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Coffee is Addictive
zpok writes "According to scientists, coffee is really addictive, which I guess must mean they'll come in and confiscate your latte any moment now..." Can't wait for the study proving sugar is sweet.
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Seriously... is there ANYONE in ANY part of this country anymore that just takes a little bit of responsibility for their own goddamn actions? The idea that the effects of drinking a cup of coffee could even be considered being classified as a "disease" is absolutely ludicrous.
People are so pathetic these days. I think the only disease involved in all this "you're not an irresponsible jackass, you just need medical help!" attitude is an acute affliction of stupid.
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And cigarettes etc etc.
Course the failed War on Drugs should be canned, all drugs should be legalised, taxed and the cash used for rehabilitation services.
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Is there anyway that I can mod this whole article up as obvious?
/. is a bunch of nerds at a million typewriters. It's not a political conspiracy determined to undermine your beliefs.
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Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
...the study was more about the addictive properties of caffeine, rather than coffee. This is actually quite useful, because caffeine is often combined with paracetemol in pain killers. People who use these painkillers as "lifestyle drugs" (and they do - just look at the proliferation of "pocket containers" for brand name pills") might want to read this research. For example, the article states "Griffiths and Juliano assessed the validity of 66 studies on caffeine withdrawal over many decades. Fifty percent of people had headaches, and 13 percent had clinically significant distress or impairment of function.". If you're taking pain killers with caffeine to relieve headaches, the pain could actually start to be caused by your addiction to the caffeine. Still, at least they're researching something :)
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A recent study shows that Calling Things Addictive and Evil is truely Addictive! Try to avoid sensational news stories at all costs else your head might rot and fall off.
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And other blindingly obvious statements:
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I resent that remark.
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...given that it has so much caffeine as well. I haven't had any soda in three and a half years, and I can tell you that it's still difficult not to drink it. Just smelling it really makes me want to drink some, so it definitely had an effect on me, regardless of whether that could be officially classified as addiction.
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Perhaps starbucks should be careful they don't get added to the list, especially serving columbian blends !
"In other news, it has been found that eating food can be addictive. Studies show that some humans who start eating food shortly after they are born are unable to stop until their death."
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Since we lost the war on drugs and are losing the war on obesity and are barely holding our ground on the war on terrorism maybe we could win the war on caffeine!
I find that daily use of coffee completely prevents all side-effects of caffeine withdrawal. Give it a try and you will see.
The only reason I'm on slashdot now instead of doing some real work is I'm waiting for my first cup of coffee to kick in.
Thanks mainstream media (and Slashdot) for once again misrepresenting, misinterpreting and oversimplifying a scientific study or publication.
Some people would probably think it's boring to read the actual article (J Pharmacol Exp Ther. 1990 Mar;252(3):970-8) or the abstract, but a link could have been in order.
No, the news is not that "coffee is addictive". Duh.
From the abstract:
"A novel drug discrimination procedure was used to study the discriminability and subjective effects of caffeine in seven human volunteers who abstained from dietary sources of caffeine. [...] The present study documents biological activity of caffeine at lower doses than heretofore recognized. The general approach to investigating the effects of low drug doses may have broad application in human psychopharmacology research for characterizing other subtle psychotropic effects."
Funny? Laugh?
I wonder why the Seattle Times and Slashdot found this worthy to mention, at the same time as it's apparently not worthy to understand.
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And there's less money spent on a demonstrably failed policy. And the product would have to be quality controlled, so fewer health problems, and junkies would be less likely to share needles, so fewer disease problems.
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Here is the original Johns Hopkins Medicine (hopkinsmedicine.org) press release ( +printer friendly version)
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
This could be the right article.
"OBJECTIVES. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review and analysis of the literature regarding human caffeine withdrawal to empirically validate specific symptoms and signs, and to appraise important features of the syndrome."
"CONCLUSIONS. The caffeine-withdrawal syndrome has been well characterized and there is sufficient empirical evidence to warrant inclusion of caffeine withdrawal as a disorder in the DSM and revision of diagnostic criteria in the ICD."
