Coffee Mate is my kryptonite.

I have a confession. I go through a family sized thing of Coffee Mate like every month. And no, a small family is not eating this Coffee Mate as its main sustenenace. Nor do I use Coffee Mate in creative, Martha Steward-esque ways. I do not mix it with baking soda for a cold remedy or spread it on my toes for smoother skin. 

I eat it. Me alone, put it in my face hole, in multiple servings, every. single. day. It's entirely possible that my stomach has created a pouch devoted entirely to Coffee Mate. I can picture my poor, little digestive team, all what is this lady's DEAL with the coffee mate, using shovels and wheelbarrows to cart it to the intestines, with a "sorry guys, it's your problem now, have fun digesting THAT."

I just can't help it. I prefer Coffee Mate to real, honest to God, straight from the cow cream. There I said it. You know how if you eat at a fancy restaurant for breakfast, they'll give you a tiny little silver piitcher with cream in it. That's nice and all, and I love to use a tiny pitcher because it makes me feel like a giant, but really I just wish they'd give me a mound of Coffee Mate. They could put it on a fancy plate to class it up and all, but I need my Coffee Mate. Sorry cows. 

It was one of my greatest joys during my time in Thailand to discover that Coffe Mate existed over there. I had to haul out to the Tesco Lotus and buy it in single serving packages, but it was worth it. Sure putting Coffee Mate into the instant coffee dregs they serve over there is really like adding one chemically created powder to another, and I very well could have been risking some kind of small explosion with all the chemicals involved, but I just can't help it. 

I think it makes coffee taste dreamy, and yes I meant to type dreamy and not creamy. But you know it also makes coffee creamy. It softens the bitter edges of my morning cup (or two, or three). It turns the harsh-looking black liquid into a caramel, butterscotch invitation to enjoy. And the best part. It does not cool down my coffee. I have this weird thing where I hate to drink super hot liquids, but I also weirdly enjoy the process of waiting for my coffee to cool off on its own before I drink it. I think it's because when I first wake up I'm not quite ready for caffeination. I need those few, still sleepy minutes where I can hold the hot mug in my hand and let the last hazy, dream-like moments come and go. And then when I am ready for that sweet, sweet caffeination, the coffee is at a perfect temperature. 

I just can't get enough of the stuff. And stuff really is the better word than food or food product. Because let's be honest here. Coffee Mate is not food. It's a closer relative to laungry detergent. It's just bad for you in every possible way. After my first semester of Nursing school and taking a nutrition class, I swore off hydrogenated oils forever because they are basically linked to every possible disease that can kill you. You know what's in coffee mate? HYDROGENATED OILS. You know what else is in there? I mean really do you? Because I've read the ingredients list and I cannot for the life of me make heads or tails of it. 

It's entirely possible that every morning I am ingesting a product that is pure evil. I mean really, I'm fairly confident that sacrificial blood is in fact one of the key ingredients to Coffee Mate, that and xantham gum. 

And yet, even though I know it's bad for me, even though in most other aspects of my diet I am very health conscious and avoid high-fructose corn syrup and yada, yada speechifiying cakes, I just know I will never stop eating Coffee Mate. A study could come out tomorrow linking Coffee Mate directly to multiple personality disorder and I would keep eating it, me and all my new selves. Coffee Mate could be recalled because scientists have found that it is in fact single-handedly responsible for global warming, and you know what I would do? I would get myself to Costco and buy out their entire supply of jumbo cans of Coffee Mate and hoard them until the day I die, a death that would in all likelihood be hastened by the fact that I eat so much damn Coffee Mate.

But it's just my thing. We all have one, that food or drink or chemically altered substance we can't live with out, no matter how many times that bossy pants friend of ours tells us how many ways it will kill us. I'm curious to find out, interweb people, what's yours?