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It is not a secret that anything in excess can end up killing a human.
And he knew it, of course, he did.
His mother had told him before that an adult shouldn’t drink more than 4 cups of coffee on a daily basis.
But, how does this variate in children?
How do you explain this to an addict? Especially if the said addict is a child?
How do you prevent a child, that has a severe coffee addiction, from perpetuating and worsening said addiction? How do you talk any sense into his parents?
Those were some questions Craig made to himself every day since he had some grasp on Tweek’s life.
It wasn’t a secret that the Tweaks had been giving their son coffee since the kid was in diapers. Leading to a 10-year-old boy that ‘had the need’ of fueling his body with coffee for surviving the day.
And Craig didn’t know how to approach the subject with Tweek.
His first instinct was to take away the source. Therefore, taking Tweek’s coffee away. But, once Tweek had passed half an hour without his caffeine source, he started shifting uncomfortably in his place. Tweek was looking desperate, his gaze shifting through the room, and he was looking more and more desperate by the minute. By the end of the first period, Tweek looked so irritable, tired, and done, that Craig (with his sweet spot for Tweek) simply gave him the coffee. Tweek drank it extremely fast as if it was a necessity.
That was when Craig noticed the issue was harder and deeper than he thought.
Craig silently started keeping track of Tweek’s daily coffee consumption. And after a week, Craig noticed how Tweek’s daily coffee consumption didn’t go down the 7 daily coffee cups. On good days, Tweek´s coffee consumption was twice the recommended doses for an ADULT, and Tweek was a KID. On the worst day, Craig saw Tweek drinking 11 coffee cups.
At this point, Craig wasn’t sure about what to do. Talking to the Tweaks wasn’t a choice, since the adults were the ones providing this insane amount of coffee to their kid. So, he did all a kid can do: Looking for solutions on the internet and telling his mom.
After less than 10 minutes, Craig had already found information regarding a caffeine overdose and caffeine abstinence symptoms. And he started connecting the symptoms he read on the internet with habits and reactions Tweek has been concerned about it all.
And then, Craig communicated his concerns with his mom.
Laura Tucker listened to her son’s ranting about his concerns regarding his boyfriend’s health, feeling horrified as she heard how the kid was put through health-threatening situations on a daily basis. What concerned her the most, was the fact that the amount of caffeine Tweek was drinking, was enough to kill someone; it was almost a miracle that the kid was still alive.
Laura got Craig in the car and the both of them went to the Tweaks’ coffee shop. She was going to have a talk with the Tweaks.
When they got there, they could see Tweek being the one attending the register (and the whole shop, actually). The Tuckers got in the shop, and (as Tweek wasn’t attending any customers at the moment) approached the son of the shop owners.
“Hi, Tweek,” Laura said in a nice, calm tone, “Where are your parents?”
Tweek looked confused, and scared, yet, with a trembling voice he said:
“They’re in the backroom”.
“Could you please go and get them? I need to talk to them for a bit” Laura said.
Tweek nodded and went to the back room, coming back out with his father.
“Hello, Mrs. Tucker, Tweek said you wanted to talk to me?” Mr. Tweak said with a fake smile on his face. ‘A customer service smile’ Craig thought.
“Oh, yeah, Mr. Tweak. May we talk privately?” Laura asked with another fake smile.
The two adults walked to the backroom, Laura accepting a cup of coffee from the Tweaks, noticing the weird taste the coffee had.
Once the adults went to the backroom, Tweek took his cup of coffee, with the intention of taking a sip. Craig put his hand in the way, preventing Tweek from taking a sip.
“Tweek, honey, that’s enough coffee for today,” Craig said, trying to take the cup away from Tweek’s hands. Starting a little back and forth, where each part wanted to take the coffee from the other one.
In their position, they could hear some muffled words coming from the adults, they couldn’t understand what they were saying. But Craig identified a harsh mad tone coming from his mom, a voice tone he had never heard her use before, but that was completely covered in rage.
“Are you trying to murder your son?!”
The boys stopped ‘fighting’ for the coffee cup. That was definitely Laura talking.
Tweek released his grasp from the cup, stunned. His paranoia starting to take over him.
Craig, who was still on the costumers’ side of the counter, crossed it and started saying reassuring words to Tweek, trying to calm the other boy down.
Tweek’s breath started to uneven. His nervous hands trying to reach for his hair. His mouth felt dry, and rapidly, he felt nauseous. Tweek rapidly sat on the ground.
Craig followed Tweek to the ground, holding the boy.
Laura stormed out from the backroom, extremely mad about how the Tweaks seemed to not give a fuck about their child’s health. Her anger dissipated as soon as she saw the boys in the ground, Tweek was extremely pale, and Craig (who rarely showed any expression) was visibly concerned.
Laura then got the two boys in the car and took them to the hospital, worried about Tweek’s life.
Once they got to the hospital, Laura took Tweek inside, fortunately, the sick look the boy had was enough for him to get attended rapidly. While Tweek was getting some questions asked, Laura went back to the car and took Craig in, and both sat down, nervous about what would be happening with Tweek.
After sitting in the hospital’s waiting room for 2 hours (and a call to her husband in order to justify why she left Tricia home alone), the nurse took Laura and Craig to see Tweek in the room he was set in. When they got in, Tweek wasn’t conscious, and he had some medication administered intravenously. The nurse explained that they did some blood analysis on Tweek, and that these showed 450 mg of caffeine in the kid’s blood, as well as a significant amount of methamphetamine in it, and that it was surprising how Tweek didn’t end up in the hospital earlier due to his caffeine consumption habits. Tweek’s daily caffeine consumption would have killed an adult with low caffeine consumption habits, let alone, another child. The nurse told Laura that Tweek would have to stay in the hospital for some more days in order to treat him for the mild overdose. Laura accepted and went back home, later she would worry about Tweek’s family life.
In the following days, Craig went to visit Tweek daily. Craig would go and rant about anything that happened that day, ask Tweek about how he was doing, and never mention to Tweek that the overdose he had was not only because of the caffeine but a mix of caffeine and meth. He agreed with his mom that Tweek didn’t need to know that, that would just stress him out more than he needed.
The first few days, Tweek was having it hard with the abstinence syndrome. He missed coffee, he used to drink it as if it was water, and without it, he felt more and more desperate. Yet, as the treatment was taking effect in Tweek’s organism, his need for coffee was decreasing. Starting his recovery path.
The moment Tweek would get discharged from the hospital, he would have to confront the truth. The drug abuse and child neglect his parents had put him through. But for now, he was ok with being here, in Craig’s company, apart from the real world.