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Honestly, who here didn't know caffeine is majorly addictive, just like sugar? Anything that gives you a "buzz" is majorly addictive. Most of the soft drinks sell not based on taste (other than tasting sweet they don't really offer much taste qualities), but based on how addicted people are to the buzz they get from drinking them. I know a lot of people with cola or coffee addictions, and those addictions are tolerated (or not even recognized) because a caffeine and sugar addiction tends to not obviously harm society.
It's highly addictive!
-- "You can lead a yak to water, but you can't teach an old dog to make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke" - Opus
I have yet to see anyone of authority seriously denounce the use of automobiles as the main form of transportation, as it's highly profitable to the steel, manufacturing and oil industries. It makes money, a lot money, and makes you and me work a lot extra for THEM - just to be able to get around.
The fact that it's also by FAR the leading cause of death among young people worldwide, of depleting cities of sidewalks full of people and converting them to endless asphalt-covered semi-arid cultural deserts, making the air equivalent to smoking a couple cigarrettes, etc, seems to be no problem.
So when's a president going to declare "war on the auto industry killers"? Oh yeah, every presidents just represent THEM, too, never US.
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I must be the exception to the rule. I drink coffe on average three times a week. And when I do, it is only one cup a day. It's when I get to work and realize I forgot my juice/water that I normally bring in to drink. For me, it is more about having something to sip on in the morning while I read the news, and settle in for the day. I can honestly say that no matter if I drink coffee for an entire month, I do not have "the need" to drink a cup on that next day. Water will do just fine.
I can honestly say that even though it does clearly have an effect on me (I get a little jittery and feel way too high strung after a cuppa joe) I would bet that most people would only have "withdrawal symptoms" for a day at most. I'm guessing (very unscientifically) that for most people the need for coffee is a routine. Try switching to water or juice or even decaf coffee to see if you feel any different.
I can see where someone who drinks a couple pots of coffee a day might get headaches or something if they just quit all at once, but this could be said for anything...sugar, caffeine, salty snacks, you name it. Your body is going to be used to dealing with anything you take in in excess. Once that excessive amount is gone, you will notice, at least for a little while. I'm not sure it's really groundbreaking news just because Johns Hopkins told us they found it out.
I certainly don't think it needs to be entered into the DMS just yet, just because some people get a headache from too little/much caffeine. (yes it happens when you get too much too, at least for me) I know people will say it is like alcoholism, where it's the same kinds of symptoms and what not. But I don't think alcoholism is quite as bad as people make it out to be. (and before I go any farther, let me tell you that I do have two alcoholics in my close family) I think that even though some people may be more likely to develop alcoholism, the blame and responsibility still falls on them. Every person has the ability to stop doing destructive behavior. You just have to learn what your limits are and govern them youself....but that's another topic for another day.
I'm now taking 1 heaping teaspoon of creatine a day and on those occasions I drink coffee at all it is about 1/2 to 1 cup early in the morning.
Seastead this.
You present a strong argument.
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...sorry, just had to say it. Prohibition funds organized crime of all sorts.
Spot the difference?
"Coffee is really addictive" : Slashdot cover story
"Coffee really is addictive" : Original article
Who says Slashdot are really cut and paste merchants?
Remember kids! Guns don't kill people - Americans kill people.
It is amazing that there are people getting paid for stating the very obvious. I can't help thinking of Douglas Adams' theory that people need to state and repeat the very obvious or else their brain might start working.
So, to the list:
* High intake of any substance, exceeding some limit, will kill you.
* Low intake of some substances will kill you.
* It is generally not a good idea to be where the plane crashes.
* You may die from other causes than planes crashing on you.
* Nuclear weapons may be dangerous in the hands of kids (needs futher experimental confirmation).
What it does meen is I now have a legal basis for beating the cr@p out of the Starbucks clerk when he doesn't understand I just want plain black coffee.
It's worse here in Israel, where the idea of coffee is synonymous with milk. Every time I go somewhere for coffee it's a 5 minuet ordeal, that I am not caffinated enough to deal with.
