VERY DRUNK ON COFFEE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 5, 1900

VERY DRUNK ON COFFEE.

Boston Evening Record.

THE man was arrested as a “drunk,” yet the captain hesitated.

“Smell his breath,” he said to the officer who brought him in.

The officer did so, and admitted that he could detect no trace of liquor. As the officer is an abstainer, his testimony was competent.

“He acts drunk, and he is drunk or sick, I don’t know which,” said the captain, as the man lurched forward against the rail.

“His eyes look as if he was full of dope,” said the officer. “I found him on Washington Street.”

“Give him a cold-water shampoo, and I’ll see if the doctor can come over.”

The doctor was out, and the captain went downstairs himself to see how the non-alcoholic drunk was getting along. The officers had stripped him to the waist, and were giving him cold water in such quantities that he was sputtering and blowing and howling for all he was worth. Aromatic spirits of ammonia was poured into him, and the process was continued until he began to yell for mercy. A foreigner, speaking English imperfectly, his condition heightened the difficulty in understanding him. But if he told the truth, he is the most peculiar drunkard that ever came to the attention of Boston police.

He says he never drinks anything but coffee, and acquired the inebriety he was blessed with when taken to the station house, solely by libations of the cup that is considered so harmless. His name is John Canavenez, and his birthplace, Brazil. The Brazilians, he says, drink coffee from infancy,—the strongest and blackest. The habit has grown upon him to such an extent that he sometimes drinks forty small cups a day, each cup being equal in strength to about a quart of the beverage we know. He prepares the coffee himself. Mashing some of the green berry, he steeps it, and steeps separately a quantity of the burned berry. Combining the two until he has boiled all the essential part out, he has almost a syrup. Putting in fresh coffee, and cooking this with it, he has a bitter drink that would make an American gasp, and a cupful would nauseate a novice. He consumes about a pound of coffee a day; and if deprived of the beverage, his nerves are gone completely. He was two weeks in a hospital in New York last winter, and nearly died for lack of his narcotic drink. It is not, like alcohol, a stimulant, but more like opium in its effect, although it produces a result unlike either, but rather like a combination of both. He attributed his condition yesterday to the fact that his stomach had been upset, and he had eaten practically nothing for two days, and his tipple took hold of him more than it would ordinarily. He says that only once or twice has he been in this condition, and that generally he feels only calm and happy. He originated his way of preparing the beverage, and never knew of any one else who used the same method. The captain concluded to let the Brazilian go.

“He could hardly be called a drunk,” he remarked, “but he is a new one on me, and I hope he won’t teach any Boston people to use his Brazilian coffee dope. We have vices enough without new ones being imported.”