Have you ever thought about how weird the things are that we eat and drink? We eat meat, veggies, candy, and drink liquids that usually have all been through some kind of crazy processes on the way to your mouth.

Sometimes those processes totally alter the state of what’s being consumed. Corn turns into a super sugary goop that becomes a solid candy, shaped like a strawberry. Jell-O is, well, we’re not going to get into that.

But one food that goes through a weird change bothers me, and believe it or not, it’s not the Jell-O. It’s coffee.

Coffee starts as beans, which are harvested, usually roasted in some form, and then ground up. Hot water is strained through the ground beans, making a beverage. Realistically this is not an incredible change of form, until the beans go from a solid, to being used to flavor a liquid.

My problem, however, is not generally with the process that coffee goes through. My problem is with coffee culture.

Realistically a Starbucks just does for coffee what McDonald’s does for burgers, or an Italian restaurant does for pasta. It takes the original product, and changes it into something different, with added amenities, in this case such as hazelnut flavoring or whipped cream.

And people are even snobby about other restaurants like they are about their coffee, which is understandable. Almost everyone has a favorite burger place, Italian restaurant, coffee shop or brand of coffee.

So why do I hate the coffee culture? I know it sounds like I understand what it’s all about.

I hate the coffee culture because people act like they can’t live without coffee. Coffee runs people’s lives like drugs. People act like coffee is some incredible invention and that their frappuccino that doesn’t even have coffee in it is something they literally cannot live without.

Maybe it’s just me, but I can live without coffee. I don’t find coffee to be all that appetizing, and definitely not worth the money for some fancy drink at Starbucks that rots my teeth more than it give me a caffeine boost.