I haven’t slept in 20 hours.

Few Columbia students are strangers to Joe’s Coffee. With three locations, it maintains a hegemony over the campus coffee supply. But guys, I have to ask: Is it just me totally wigging out from a single cup of Joe’s?

I first tried Joe’s Coffee when it became apparent that I was incapable of staying awake through my 10:10 classes. I fought long and hard to avoid paying for coffee in the morning, but after the third time I registered myself literally dreaming during a lecture, I surrendered and bought a drip coffee from Joe’s. Halfway through the cup, my entire body was shaking. My mind jolted, my pulse raced, and I couldn’t hold a pencil straight. I was entirely unhinged.

These all-consuming caffeine jitters have repeated every morning since—unfortunately, I’m hooked. It’s just part of my Columbia lifestyle now to go berserk in lecture halls. Seriously though, why does Joe Coffee contain weapons-grade caffeine? Once, while recovering from surgery, I was sleeping 12 hours a day; but after drinking one size small Joe Coffee in the afternoon, I couldn’t go to bed until 2 am.

It’s not that I’m guzzling supersize gallons of coffee every morning. Each time I order at Joe’s, I ask the barista for “the smallest size you have.” At eight ounces, it’s not even on the menu. The cup is so minuscule it doesn’t fit in a cardboard sleeve, and so the barista simply stacks it inside another cup (which I spill every single time). And yet the caffeine contained in this tiny little thimble of a drink continually wreaks havoc on my mind, body, and soul. I haven’t even tried a size medium, for fear it’ll launch me into another universe.

And no, I’m not just caffeine intolerant; I’ve tried Blue Java and continued on my way without experiencing cardiac arrhythmia. So do I just have a genetic sensitivity to Joe’s Coffee? Or is their coffee, as I privately suspect, infused with crack cocaine? But who cares. At the end of the day, whatever mystical elixir Joe’s is brewing, I’ll be drinking.

Header via Joe Coffee