner rocket ship, but now that I think about it, maybe that's the stuff all the speeders on the roads around here drink. 
     Water? As W.C. Fields so famously statred, "During one of our trips through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We had to live on nothing but food and water for several days"
Er... maybe that's not the best analogy. But, I get part of my necessary daily water requirement filled through drinking coffee, right?
Smoothies to me are like injecting sugar directly into my bloodsteam, and soda is even worse, so my staring fluid of choice is coffee.
    I don't know why. 

But I do know this: Scientists research this sort of thing. There are people out there that are attracted to various substances and no matter what you do, you can't keep them away from them. This is certainly true in the case of hard drugs, for despite stringent laws against, there are still some people for, even for the devil's own drug Fentanyl, which has the unwanted lethal side effect of making you dead. The scientists say it's addiction that is driving the users. What is addiction? You don't really want to know, it's one of those things that is best known theoretically and not experientially. Addiction at that level sounds like hell, it's been described as an almost insatiable psychological craving coupled with physical symptoms to match. Sounds like a hard lesson, perhaps one of the hardest ones in the pantheon of human life lessons. 
"Moderation in all things" is the key to health and longevity. I've read interviews of wise and very old people from around the world and they always say that. "Not too much, but never too little! Enjoy life!" 
And that's what rings true for me. I'm there. No hard drugs anywhere near me, no thanks. Just coffee and craft brew. And as far as coffee goes, Before Coffee is too little while After Coffee is just right. I have learned to find that happy balance. 
And it's not like I drink coffee all day in order to maintain that balance, unh uh. There is Before Coffee, and then there is After, and then there is no coffee for a long while until the cycle starts again. 

They say that with any addict there is withdrawal and that a true test of addiction is that you try and not take the stuff and find that you're helpless in that regard, you will seek it out and seek it out until you find it, even if finding it finds you in some movie set dark alley somewhere with ominous music playing. Hooded characters who are totin' heat are passin' baggies and crumpled bills back and forth and you'd better grab your daily fix and get gone before something ugly goes down 'cuz there are sirens in the distance, multiple, some from cop cars that could be racing towards your location and others from ambulances that are carrying the afflicted away and damn how did I fall this far but I gotta have it and whew I'll be ok now 'cuz I've got my stuff.

Jeez! It's not like that! 

An' with me it never will be.