The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee (1830)
quod.lib.umich.eduWorth a read (5-10 minutes). I found myself agreeing more than disagreeing.
That aside, some gems:
“…Among certain weak natures, coffee produces only a kind of harmless congestion of the mind; instead of feeling animated, these people feel drowsy, and they say that coffee makes them sleep. Such individuals may have the legs of serfs and the stomachs of os- triches, but they are badly equipped for the work of thought.”
“If the experience of the English is typical, heavy tea-drinking will produce English moral philosophy, a tendency toward a pale complexion, hypocrisy and backbiting.”
> instead of feeling animated, these people feel drowsy, and they say that coffee makes them sleep
Sounds like ADHD to me
This may not be strictly related, but my personal experience aligns with that. If I drink coffee after lunch, I get very sleepy and have my usual bowel movements. If I drink it after dinner, I become overstimulated and can’t sleep at all (which I realize is fairly typical). For context, I’m referring to classic Italian espresso.
This is such a BS lie sold by pharmaceutical companies, "stimulants are safe for your child, amphetamines will actually calm them down". There's a thing called fast caffeine metabolizers, and 50% of people have this genetic variation and perfectly explains why some people can nap after having caffeine, also tolerance.
I digress, but you will never convince me otherwise, that the wide spread promotion of amphetamines in children/young adults is anything but an experiment of Empire. I attribute the somewhat significant economic edge US society has over the rest of the world is due to its addiction to amphetamines, and the ruling classes project to push them onto working class people to make them more effective workers.
Its no different than how the Nazi's used amphetamines to simulate their population or how imperialist Japan did the same. Lets stop spreading this BS lie that stimulants calm people with ADHD down.
So coffee doesn't calm people, so then why do stimulants also act oppositely for those people? It's not caffeine.
It isn't stimulating that part of "the nation", it's calming and focusing them.
> Lets stop spreading this BS lie that stimulants calm people with ADHD down.
Most people who follow the science and personal experience probably don't have any reason to follow your command, sorry.
> I attribute the somewhat significant economic edge US society has over the rest of the world is due to its addiction to amphetamines
Over here in Europe getting prescription stimulants against ADHD is a fairly straightforward process. Or, at least, that's what I gathered from a conversation I recently had with a person taking them - they had no difficulties in this regard.
As an outsider I think one of the many reasons is the sheer amount of (often unreported) hours Americans put into work annually (and pay for that in their health).
For this same reason South Korea recently overtook Japan in terms of GDP per capita.
By this measure the mentioned countries (descending):
1. South Korea 2. USA 3. Japan
Am in Europe and have certainly not found it straightforward. It took several years for my friend to get prescribed, as well.
I never said its the only factor, but its typical for Empires of the last 150 years to get their populations hooked on stimulants, whether this is outright intentional (probably), or a side effect of growing Empires is up for debate.
Do your school counselors in elementary school work with psychiatrists to get parents to get children hooked in 5th grade because they are a more active than other kids?
The well-documented scientific basis for the “calming” claim for ADHD medications is that by stimulating brain regions involved in attention, motivation, and regulation of behavior, it can reduce impulsivity and restlessness, giving the appearance of calming a person down if they have deficits in the latter areas.
This has been shown to help many people (a large majority) with ADHD, and it’s also been shown to not provide general neurocognitive benefits to people without ADHD.
IOW, the benefits come from improving attention and reducing impulsivity in people who have deficits in those areas.
See e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6165228/ and then e.g. the three references it cites here:
> “It is important to note that a robust body of literature exists that supports the positive effects of prescription stimulants on neurocognitive functioning in children and adults with ADHD (e.g., [14,54,55]), underscoring the importance of baseline impairments in performance relative to improved effects.”
Reconciling this with your opinions on the matter is left as an exercise, but there’s some pretty clear and unambiguous science here.
Your parent literally said that nobody will ever convince them otherwise. It’s probably not worth trying.
Yeah, but while they might not be convinced, some stranger that needs this information may stumble across it -- and it may do them good to read it. ADHD is no joke and stimulant medications are vitally important, as one component, in the treatment of ADHD.
Incredibly false. see my comments below, there are way more potential risks that should out weigh any potential benefits, there are non-stimulant based treatments for ADHD that are just as effective and don't require you to play russian roulette with your sanity. Your comment is ill informed and incredibly dangerous.