"Caffe, Shovar, ein Chalav, ein sukar" (Translation: Coffee, black. No milk, no Sugar)
"Espresso".
"Lo Nescafe",(Trans: no instant.)
"Ah Nescafe Latte" (Trans: Oh, you must be wrong, and want Instant coffee mixed with steamed milk)
"LO! Nescafe, im maim cham. Ze Oh." (Trans: No you freaking moron. Put instant coffee in hot water, nothing else!)
"Maim? oh Chalav?" (Trans: No one actually drinks coffee like that here. You want it with milk)
"Look I'm a f@#$ing American. My hebrew sucks, and I know you speak 3 d@#$ languages so you can understand this. All I want is caffine in water. No milk, I'm lactose intolerant. No suggar I'm a diabetic. So unless you want me farting while I'm going through sugar shock on your floor, PUT INSTANT COFFEE IN HOT WATTER AND LET ME PAY YOU FOR IT!!"
Ah... I feel better now.
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mental illness
n.
Any of various conditions characterized by impairment of an individual's normal cognitive, emotional, or behavioral functioning, and caused by social, psychological, biochemical, genetic, or other factors, such as infection or head trauma. Also called emotional illness, mental disease, mental disorder.
This is all a mental disorder is. It does not assign blame. Caffeine withdrawal exhibits certain predictable symptoms affecting the normal order of a person's mind, and as such it makes sense to classify it as what it is, a disorder. The word "disorder" just means things are mentally messed up; it does not imply the person was "born" with caffeine withdrawal or blameless for having this disorder, anymore than a psychopath is granted amnesty just because they have antisocial personality disorder.
"That, and I think people would be happier :D"
Would they now? The drug problem isn't just about "cost of drugs", but the social problems that they bring. Never had a family torn apart by drug addiction, have you? It's easy to keep deluding ourselves "If only we follow our natures, we'll all be so happy."(1) Even those countries that have legalized drugs (and sex) have found that such a decision isn't "consequence free" for the individuals nor society.
(1) Just look at what food addiction is doing to America, and you can get that free of restrictions.
How did the parent post get a +4 for Insightful, anyway? I guess there are at least 5 of you out there who believe this B.S. statement.
Seriously, sugar is hardly the problem with obesity in America. The problem is primarily one of poor eating habits, coupled with lack of exercise. (Not that anecdotes prove anything, but just to pull out one random example; I used to know a gal who was a strict vegetarian, and I *never* once saw her eat a piece of candy or "junk food" - yet she was overweight.)
If you consume more calories than you use, you gain weight. It's really that simple. It doesn't matter if those calories come in the form of sugar or "healthy foods". If you're eating more than you're burning off - you'll eventually get fat.
If sugary foods are contributing to the obesity problem, it's only in a more indirect way. (Snack foods tend to be "ready to eat" and conveniently packaged. When you can just grab it, unwrap it, and stuff it in your mouth - you're more likely to do so often, hence increasing your overall intake of calories.)
What they've found is that there is caffeine withdrawl. This doesn't mean addiction, it means physical dependence. Addiction is more of psychological condition in which you can't stop doing something in the face of negative consequences, e.g. you'll give out blow jobs if that's what you have to do to get your fix. Someone else gave this link to the actual study. It doesn't say addiction.
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The last 5 times [at least!] which I've forgotten to have coffee in a day I've slept straight through at least one of my classes, and usually all of them. It doesn't even dawn upon me until much later where I find myself thinking
'hey wait a minute, my coffee pot is empty, and wasn't filled!'
Usually i have around a half a pot to a pot a day. I need around two cups just to get me up in the mornings to some level of coherency. All my recent screw ups I can pin the blame on me for not drinking enough coffee in whatever day they occur on. It kind of worries me, actually; It's becoming more of a 'I have to have coffee, or I will not function with even mediocre talent' rather than a 'with smore coffee I can do better, longer, faster!.'
Which is of course, why I'll be into provigil as soon as I can get easy access to some.
