Dear Roger: Monkey On My Back

I have an addictive personality. I've known it my whole life and I have really worked hard to steer myself away from the more truly destructive passions, but there are a few things that I have allowed myself because they are, for the most part, harmless. The longest addiction I have had is to coffee. My West Texas granny gave me my first cup of it at her table when I was 8 years old and I drank it from then on. Its the one constant in my life. I tried to quit it once and those around me suffered as if I was a heroin addict trying to go cold turkey. I was irritable, mean, sick to my stomach, and outright hostile until I finally gave in and began drinking it again. When I was a cop I averaged 6-8 cups a day, and not the weak, Folgers dessicated stuff, I bought the expresso beans and ground my own and made it strong enough to stand a horse shoe up in.
This morning I was out of coffee. We tend to run out of groceries from time to time due to transportation issues or too damn much rain, and with me being sick with whatever crud it was that I had this past week, I hadn't been anywhere and consequently, we had run out pretty much everything, including my coffee. I am at the tail end of a horrible cold that had left me feeling like hell, weak as a cat and barely fit to be around by human or dog, and then you add in no coffee and I was not fit company for man nor beast. I tried re-running the grounds that were left, but that was less than pleasant, though I did drink a cup or two to try and soothe the caffeine beast that was rearing its ugly head. It didn't work and my irritation with with the world at large soon was evident.
My eldest son was soon shoving me out the door and telling me to go find a coffee shop and my civility. It took awhile. I ended up going to work and listening to music, and then walking over to a small coffee and donut shop and buying my morning fix.
As I was walking back home with my bag of coffee beans and a couple boxes of donuts as peace offering for the kids to make up for my crappy attitude, I came upon a young man huddled on the sidewalk. He looked up at me and smiled and said,"Hey, I like your hoodie. My little brother liked the 100 Monkeys." He was obviously homeless, dirty, thin and they type of drawn up that speaks of having saddled the horse, but he had a beautiful smile and I stopped and talked to him a moment. I asked if he was hungry, and he said he was. I gave him one of the boxes of donuts and talked to him about good music and hopes for good weather. He thanked me and because it was all I could do, I asked if he needed any other help, and he said he was okay, so I told him to take care and I went on towards my home.
I have never had much patience for drug addicts. Maybe because I was able to resist them and I have a holier than thou attitude? I don't know. I know that they junkies do a fuckton of damage to all those around them and I hate to even have passing contact with them , but it hurt my heart to walk off and leave him sitting there huddled on the sidewalk. Thats not how I am cut. I was a cop and an Emt for a reason, not to hard ass people, but to help and because I was an adrenaline junkie. I still am an adrenalin junkie. I crave that rush of the sudden burst of it racing though my veins, making me feel ten foot tall and bullet proof, either because I was facing down a psycho with a knife, racing code three to an unknown scene balls to the wall, or standing in front of over 300 people about to give a speech or perform one of my poems from back in the day. The rush was amazing and I often miss it, so I get the desire to keep the feeling going, but I never could grasp the weakness that drove people to fall into taking drugs to find it. I did enough drinking in my day, in fact I could out drink more than a few of my male friends in my heyday, but all it got me was alcohol poisoning  that left me with the tolerance of a one beer drunk and the regret of knowing that I wasted a lot of potential good times by being blitzed out of my mind, and I also took a hell of a lot of risks that I was lucky to not end up regretting.
April is looking like the beginning of a good month for me. I got another of my damn wisdom teeth pulled, and it was like immediate relief! It was in such a bad place, the dentist who worked on me was amazed I had lived with it for over a year, impacted and infected, impinging into the hinge of my jaw! She commented it should be a surgical extraction, but times being what they are;hard, she just shot me up with extra numbing stuff, which was quite the experience in itself, because apparently there was an abscess that got punctured by the needle and it drained, not only tasting but smelling horrible. The relief once it was pulled was immediate and I think I smiled the entire walk home I was so happy and relieved.
I turn 43 this month and I've got a lot going on. Im rather philosophical about it and hopeful that it will be the start of an amazing year, its starting off with a bang as is my style.