Thats strong advice. Where did you get your medical degree amd where can we read your research?
Obviously it must be vast, or you wouldn't be able to make sweeping claims that contradict soo much evidence to the contrary.
> you will never convince me otherwise
I suppose its good to have a religion.
Comment conversations are public; “everybody else” is part of the conversation.
Not everything can be understood through p values and studies with 13 PARTICIPANTS undergoing a ONLY TWO EXPERIMENTS each, nor should the observed effects on 13 PEOPLE (half placebo) be extrapolated out to justifying safety for hundreds of millions of people. Next time you want to prove a point, take the time to research good sources, and not just ask an llm use your brain for once.
Please go put your kid on amphetamines for 15 years and let me know how that works out for them..
Do you care how much incidents of psychosis it causes on a yearly basis?
I said that the Ruling class (aka these professors) are pushing an agenda, and then you choose to provide evidence published by the ruling class to support that agenda.
You did understand that the parent post was referring to the referenced articles within the linked article?
14: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1087054711427299 - N=50
54: https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.12917 - N=82
55: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01497... - review of 21 studies
Often prescribed to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, the risk was highest in those taking 30 mg or more of dextroamphetamine (which corresponds to 40 mg of Adderall),
The researchers identified 1,374 cases of individuals presenting with first-episode psychosis or mania, compared to 2,748 control patients with a psychiatric hospitalization for other conditions like depression or anxiety. They conducted a comparison analysis of stimulant use over the preceding month and accounted for other factors, including substance use, in order to isolate the effects of stimulants.
They found the attributable risk percentage among those exposed to any prescription amphetamine was nearly 63 percent and for high dose amphetamine was 81 percent. These findings suggest that among people who take prescription amphetamine, 81 percent of cases of psychosis or mania could have been eliminated if they were not on the high dose. While a significant dose-related risk increase was seen in patients taking high doses of amphetamine, no significant risk increase was seen with methylphenidate (Ritalin) use, which is consistent with previous research, including a 2019 study led by Moran.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/09/high-doses-of...
Among 1,374 case subjects and 2,748 control subjects, the odds of psychosis and mania were increased for individuals with past-month prescription amphetamine use compared with no use (adjusted odds ratio=2.68, 95% CI=1.90–3.77). A dose-response relationship was observed; high doses of amphetamines (>30 mg dextroamphetamine equivalents) were associated with 5.28-fold increased odds of psychosis or mania
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.20230329
I don't care, the drug isn't safe. I've seen it permanently change many people. I don't care if they handpicked <100 individuals to prove safety. The doses cited above >40mg are pretty typical.
Should we also outlaw penicillin because a tiny percentage of people who take too much have negative side effects?
Also the linked Harvard article points out that "no significant risk increase was seen with methylphenidate (Ritalin)".
It isnt stimulants in general, just Adderall, and just when you take too much.
Your own quote literally states that methylphenidate didn't appear to cause any of these problems.
Q: what's the most widely prescribed ADHD medication?
A: Ritalin / Methylphenidate
> Methylphenidate remained the most widely prescribed drug, although the use of lisdexamfetamine and guanfacine has expanded in recent years.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12565614/
It's almost like ... you work with your doctor to identify an effective treatment that balances the costs and benefits for your particular situation.
This applies to most medicines and it's why we have a set of people trained to navigate those tradeoffs. You seem focused only on the negatives of ADHD meds, which are real, without acknowledging that for some patients there are large benefits too. That seems kind of myopic.
I think your take is a bit alarmist, if I were to be generous. On one hand, ya it's a pharmaceutical empire, but on the other, that empire's conduct is as detrimental to the people that actually do need those medications as they are to the people that might not. Nobody should be forcing their kids to take anything, but if a kid is struggling, it should be an accessible option, and it will probably help them get by in a system not designed for them. There's no reason to suggest that the general case is that a parent or some company is force feeding their kid meth.
I'm one of those people that could have benefited from it MUCH earlier, it's also incredibly boring if you get the right one. I have no idea what they really do for people who don't have ADHD, but for me it basically lets me get places on time and have a passably productive day. It's also not that trivial to get depending on where you live, and potentially expensive.
> Please go put your kid on amphetamines for 15 years and let me know how that works out for them..
Please tell someone who's gone from having 7 jobs in 7 years to 1 job for 3 years that they don't need it.
