A day in the life of the future:

Take one of the first scenes in Miss Congeniality—she is fighting her way through a horrendous crowd of people crammed into the corner Starbucks each vying impatiently for their morning fix of….caffeine. Of the thirty or forty people elbow to pointy elbow, each and every one of them is ready to kill Agent Hart for brushing past them so flippantly to the front of the line. What gives her the right to get her morning fix before everyone else? You see what the world is coming to? That crowd has murder in their eyes, ready to trample over her when they realized there was not emergency related to the FBI and the Starbucks front counter.

Lately I have relied on caffeine to keep me awake and somewhat alert during the day. Because of stress, and consequently lack of sleep, I haven’t felt refreshed in ages. So a quick stop at the local coffee stand is in order before showing up drained at school. However, to my dismay, caffeine isn’t doing as swell a job as usual. Sure, I’m awake, but not at all energized. My eyes are open, but my mind is completely turned off. Be it coffee or tea, I feel more irritable than relaxed. All I want to do is sleep—which I did get about 7 hours last night—but there is. Just. So much. To do.

That being said, this scene is just a glimpse of what the world will look like in about 20 to 30 years. You think waiting in a disgruntled line for a double-shot latte is bad now; wait until we are so conditioned to function on caffeine that we literally can not get through the day without five shots of the drug. I can’t decide yet if it will take the form of a liquid injection (eek!) or a pep pill. The problem with a pill is that it is too easy to take more than one. I mean, can you really overdose on too much energy? I supposed like anything else, your body has a breaking point. Maybe we’ll just explode if we try taking too much—it’s like your body is wound up so tight, the only way to release that energy is in one catastrophic burst. Well, good-bye to you.

You think I am joking, but just you wait—your body is slowly becoming more and more dependent on the stuff. When you start shaking after being awake for a couple hours without your daily coffee you’ll know what I mean. And believe me, the doses will have to increase to get the same effects…hmm, just like any other drug.

I wonder….