GREENVILLE, SC--She wakes to the sound of the OWL City ringtone on her phone. Rolling over, she glances at the screen blaring ten o'clock and realizes just how much work she has to do. And before another moment passes, Haley Harned is in the kitchen scooping out the first aromatic grounds of the day.
Caffeine's allure wasn't why she started drinking coffee. But now, she is obsessive. She is dependent. Haley is addicted.
While attending community college in addition to her senior year of high school, Haley decided it was time to forget the child. The now junior Political Science major at Furman University and self-proclaimed “coffee fiend” did not like the classic cup 'o' joe that her father drank. Not even creamer and sugar could convince Haley's taste buds.
“I drank coffee 'cause it was old, sophisticated and classy and cool,” Haley admits with a roll of her wide, caffeinated eyes. But the perpetual stream of caffeine now courses through her veins, with at least three large mugs of coffee each day.
After the morning cup of at least 16 ounces, a mid-afternoon cup, a cup at night before the tons of work left to do and perhaps a trip to a local coffee shop to study with others keep Haley in a state of eternal caffeination. Once going cold turkey from coffee for two days, Haley experienced severe symptoms.
“I had never felt so bad,” she describes. “My eyes wouldn't open, my tongue was heavy, my throat hurt--which was the absolute worst--and a massive headache. I didn't talk. It was awful.” But after downing three cups in ten minutes upon arriving home, Haley was restored, but jittery.
And in caffeine and coffee addictions, Haley isn't alone.
“I helped Lizz get addicted, I'm pretty sure,” Haley explains of her Furman roommate. And upon traveling to downtown Greenville's Coffee Underground, on the corner of Coffee and Main Streets, others like Haley and Lizz sit and work with the same buzzed facial expression.
The dim light, warmth, and a muted, rich scent greet you first upon entering Coffee Underground. The dull chatter mixes with the deep reds, browns, and oranges that flood the space of tables, chairs, and couches. Laptops are everywhere. Students work, older men organize virtual business charts, and a woman videochats with a loved one from the corner of the shop. As the baristas calmly clean behind the counter and a mother and her children warm up from the snow outside, two Greenville High School seniors chat happily with the joy of cancelled school.
Fielding Smith* and Leigh Rochester* have an eye for art. Both students at Greenville County's Fine Art Center based at Wade Hampton High School, these two friends know about addiction.
“We're addicted to our sketch books. I mean, we make them,” Leigh explains, “It's so hard to leave them when the teacher takes them up to grade--like 'nooo'.”
But doodles and sketches aren't the only thing these girls are addicted to. Coffee rules over their lives. While Leigh's and Fielding's parents do not let them drink coffee at home, plenty of opportunities for java arise each day. With $1.50 dark roast for lunch, $50 Starbucks gift cards, and at least two or three afternoons in various cafés, coffee is in no shortage.
“I don't drink fancy coffee,” Fielding says, rationalizing the dismissal of expensive, “frilly” drinks. After all, it's not the sugar and flavors these girls are seeking. Coffee is their gate to caffeine.
Both diagnosed with ADHD, caffeine works biologically as a depressant rather than a stimulant. Leigh compared coffee to psychostimulant drugs, offering a base-line of energy that gives both focus from hyperactivity and vigor from exhaustion. Leigh began drinking a Diet Mountain Dew at lunch each day before ninth grade Algebra II and increased her grade from an 89 to a nearly-perfect 99. But soon, the addiction to soda morphed into a coffee addiction.
“Regular soda makes me shaky and feel icky,” Leigh explains. But after experiencing caffeine headaches without soda, she's switched to coffee: at least $200 worth of coffee at school alone.
Looking into colleges to attend in the fall, College of Charleston is definitely out.
“They have, like, a rule against drip coffee makers,” Fielding explains incredulously.
For Fielding, the addition of the downtown Starbucks began her affairs with coffee. Admittedly only partaking the heavily sugared and flavored drinks before meeting Leigh, Fielding now proclaims, “Even slightly burnt coffee is better than no coffee.”
Coffee has consumed these adolescents' lives.
“We don't really have a life outside of here,” Leigh explains. With school, homework and their art filling most of their days and little cash in their pockets, coffee provides an outlet to cheap entertainment. Going out for coffee with other artsy and eccentric friends offers a place for these two seniors to experience life outside the “elitist, hipster group” they say floods the Art School. Favoring a Wade Hampton coffee shop, Fix, as well as Greenville's Liquid Highway and Coffee Underground, these girls are attracted to the social setting as much as the caffeine.
Coffee Underground employee Wilson Ligon suggests most café patrons are indeed present for more than just the java.
“We fill this hole in the community,” Wilson suggests, as he details themed nights for poetry, open-mic comedy, and acoustic performers. “People need a place like that,” he says.
Recent Clemson Business Management graduate aspiring to Italian international business one day, Wilson currently works as one of three counter managers. Sitting easily with Burt Reynolds's facial hair, campaigning for children's cancer research in “Mustache March,” Wilson describes his life as a barista; but please, don't call him that.
“I cannot stress this enough. I am not a barista,” Wilson asserts. “I'm just a guy of the bar.”
This ironic tee-shirt wearing guy details 60 percent physical labor and 40 percent customer relations working at the bar. Especially at this independent business, currently owned by Greenville transplant Dana Lowie, sales cannot rely on product alone. Wilson is quick to acknowledge you can get product at chains such as Starbucks, but not an atmosphere embracing every demographic. Wilson's feelings for Coffee Underground underscore their slogan: “It's more than just for coffee.”
Working for Coffee Underground since he was 17, with three-and-a-half years off for college, Wilson now has seven years' experience with coffee-holics, study parties, and even romance.
“I don't know what it is, but we seem to bring out the best of love and the absolute worst,” Wilson joked. First dates for local teens, Match.com internet meet-ups, and even tearful break-ups seem to happen all the time. And the staff at Coffee Underground bears complete witness to these blossoming and dying relationships.
Praying and crying are key signs that wait staff will leave you to your business. Otherwise, workers try to be personable while not intrusive.
“We hear it all,” Wilson explains. Deaths in the nuclear family, discussions preempting sex-change operations, and arguments of religion represent only some of customer's talk. “There's a reason the people at the bar have 300 people's names in their heads,” Wilson asserts.
Drinking around three medium coffees each eight-hour shift, Wilson enjoys the chill and fun nature of working at a downtown coffee shop with the unofficial club of coffee drinkers. Personally choosing the “old-school” hot chocolate with espresso and strawberry cake, Wilson still feels the attraction to the caffeinated community.
“If they come in with even a kinda good mood, they leave happier and usually make us feel better too.”
*Note: Last names have been created to protect minors' identities.
originally written, EAG
original: March 4, 2010, Journalism Course Submission. edited: August 20, 2011.
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