Sweet mother of God.  I have found the new legal, drinkable version of crack.  Trader Joe’s opened up some stores in Atlanta not too long ago and I went to one for the first time.  I won’t get into the boring details about their food selection, but they seem to have a lot of store-branded items that are a tad fresher than your typical store brand stuff.  It’s sort of a cheaper version of Whole Foods.

So I’m wandering the aisles, picking up impulsive odds and ends and then I hit the coffee section.  They sell large canisters of beans with about 30 different options.  The group I work with has their own coffee maker and we brew much-better-brew-than-the-standard-swill that the rest of the company drinks.  Everyone in my group is like me – the darker ad stronger the coffee the better.

I try not to consciously cave in to marketing schemes or presentation, but my eyes gravitated to a canister labeled VOLCANO.  The label said this blend was their darkest roast.  Now, darkest roast doesn’t always translate to good tasting.  Sometimes a dark blend can be bitter or not have enough of a caffeine jolt.  But it’s always worth a try.

I return from lunch and show my contraband to our group.  It’s immediately suggested that we try a full pot of it to see if it’s good.  The lid is peeled open and a whiff of Essence of Caffeine blasts us in the face.  The beans are about as roasted as they can get - shiny and darker than a ninja outfit.  The oil on them is almost greasier than Michael Jackson’s jheri-curled mop right before his hair caught fire while filming that Pepsi ad back in the 1980s. 

Grinding the beans in the grinder releases even more of this lethal blend’s smell and we wait for the magic to commence.  Can this percolator go any slower?  Finally, the brewing process is over.  We raise the full pot to the light and notice the complete opaqueness.  Not a dark brown, my friend, rather complete and utter blackness even when held up to the afternoon sunlight.  The first sip commences and we all realize this blend is a Winner.  It makes the Starbucks Sumatra blend seem like a light Arabica blend complete with cream and sugar.  After a few minutes, The Buzz kicks in and we’re all in a euphoric state.  We have found a new drug, and our dealer is Trader Joe.  Someone else in another group took a small handful of the beans and ate them.  He too, is wired beyond belief right now.

Then someone in the group suggested we brew another pot.  Thankfully we’re sobering up now and realized that would not have been a good idea.  I’m waiting for the tremors to kick in once this drug is out of my system.

I eagerly await coming into work tomorrow for another fix.  I might have to play Ministry’s “Just One Fix” song while drinking it tomorrow.  The first step in an addiction is admitting you have a problem, but I don’t want to stop.