(anyways, I've written many a song on the vector-meme of coffee and caffeine addiction...although none of those have been finished off, you can find some here, from my attempted album ""past tense" )
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Sugar is a serious part of the obesity problem in America. It's not the whole thing - our eating habits are the real problem. Regardless, sugar is a carbohydrate and when your body is functioning "normally" your body will store unused carbohydrates as fat, barring those which are expelled from the body as waste.
Put simply, most americans have been relegated to eating prepackaged foods. Who makes their own spaghetti sauce any more, for example? I know several of you out there are jumping up and down in your chair saying "me! me! ima post and tell this fucker off!" but the fact is that you are statistically insignificant. But spaghetti sauce is loaded with excess sugar and so is just about everything else we eat. Even hot dogs tend to have a ton of sugar added to them - someone please explain to me why little fine-ground sausages need sugar.
Well, actually, don't explain it, because I know the answer: they don't need sugar but focus groups, taste tests, and other forms of research have shown that we like to eat food with sugar added to it. So, the food industry in America (and other places) adds a grip of sugar to just about everything, including many foods that ordinarily wouldn't contain any.
In short, everything you eat is sugary unless you make it yourself. This IS a serious problem and it IS totally unnecessary.
The problem really goes beyond sugar though, which after all is just a carbohydrate. No matter how you feel about no- or low-carb diets like atkins (which is just a new name on an old diet, which can be referred to as a low-carb modified fast) the fact is that we eat too many carbohydrates. As early as the 1700s you can find literary examples with people making observations that people who eat a lot of starch are fatter on average than people who eat a lot of meat. You can find carbohydrate-based fillers in just about everything on the store shelves; anything that doesn't have carb-based fillers is probably primarily a carbohydrate to begin with, like bread. The USDA food pyramid, promoted by the NIH after several billion dollars were spent trying to prove that eating fat makes you fat and failing, yet promoted on the "strength" of a study which showed that taking drugs to reduce your cholesterol decreased your risk of heart disease, suggests that we eat more carbohydrates than anything else. This is not only totally unnecessary (your body can quite efficiently derive energy from fats, it just doesn't do it as quickly) but completely ridiculous and utterly unfounded.
I don't know how you got a +4, Insightful for saying that sugar isn't a big problem, because it is. It's only a part of the problem, but the aggressive promotion of sugar-laden foods in the US is a big part of why we're fat. C&H sugar will happily tell you via a message printed on the packaging that SUGAR CONTAINS NO FAT. Well, whoop-de-do, it still makes you fat.
Come down off your high horse, which is headed in the wrong direction anyway, and join the parade.
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Sorry to hear about your plight, but it could be worse...
I live in "God's Country" (place your finger in the middle of the U.S. -- that's about where I am) and I have the opposite problem -- nobody has cream here.
Now, I started drinking coffee in the Italian area of Boston. I can't stand not having cream in my coffee. And out here, I'm literally surrounded by cows, but everyone insists on putting this "Creamer" stuff in their coffee. Creamer can be left open, in a warm room, for months and not go bad. It's simply not from this earth.
These fat slobs (some of the fattest in the nation!) would super-size their ASPIRIN if they had the chance, but "oh no, cream is too filling!" Gah!
And naturally nobody has ever heard of SUGAR. No, it's all artificial, carcinogenic "sweeteners". Most of the people just drink Foldgers instant-coffee, anyway. Mixed to half-strength.
If you're ever in the Mid-West, just remember that "coffee" means "slightly brown-tinted water with artifical sweeteners and fake milk."
Right before going to sleep at night, take one or two caffeine pills. It's necessary you use pills, because the taste of familiar caffinated drinks and/or the sugars in these drinks will cause an immediate "peppy" reaction. The trick to this hack is to fall asleep before the chemicals kick in. Caffeine takes about 30-60 minutes to take effect depending on the person, so you want to be in a situation where you can fall as quickly as possible.
If you do this correctly, what'll end up happening is that the caffeine will cause a state of hyperactivity while you're still asleep! What ends up occuring is an extremely deep, relaxing sleep, while producing intensly vivid dreams. Try it!
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This presumes that the body is a perfect translator of calories into energy.
