Most kids spend their childhood on playgrounds, helping their mom bake cookies, or playing Barbies at a play date. I, however, spent my adolescent years at a quaint cafe in the heart of Wayzata, also known as Starbucks.

Most of my first memories involve coffee. Whether that was the pots (one in the morning, one in the evening) brewing as I ate breakfast each morning and went to bed each night, the aroma that was constantly soaked into my clothes and hair, or meeting my best friend each week at Starbucks where she ordered fluffy, whipped, pitiful excuses for coffee, while I ordered it black. Even at age 10.

I began drinking coffee socially at about age 10. I would sneakily gulp down half of my mom’s latte or sip the bitter coffee that my dad always ordered. Not until I hit high school, did my casual flirtation with coffee turn into a full on addiction. I couldn’t control it. my hands were constantly shaking because of the caffeine. I began not just wanting it, but needing it in order to stay up late enough to finish all my IDs for APUSH.

My addiction reached its all-time low–but really, I view this more as an accomplishment–when in Miami for Christmas break I did not have a chance to pick up my daily cup of joe and got a piercing headache. My father then mentioned “this is sad, what have I raised? A girl who gets caffeine headaches at 18.” Later that same day, I went on a tour at a college that I loved–or at least I did. Everything was perfect until my tour guide mentioned that coffee pots were not allowed in the dorms. “What type of lives are these people living? Forget this college,” I thought. A college not willing to accept coffee is a college not worthy of my acceptance .

As my addiction grows stronger, I like to recruit new people to follow me. I have turned two of my go-to-bed-early-and-not-drink-caffeine friends into coffee-loving insomniacs whom I can always count on to be available at 4 a.m. Granted, I have to work harder to be healthier in nearly every other aspect of my life because of my bad coffee habit, but as Caribou says, “life is short, stay awake for it.”