One thing I've learned over the years is that specifically setting out to enjoy and appreciate something on a daily basis is beneficial to overall satisfaction with life. And for me, that's my morning cuppa before the rest of the house wakes up. Is it (just) the coffee or is it (also) the rituals surrounding coffee?
Father of three here. I also enjoy very much this moment of the day, the calm before the storm. It was a real motivation to wake up a bit earlier.
One day, I decided to stop coffee for some weeks. My motivation to wake up before my kids vanished in a few days. I was quite surprised since it used to be a real pleasure. I guess the ritual part was much less important than the coffee chemical role.
Did you just remove the warm drink part of the ritual or did you replace the coffee with another warm drink? This could be the big difference you were missing.
Is it the addictive substance or the ritual I created around it?
I used to think this same thing, that my enjoyment of coffee was largely the ritual. But then I switched to decaf for quite a long time and all my little rituals fell away quite quickly.
I still occasionally drank coffee when I felt like the taste, but I certainly wasn’t performing daily morning ritual.
I’ve switched to decaf full time and a my generalised anxiety basically went away. I love coffee and still drink it ritualistically. I probably drink more coffee now, at all hours of the day (caffeinated coffee after 12 really messed my sleep).
Also once per week I allow myself an espresso, and I get a nice buzz from it that lasts the entire day.
This hits home. For me stopping coffee (and caffeine) consumption was also one building block of taking care of my generalised anxiety disorder. I enjoyed the morning ritual, but it stopped with quitting drinking coffee. Maybe I should give decaf a shot, but I also miss just grabbing a coffee when out with friends (usually tea does not scratch the same itch and is not worth it when everyone else around you is enjoying a great smelling coffee). All I want to say is “Thanks for sharing” I guess. I was able to connect with what you said.
I went to the US recently and was fully prepared to drink caffeine on the trip because of all the cool coffee shops and roasters. But I was amazed that decaf was basically a first-class citizen there. The hotel breakfast had one giant brewer for regular and the same giant brewer for decaf. It was amazing.
And it’s pretty important to realize that well-made decaf doesn’t have to taste worse than regular coffee. James Hoffmanns decaf project proved this for me, and his video about decaf sold me on the idea: decaf drinkers are the OG coffee drinker, drinking it purely for the taste, even without the drug-induced high that caffeine gives you.
That’s cool. I’d like to quit again sometime but right now caffeine staves off migraines for me. And with a baby in the house I really don’t have the resources for that battle.
My gf has a migraine head and she’s tried going decaf but it just doesn’t work. Apparently caffeine does a lot to reduce the risk of migraines? So I’d probably just try to lower the dose until you find what works for you.
When(ever) I quit coffee, I got strong migraines after a day or so. However, they subside and go away after a few more days.
I wouldn’t claim it works the same way for everyone, but the difference between coffee being a treatment for migraines and migraines being a symptom of coffee withdrawal may be indistinguishable in immediate term.
There is an absolutely huge ritual part to it because I have been trying swap out coffee and just take caffeine pills in the morning to be more exact in my caffeine consumption.
I just can not do it. It is just not the same sitting here without the taste, smell and sensory experience completely divorced from the actual caffeine. That is with even taking more caffeine than I would get from my brew coffee.
>enjoy and appreciate something on a daily basis is beneficial to overall satisfaction with life.
I'll couch this in a warning that you need to have the money for it, but for me an espresso machine and good grinder was such a great investment.
It's this thing I appreciate a lot every day.
If you're a drip coffee person I guess this won't apply and you can save a few thousand. Although I'd still recommend getting a grinder (not necessarily an expensive espresso worthy one) and good beans then.
Drip coffee is amazing: A consistent grinder; fresh, light or medium roasted beans protected from oxidation; and a machine that heats the water to the correct brew temperature (190-195 F)is all you need.
The flavor profiles are akin to wines; no decanting required.
Espresso is my soft spot given my origins, but a good drip on paper filters (to remove some oils and cholesterol) is akin to good tea, full of aromatics. I disagree with the temperature, for me a blonde roast calls for 72 degrees Celsius (162F).
To be accurate, I should qualify that for me it’s “light/medium” and not a true blonde roast.
I haven’t had the pleasure of trying to brew my own blonde roast yet.
But I was amazed when I first tried a black coffee brewed properly, and it took me far longer than I want to admit to learn the basic nuances; it was a very fun journey though.
I'm a hater of drip coffee as it almost always contains under-extracted (outside of cone) and over-extracted (middle of cone) coffee. You're correct about the importance of brew temperature, although I take issue with the strange units you use.
For me, full immersion brewing is the best as it's far easier to control than expresso - you can fine-tune the water temperature, the grind size and the brew time until you get coffee that astonishes people. Personally, I'm a big Aeropress fan, though I don't know why so many people make horrible coffee using french presses. I think most french press coffee I've drunk has had far too little coffee or too much water in the brew.
I wasn't complaining about the actual temperature (I tend to 80°C water for my Aeropress brews), but the use of freedom units.
I'm sure there's ways to make quality drip coffee, but all the drip coffee that I've had has been very poor. I've also lost count of the number of times that I see people using boiling water for making coffee.
To my mind, it's easy to get obsessive over making good coffee, but what I'd like to see is just more people knowing how to not make bad coffee. If you're thinking about water temperature and pyramiding the grounds, then you're likely making great coffee.