If you reduce the ability of your body to effectively translate calories into energy, then variance in consumption has little effect on energy output.
Like a car with a carburetor turned way too rich, it consumes scads of fuel but doesn't produce much energy output.
For years, mankind only saw the connection between the gas pedal and the engine. Now we see the connection between the gas pedal and the carburetor and the engine.
This is what low-carbohydrate diets do.
If I were a bad evil guy like Osoma, rather than attack buildings and airports, I would attack coffee processing facilities. Without coffee the US economy would shift into sluggishness. Coffee allows people to stay awake through boring work and insipid PHB meetings. Coffee feuls the economy more so than gasoline. Coffee is the only known semi-anecdote to the Dilbert World, and without it we would all either go insane or go to sleep. It can be likened to the pills in 70's sci-fi films that kept the population from revolting against the overseers.
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Oh shit, that described me to a tee. I sometimes get headaches and a coffee gets rid of them! I only drink 1 or 2 a day but occaisionally upto 4 or 5. But then there are times when i feel like a boost so i grab the big 4-person coffee pot and stuff it! Im just glad im so obsessed with making it right, i like to grind it on the spot and run the pot through empty to clean it every time which means i offen just can't be bothered to make a coffee, good thing i cant drink instant or i'd be OD'd by now! Oh fuck, thank you very much slashdot, now i need another!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
A couple ideas:
1. Genetics: I haven't seen very many fat Asian-Americans either.
2. Rice isn't as important as you think. It's a staple of Asian meals, but they don't eat a big plate of rice and a little bit of meat and vegetables on the side. Rice is always there, but it's not the primary component of the meal. You're always eating plenty of meats and vegetables to go along with it.
3. Portions. Perhaps they just eat ridiculously low portion sizes that would leave the average 200 pound American (that's me) craving an actual meal afterwards.
As for the lack of exercise, maybe we should adjust our eating habits to our lifestyle, instead of adjusting our lifestyle to our eating habits. Instead of randomly physically exerting ourselves from time to time like the Exercise Nazis would have us do, maybe we need to find a way to eat so that we can get by on our current activity levels.
And maybe Atkins is the way to do that. I don't know for sure, myself. But athletes eat carbs. They eat a LOT of carbs. That's because athletes are in a constant state of physical exertion. Most of us aren't in a constant state of physical exertion. The high-carb orthodoxy tries to make us eat like athletes, and then exercise as much as athletes, therefore (in their estimation) making us as healthy as athletes. That sort of thing would work if we abandoned the past couple centuries of technological innovation and worked in the fields. But people have to work for a living in the 21st century, and when they work, for the most part, they aren't physically exerting themselves. There goes the time we'd set aside for exercise.
That said, I'm not against exercise, but exercise for the sake of weight control (unless you're consciously trying to *lose* excess weight) shouldn't have to be an essential part of our lives. Exercise because it feels good, because you enjoy martial arts or something, or because you want to attract women. Don't exercise because your diet requires you to.
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I did actually kick the habit for several months a while back. The first two weeks are murder (headaches, can't keep your eyes open in the afternoon, etc) but once you get done with withdrawl it's pretty nice. Then one day I needed to stay up late for something and I was back on. I stopped smoking far easier than stopping caffiene.
Some mental health professional I talked to a while back told me that one of the best signs of caffiene addiction that he's seen was Mountain Dew consumpsion. At the time I was drinking a fair bit of that stuff, and I was a bit startled that a lot of people in late night jobs also did. I stopped drinking soft drinks shortly thereafter. I want my daily caffiene quota to come from nice, wholesome coffee! (Heh heh heh)
If you're watching your intake, Excedrin and BC Headache Powder both contain caffiene, by the way. Make sure you check the active ingredients on the stuff you're using take the edge off those caffiene-withdrawl headaches. They make be taking the edge off very well due to having the stuff that you're trying to get away from.
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I hate all the folks around me say "Gah" when they want to express frustration. Never heard it in NY.
Sorry, what I meant to say was, "Goddamn fuckin' mutha-fuckah's!"
And there goes my karma.