Spill the beans: my coffee, strong as my soul, dark as my life in Cuba 😅☕

Well, my story is one of true addiction. The funny thing is, I came to like it very late—no one understands how a Cuban could not like coffee.

First, I have to explain something about Cubans: we like our coffee BLACK. We don’t get the idea of "contaminating" it too much. In fact, many of us look down with a certain superiority on those who add too much milk or other things. In my family, we have a rule: you can add rum, sugar, or honey to coffee, maybe a little milk (like when making a cortadito), and, in very fancy cases, cinnamon. Anything else is no longer coffee—it’s dessert.

And don’t even get me started on American coffee. For us, adding water to coffee is a true sacrilege. Do that in front of a Cuban, and they’ll probably cry as if a relative had died. Offer them such a thing, and they’ll take it as an insult. A Cuban drinks their coffee as strong as their soul and as dark as their life in Cuba. It's a cultural thing 🤷🏻‍♀️

So, for years, I was a weirdo. I didn’t like coffee.

Because of a social issue, I started drinking it in college. My new friends would meet up at a coffee place in the city that was open 24 hours and was very cheap. The coffee was TERRIBLE, but nights had a lot of fun. Coming from a strict family and having a very non-partying spirit (very un-Latino, honestly), those outings were my first taste of freedom.

The pandemic changed everything. I started drinking coffee like water. Then I began working in an office full of web developers. Some of those guys drank coffee straight from the pot. The amounts we consumed to keep up with the workload were insane.

So when I left that job, I decided to cut back a little. Three cups a day, I said at first. A single cup of Cuban coffee could send a gringo to the hospital. Later, I managed to reduce it to two: one when I wake up and one around 3 p.m.

I don’t know when my brain decided to perceive the taste of coffee as something good. I don’t know when it stopped upsetting my stomach. I have no idea how we went from hand tremors, nervous excitement, and caffeine-induced insomnia after just one cup, to drinking it at any hour and sleeping like a baby afterward. But honestly, I’m grateful for it.

They say your body makes you love the things it needs. I used to have low blood pressure. I constantly felt unwell and even fainted a few times in public. I tried everything: a pinch of salt under the tongue, drops of ginger tincture dissolved in water, peper leaves tea, avoiding citrus fruits, papaya, and cañasanta tea (which tend to lower blood pressure). After my coffee addiction, those things happen much less often. And if by chance I do feel a bit dizzy—well, coffee fixes it, just like that.

And well, that’s my story 😊