The Alcoholic Bartender

I’m beginning to understand why it is that alcoholics always seem to know, often times down to the minute, exactly how long they’ve been sober.

For several months before I bought the coffee shop, I was in the throws of doing some serious internal cleansing. I was practicing massage therapy, had access every day to a full gym, swimming pool and sauna. With my cleansing regime, I started with one element of the body and proceeded to work my way through. I had cut out all processed and hydrogenated foods, wheat, sugar and caffeine. I was working on my liver and my digestive health. I had been fasting and exercising almost every day. I was doing yoga and had discovered African dancing. Once a week I met with a specialist who helped “move the process along”. Everything was light as a feather and going great.

August 15th I bought the shop. My sleepless nights of worrying about the logistics turned into falling asleep on my feet as soon as I allowed myself to stop running. It’s pretty much gone this way since then…. With the occasional luxury of getting out of town or a Sunday that provides total respite from responsibility.

I had a surplus of extra time on my hands at my last job. I spent that time perusing library shelves, reading at the Stowe Coffee House, visiting friends who lived nearby (friends I miss dearly), working out… you name it. I drove forty five minutes to and from work and listened to audio books in my car. I think now that I may have taken all that extra me-time for granted. Now, a short walk through the meadows with my dog is a sweet luxury. I stop to watch birds and pet our neighbors horses and sometimes sit in the grass and savor where I am.

The alcoholic thing…..

I have this stupid condition called Dermagraphism. It shows up in young adults and can last anywhere from three months to an entire lifetime. My body produces too many histamines. If I scratch an itch, wipe something on my face, rub up against something, it leaves a raised, reddish welt in it’s wake for a much longer period of time than is reasonable. I’m like a walking Etch-a-Sketch. It’s nothing serious or life altering….. it’s just kind of annoying. After walking around with it for a year and a half now, I finally decided to go visit my naturopath in Burlington to see what she had to say about it. Well, that’s not true. Initially I went to visit a very pompous Eastern European allergist who gave this weird skin stuff a name but insisted that the only way to find any relief from it’s annoyances was to regularly take anti-histamines. I tried to delve deeper into the root of the problem, pointing out that the skin is the largest organ of the body and if that organ is out of whack, isn’t that symptomatic of something within the body possibly being out of whack? He got really frustrated and insisted that what I have is just a skin disease and nothing else. When I said I didn’t “buy it” he told me I didn’t have to “buy it“, that he was right and I was wrong and showed me to the door.

I’ve learned since that I have a slight metal allergy which is slowing down my immune system in general and causing my adrenals a wee bit of distress. I’ve begun taking a homeopathic histamine and Omegas 3 and 9. Once my body has acclimated to these, I’ll begin a series of acupuncture. In the meantime, I’ve had to completely eliminate caffeine and coffee altogether.

Yes, the coffee shop owner and constant barista cannot drink coffee. For the time being anyway…like, several months.

Yesterday, while I was filling the espresso bins I was counting the ways in which I interact with coffee every day. I order and inventory it, I pour it, I grind it, I tamper it. I weigh it, I brew it, I smell it, I sell it. I sometimes give it away. I draw shots of it, I steam milk for it, I mix mocha syrup into it. BUT, I no longer drink it.

It’s been 8 days, 2 hours and 42 minutes. But who’s counting?