We can have issues with the implementation, that's fine
Well I'm glad you haven't had any major side effects, just know you're playing Russian roulette with your sanity, and the way you perceive reality.. I'm not exaggerating here, give it a decade..or don't
And you're kind of confirming my original thesis, that its a class of drugs created by the ruling class for the working class to make the best workers for capital/ruling class, which it seems to have accomplished that in your case...
Among 1,374 case subjects and 2,748 control subjects, the odds of psychosis and mania were increased for individuals with past-month prescription amphetamine use compared with no use (adjusted odds ratio=2.68, 95% CI=1.90–3.77). A dose-response relationship was observed; high doses of amphetamines (>30 mg dextroamphetamine equivalents) were associated with 5.28-fold increased odds of psychosis or mania
> high doses of amphetamines (>30 mg dextroamphetamine equivalents)
If you do a harmful amount of something, it harms you. Seems pretty straightforwards. To vilify the whole concept seems a bit much though.
I've heard anecdotal reports from many people with ADHD symptoms that stimulants (caffiene, ritalin, street drugs) do help them focus. And quite a few from people with ADHD symptoms that stimulants make things much worse. And there's also reports that the stimulants help with focus but cause other problems.
If you're using chemical interventions for ADHD symptoms, you've got to be evaluating the response as well as getting feedback from the patient. Starting with small doses when possible is probably advisable.
Many symptoms can be addressed by behavioral and environmental/situational changes rather than chemical intervention, but chemical interventions can be effective for many, even if they're not effective for all.
stimulants help everyone focus if dosed correctly!! I never said that it doesn't have that effect. I'm just arguing its very bad for the brain, and it mostly just benefits your employer/future employer at the risk of you going literally insane. Its a tool for Empire/Capital. Its very common for Empires to dose their working class on stimulants to achieve certain goals. It may help you but you're also risk of getting amphetamine induced psychosis, which should void any potential gain for any reasonable person..
"Mostly benefits your employer" my ass. ADHD isn't just "ugh, I don't like doing my job". Things you want to do, or need to do, even enjoy doing, and fully intend to do end up constantly pushed to the side when you're unmedicated. You end getting into difficult situations because you've managed to procrastinate taking the 10 minutes it takes to renew your car's registration for 6 months. You struggle to maintain relationships, both friendly and romantic, because people interpret your inability to focus on them as disinterest. You lose sleep, and not just a little, because you lay in bed and simply cannot focus on going to sleep long to actually do so. So you stay up until completely exhausted, but guess what? That doesn't align with anybody else's schedule.
Then you take a pill, and all of these problems just disappear. If you want to work out, you can just go to the gym and work out. No weird little ritualistic hacks, just "I want to do X, I shall do X". You receive a wedding invitation, and you can just spend the 10 minutes making travel arrangements, rather than procrastinating it for months. You can see that a load of laundry needs to be done, and just spend the 5 minutes loading the washing machine, rather than having to push past your brain screaming like you're trying to stick pins in your eye.
It's really hilariously written
I really like this essay and I managed to track down the original in French, for anyone who reads French:
https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Trait%C3%A9_des_excitants_mod...
The part about coffee is halfway down the page under the heading §III — du café.
Merci :)
I have a theory that the renaissance and perhaps more critically the industrial revolution that followed was in a large part driven by coffee.
Middle ages, things are a bit sleepy, dopey. Everybody is drinking beer all the time. progress runs at a slow pace.
Then there is this popular new tea sweeping the scene and boy howdy does it get you up and going. Now people are waking up and doing things.
Caffeine, It's a hell of a drug.
It’s more accurate to say that the “modern era” (1600s and onwards, the Enlightenment , etc.) was boosted by coffee, because the Renaissance was larger over by the time the bean arrived from Arabia.
Definitely a lot of modern ideas and institutions had their origins in coffee shops, though.
> Definitely a lot of modern ideas and institutions had their origins in coffee shops, though.
There are accounts of discussions between Robert Hooke, Edmund Halley, and Isaac Newton in a London coffee house. It's a wine bar now and not notably highbrow :)
Lloyd's the insurance company was founded as a coffee house.
There is some truth to this (https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1f111dq/til_...)
