I am a fairly steady kind of chap - but I’m becoming an addict.

I have discovered a new drug. It really peps me up. I get chatty, ebullient, euphoric. I feel good. I suddenly like all my patients. I can solve their problems. Even their “laundry lists” seem manageable.

But I find myself craving and indulging in uncharacteristic drug seeking behaviors.

My steadiness has been manifest in the consumption of decaffeinated tea to date, (now there’s a gruesome beverage for you - where it’s very hard to find any product that makes a brew that is more enticing than washing up water). I have done this for many years - until I got a new nurse. She is from Bosnia, which is a part of the world close to those countries like Greece and Turkey where they boil thimbles-full of mud like brew that is the local coffee - and which makes your hair stand on end.

She runs on coffee. Despite apparently consuming large quantities before coming to the office, if I really want her to be productive, and take care of all my messages and figure out what shots this kid needs and find where I put the decent forceps and call the hostile alcoholic who’s coumadin level is way out of control. If I want all this, there needs to be a Starbucks “venti bold” perched on her desk in the morning.

Not warned off by this pathetic display of dependence on her part, she has got me into drinking/craving coffee. Now I am in line first thing in the morning with those other yawning, disheveled dejected specimens at Starbucks - like the line at the methadone clinic - waiting for my fix.

Or I am exuding every charm I know to the drug reps, promising to prescribe only their product - in large quantities - and that they will be allowed back even if we’ve already seen our quota of three reps for the morning or the afternoon, if they are seen to be bearing gifts - best of all a Starbuck’s Travel pack.

So I have joined the ranks of the pathetic who need their daily “cuppa” to keep the machinery moving. I have always had a gut resistance to caffeine. But despite Googling and surfing intensively I have failed to come up with much in the way of significant adverse effects (probably because anything adverse is suppressed by those people who control these things - such is the prevalence of the dependence/affection for caffeine). There’s even people claiming it’s good for you! But I have always had reservations about a society that cannot run without its stimulants. That we’re all so damn dependent that we have to dose ourselves up every day or we’re no use to anyone.

Torn between my morality and my dependency I now play this silly game of it being OK to have coffee in the week day when I have to struggle through a shitload of patients in the office - but go through withdrawal at the week end (and for those of you who either are too ignorant, or who have never forsaken your addiction for long enough to suffer it, the headaches, backaches and lethargy are no fantasy).

Cravings, drug seeking behavior and withdrawal syndrome. Aren’t those the features of addiction?

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