I’ll be honest: the arrival of Starbucks at Frank dining hall rocked my world.

Suddenly I was able to have double-shot lattes at all hours of the day. Before long the ladies who worked at the station knew my order and would have it ready when I walked into Frank. Shameful, I know, but also awesome. This new Frank development was great news for my productivity, but terrible news for my already dangerous caffeine addiction.

After a few weeks of three-a-day iced lattes, the sh*t started heading toward the fan. I noticed that the amount of time between the final slurp of one latte and the first craving for another was shrinking fast. At first just one hit with breakfast would give me the boost I needed to have a great day, but then it was one with lunch too, and then one with dinner, and then also one between breakfast and lunch… It wasn’t long before there was a syrupy mix of dairy and espresso sloshing around my body at all times. Not only was this not a cute look, but it was also beginning to take a toll on my health.

The logic of science --or something; I’m not a science person, dictates that if you drink something other than water with your meals...you’re not drinking water with your meals. In other words, not a drip of pure water touched my tongue for days at a time. My addiction to iced lattes was also depriving my body of life-giving water, and with disastrous effects.

My hair, nails, and skin became rough and dry; I became fatigued easily but couldn’t keep to a normal sleep pattern; I was apathetic, lethargic, irritable, and agitated. The combination of caffeine addiction and dehydration was truly changing me: I could often be seen in dark corners around campus hissing at passers-by and sometimes the sun.

I was a woman on the brink of disaster.

Luckily for me, my friends noticed that I was on a downward spiral and intervened. A friend and suitemate, who will not be named to preserve her privacy, sat me down and told me that the path I was on lead to nowhere good, and that I was putting my health and safety at risk. It was the wake-up call I truly needed. My reckless “live fast, die young” attitude made me feel invincible, but the truth was that caffeine and dehydration would ruin my life if I didn’t pull it together.

After realizing that I needed to help myself before I lost everything, I did some research and discovered that I could buy a container that holds a volume of water and carry it with me so that I could drink water when I experienced a craving. With this small investment, I could kill two birds with one stone and tackle my dehydration while combatting my addiction. The little water receptacle arrived in the mail a few days later and I was on my way to a healthier life. Now I can be seen carrying this object around campus, refilling it at places where drinking water is dispensed, and simply glowing with health and well-being.

Ask any science person and they will tell you that water is kind of essential for survival, and that caffeine is not. Let this tale of woe be a warning to those who underestimate the destructive power of the pseudo-Starbucks at Frank dining hall.

But let’s face it, you can take the girl out of the Starbucks line, but you can’t stop her from hissing at the sun on a nice spring day.