Erdos famously took amphetamines his whole life, and they made him fabulously productive:
> In 1979, Graham bet Erdös $500 that he couldn't stop taking amphetamines for a month. Erdös accepted the challenge, and went cold turkey for thirty days. After Graham paid up--and wrote the $500 off as a business expense--Erdös said, "You've showed me I'm not an addict. But I didn't get any work done. I'd get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I'd have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You've set mathematics back a month." He promptly resumed taking pills, and mathematics was the better for it.
I think about this a lot. I drink a lot of coffee and I feel reasonably productive. But hey, maybe I should try something a bit stronger... :
> I have a theory that the renaissance and perhaps more critically the industrial revolution that followed was in a large part driven by coffee.
Don't forget the concentrated wealth created during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade through the use and selling of slaves by the Portuguese between Africa and South America
You’re in good company. Tom Standage makes the same argument in his book A History of the World in Six Glasses.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3872.A_History_of_the_Wo...
Yes, I've been thinking this as well. Although, earlier civilisations probably also consumed lots of stimulants; mayas, incas, probably countless more.
Plus, plenty, maybe half, of humans/mammals do not respond to caffeine in positive ways. While one half are evangelical, the rest manage with water.
True
Now the curious thing will be if people attribute the rapid pace of technological development in this new century to the advent of widespread amphetamine. A large number of Stanford students are on it, and likely many other top universities have similar properties.
I had wondered about the same for nicotine, being a neurostimulant.
Turns out Otis Redding was singing about the renaissance in Cigarettes and Coffee
To get the coffee and other things european men had to be sent out on ships to rape the world, and they would only do that if they were drunk. The Renaissance and the Industrial revolution were built on the spoils of exploitation, of which coffee was one.
It gets you up and going until you build resistance then it becomes a need.
nah coffee really didn’t do much for me, i started drinking daily at 30
Ans your parent's could? Maybe coffee improved their cognitive functions so u were born smart
If you suffer from any kind of anxiety, and you drink caffeine, you should seriously consider quitting. Even if you only drink as little as one coffee per day. There's a very high chance that caffeine is the source of a large part of it.
I've been drinking coffee for 20 years and had always assumed that I was just an anxious, paranoid person. Quitting made me realize that I really wasn't.
Quitting/reducing has also cured my itchy skin problem.
I also highly recommend the subreddit r/decaf as a great source of information.
That’s interesting. I can be irritable. Not really that anxious.
Saving for later.
I used to drink a lot of coffee, eventually settling on the SkullCrusher brand, which I loved, for my single coffee of the day; My morning coffee.
One day, I decided that I would quit, and what followed was around 8 days of the worst headache I have had in a long time.
Now, I wake full of energy and feeling sharp.
The smell of coffee makes me want one, but the dullness and headache are good deterrents.
The brand you chose for daily consumption advertises "3X MORE CAFFEINE - NEVER SLEEP AGAIN."
In this instance I would honestly say that this choice of coffee, with so much caffeine, is a large contributor for why you had such a withdrawal. Your body probably ended up with a dependence to some degree because that's so much caffeine that it can't sorta just ignore it or manage around it.
More moderate consumption is more tolerable and often doesn't produce the same negative effects after you stop, though for some people it still does.
It's probably fine to have a coffee when you're craving it, couple times a week. Perhaps stick to a typical bean rather than nuclear-grade like you're used to? :P
For me coffee is all about the taste. I'm having my coffee lab with two grinders, a V60, a scale, and Cafelat Robot to brew the best possible coffee I can get. We have multiple good coffee roasters in our city, and I'm mostly getting very light roasts with lots of complex sugars in the bean. I drink two cups a day: one filter coffee in the morning and one espresso after lunch.
I can't imagine drinking bad coffee only for the caffeine.
You can drink good coffee for the caffeine, too. I think anyone (not necessarily saying that's you) saying it's only about the taste and has nothing to do with caffeine is fooling themselves. The reason you were able to trick yourself into liking this bitter stuff is because it gets reinforced with caffeine.
I drink my morning cup of decaf every day because I like the taste. I've always drunk decaf, as I never liked the caffeine buzz. I guess maybe you could argue I'm still doing it for the small amount of residual caffeine. But if I skip it for several days, it doesn't effect my mood or energy level in any way I can detect.
Fair, if you've always only drunk decaf that would be an exception.
Since no one has spoken about matcha yet, I am here to provide my two cents and my experience with caffeine and matcha.
