I find it amusing that you say that, since I never implied any such thing. My father drinks coffee every morning and is a grump without it. He's just as much of an addict as someone who takes coffee pills. Trust me, I'm not one to use the "addiction" word as a scare word or to pass judgement. Though I do find it funny how often HN is anti-drug about things that are less dangerous and addictive than some recreational drugs.
really? because four servings of coffee a day doesn't seem that much over the median dose, at least among people I know, if you adjust for body size. When I'm on, I consume more caffeine than that. So, to me, suggesting that someone has a problem when the dosage is that close to the median suggests that you are criticizing the delivery method more than the dosage.
While technically speaking many people (myself included) are 'addicted' to caffeine, I think comparing coffee dependence to something like alcohol dependence does not make a lot of sense; If I started every morning with a nice glass of scotch and finished a fifth every time I had real work to do, I'd likely be dead at this point. If I stop drinking caffeine, I sleep a lot and have a hard time getting work done. Some people get headaches. Withdrawal from long-term Alcohol abuse, on the other hand, often comes with hallucinations and sometimes death. Caffeine dependency isn't in the same class at all. In fact, while I agree that caffeine can be addictive, I'm not at all convinced that caffeine dependency is a bad thing.
I just don't know what you want me to say. It's not an addiction? Okay. Do you feel better? It's a chemical stimulant that you notice when you stop consuming it. You consume it so that you stay functional.
You can sugar coat it or say that it's not like being addicted to alcohol, but it doesn't change the fact that if you cut it out for a few weeks, you'd be more productive without the cost, dependency or negative side effects of coffee. The fact that you KNOW that, and continue to drink it, quite frankly supports the notion that it's an addiction.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21422521
http://iospress.metapress.com/content/d885346618q57103/fullt...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19158424
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20182054
The most stunning result: http://health.usf.edu/nocms/publicaffairs/now/pdfs/JAD_Arend...
Now, I have little personal experience, and I'm not an expert; but I /have/ seen people lose their jobs due to their performance being diminished because of habitual marijuana use. I've never seen anyone lose a job because of caffeine.
I mean, I know plenty of people who use marijuana occasionally on the weekends and seem no worse for wear; from my understanding, it's not as bad as alcohol, and you may be right that it's not addictive, but it's certainly more harmful than Caffeine.
>but it doesn't change the fact that if you cut it out for a few weeks, you'd be more productive without the cost, dependency or negative side effects of coffee.
This is not true for me. Personally, I tend to ramp up my caffeine use slowly over a number of months, because I do develop a resistance. During these months, I am /significantly/ more effective than without caffeine, even if I quit for months.
Now, I do build up a resistance, so every few months I quit for a while, as I do eventually get to the point where I have diminishing returns. For me, this doesn't result in headaches, just a few days of more sleep than usual and reduced performance. Assuming I get my 12 hours a day of sleep, the reduced performance is still much better than, say, a hangover. I'm up to baseline performance within a week. (my baseline performance is /significantly/ lower than my caffeinated performance.)