Caffeine does benefit people with certain forms of brain chemistry, and for folks like me, it definitely helps. I used to have double or triple espressos several times a day, and on other days, I would go for cold brews and similar drinks. I've spent years doing it. While it helped me immensely focus and get work done, it also put me on a fast track, I guess. It's probably not a good thing to keep going with. Somewhere it felt like it was putting extra mental load on me than usual.
Again, this doesn't apply to everybody. Recently, I stumbled upon matcha. It's not the entry-level matcha or matcha mixed with a lot of additives like sugar or cream; it's just matcha with milk or an alternative milk like oat milk or almond milk, etc. It has a surprisingly nice effect.
It's almost like the same effect as caffeine, but without making me feel jittery. At the same time, I'm also able to achieve the focus I used to get with coffee. I recommend that you folks start out and try it out and see if matcha helps you as well. Just make sure you buy ceremonial grade, which is available at a decent price on Amazon. It's ridiculously, crazily overpriced in stores like Safeway and Whole Foods, though.
It is the L-theanine that works its magic in matcha. Too much can cause some nausea or diarrhea, but consuming it two or three times a day in moderate amounts can go a long way for many people. It also doesn't have any other side effects and is a good drink in general. Beyond that, there are other alternatives like chamomile tea, passionflower tea, etc. Some of them work for some people, while others don’t. It's up to you to keep trying and cycling between these wonderful gifts that nature has provided.
Black tea feels like that for me. A nice cup of Earl Grey in the morning is a good way to start the day when I don’t want to be locked in.
Matcha has caffeine in it though?
It does, but the L-Theanine has an almost neutralising effect on the more jittery and frenetic aspects that caffeine can bring. It leaves you feeling what I would describe as more focused and calm, rather than alert and anxious
Yes, it does but not in high quantities like coffee. It gets complemented perfectly with the L-Theanine content in it.
This combo generally works well on folks that get benefits from coffee.
I've had that once (caffeine withdrawal headaches), we had mediocre coffee at the office for ages, then they got a new contract and we got these Italian real bean grinding things. I uh, had double espressos a few times a day.
I quit too. I’ve since found on random days where I do have a coffee I feel slightly numb to everything so can procure more physical effort, but I slightly shake uncontrollably and also have worse sleeps. So I almost never have a coffee (or caffeine).
Just so you know, you could have done that gradually with decreasing amounts every day...
I drink coffee 3-4 times a month. No headaches.
(Flipped to the page after and found a lovely ditty about tea):
There is a trickling, a grating, a stutter of cinders or light.
It catches my lungs, a breath of cinnamon.
I cough, as though I have swallowed coffee grounds.
The tea bag blessed with warm water lies there glistening
like birdseed in gauze in the colorless round of the pond.
It was as if someone had dropped a stone in a pond,
how your pupils used to expand. Or did the irises
shrink and expand, much as the flaming ring
on the stove does when I turn it down, then up?
Memory (I have poured the tea) blows on her hands.
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mqrarchive/act2080.0035.002/15?...
This seems like it was influenced by 1821’s Confessions of an Opium Eater, which is a very interesting read, far more than you’d probably assume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opiu...
Wonderfully written. If I have had too much caffeine I also look forward to the time when it burns off: "finally the tension on the harp strings eases, and one returns to the relaxed, meandering, simple-minded and cryptogamous life of the retired bourgeoisie."
Fun read :) Balzac has been on my reading list for some time, I see a lot are on https://standardebooks.org/ebooks?query=balzac&sort=default&... – anyone have a recommendation for first Balzac book?
reminds me of "Memoir from Antproof Case" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoir_from_Antproof_Case which wikipedia really does not describe well, as the plot really details the protagonist's life long war against coffee drinking, the following review handles that part better:
https://web.archive.org/web/20121008201138/https://www.nytim...
I was recently asked, unexpectedly, what would I do if AI took my job.
The first thing that came to mind was to become a coffee grower, farmer, producer or something with coffee.
Now I cant shake that thought!
It's an idyllic dream, as long as you don't need to make money!
No one who touches beans makes money. Only the largest multinational traders and cafes. The money from the specialty coffee chain goes to landlords, shipping companies, and equipment manufacturers.
Of course you'll need to live in the tropics too.
For learning about coffee production, the podcast "Making Coffees" by Lucia Solis is excellent (and industry award winning).
Why the hell does "download pdf" give you a single page?
this kind of intellectual insult is just not hurled anymore with as much precision and bite as in former times
I love this, very fun writing