That’s the ritalin. Find a healthier alternative like an energy bar with that double espresso. I find if I stack too much at once, I crash. One cup in the morning when I wake up. One before work right before the meetings. One in the afternoon to keep me fueled until dinner where I let myself gorge on protein and sugars until I crash.
suggest many many cups of 1/3 caffeinated and 2/3 decaf. There are some observed health benefits to even decaf coffee... and its got potassium besides. I drink around 10 of these. lower longer peak. Joy!
Ritalin is a chemical relative of amphetamine. In prescribed amounts it's often an effective treatment. In recreational amounts, ask your doctor about ΔFosB:
Same. During the week on meds I find that drinking more than half a litre just provokes unpleasant sweating and makes me feel frantic, some amount of brain fog and occasionally a mild headache, especially if I haven't been chugging water, which I guess is probably what most normal people get from coffee
but yeah, exercising can be an addiction? as sex. now doing these daily is fine. it turns into addiction when you can't stop or interfere negatively with your routine
By the way, why does Starbucks make such bad cappuccinos? The milk is foamy instead of creamy. There is no heart shape or any shape really. And the entire beverage is too hot.
Well, that's a bit of an unfair projection; I'm fairly fastidious about keeping my consumption around 2-3 cups a day before 11am and taking occasional tolerance breaks without consequence. But if you feel like your coffee intake is a problem that you have trouble controlling, maybe cut back.
Addiction to any given substance is highly variable from person to person, and there's a lot of data to back that up.
I recall a friend describing their struggle to quit caffeine, which I mocked at first, until I realized it sounded exactly like my brutal struggle to quit nicotine. Yet, plenty of people quit cigarettes effortlessly. Nicotine is one of the most variable, but caffeine, alcohol and cocaine vary widely too. I imagine we'd find this is the case for most substances if we had the data. In a sane world, we'd give every kid their addiction predisposition profile when they turn 13.
The hardest part of quitting anything is changing the behavioral habits that came with it.
For smoking, I bet you have the urge after a meal to smoke. Maybe you’re triggered when you drive long distances to “calm the nerves”. The issue is those triggers, those behaviors, need to be unlearned before you can attempt to quit. That’s why it’s easy for people who haven’t developed those behavioral habits and hard a hell for those who have. Former smoker myself so I totally get it. I can give that up, but caffeine - coffee? I’ll die with a cup on the counter half full.
The literature on this is clear cut. People absorb, metabolize and experience drugs differently, which has a big impact on how addiction takes hold. It's obviously not the only factor! But it's a big one and somewhat quantifiable.
Personally, I wasn't a "trigger" smoker, I was an "every chance I got smoker". I assume my nicotine metabolism is higher than average, which is linked to frequency of consumption and hence propensity for addiction. I also assume I have fast caffeine metabolism since I consume it at all hours with no consequence, but unlike nicotine that's linked to a lower propensity for addiction, which matches my experience.
Caffeine is not chemically addictive. It can lead to depedency but that is not addiction. Motivation and wanting are not altered but unpleasant withdrawl effects can occur.
There is no real importance to the concept of “chemically addictive” and it has largely gone out of favor in psychology. Even physical behaviors like gambling and sex that obviously cannot directly, chemically act on reward system pathways, can still be just as life destroying addictive and challenging to quit as any drug. The dsm now classifies gambling disorder as an addiction.
Caffeine, unlike some drugs and alcohol, doesn't cause severe withdrawal symptoms. Because of that, experts don't label regular caffeine use as an addiction.
There’s so many layers to this. First, there’s history: Coka-cola (originally made from a Kola nut and cocaine) was told they couldn’t put cocaine in their “medicine” anymore so they just sold it as a “soft-drink” without the cocaine.
Then there’s the beverage industry who pointed out there’s caffeine in tea leaves and other plant material and that it’s not a threat: (1) US vs 40 barrels and 20 kegs of Coka-cola. Ultimately reducing the amount of caffeine in soft-drinks.
Round and round we go allowing companies to use chemicals to keep us buying their consumables.
While it is a contributing factor, physical dependence- withdrawal is not anymore considered necessary or sufficient for addiction. The author there is using an outdated pre-DSM5 definition of addiction which failed to recognize that there are two separate but related phenomena here. Things like gambling and sex addiction obviously cause no withdrawal symptoms from chemical dependence at all, but can be almost impossible to quit and serious enough to destroy someone’s life.
Severity of withdrawal symptoms from caffeine also varies substantially from person to person. It’s probably not directly killing anyone, but for some people it can be brutally unpleasant and disabling for at least several days.
What’s the point of this distinction, what does it mean that it’s not chemically addictive? It causes withdrawals, dependence, it definitely acts on brain chemistry.
A lot of substances cause withdrawals/dependence and act of brain chemistry, e.g., the vast array of psychiatric drugs. However, I have never seen the word addiction used in the context of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, etc..
Even non-psychiatric drugs like NSAIDs, insulin, hypertension medication, etc. can have a withdrawal effect.
I might be mistaken, but I am under the impression that addiction is psychological in nature. Take gambling addiction, for example, I am not certain if there is any physical withdrawal effect, but there is definitely a psychological compulsion.
That lancet article very well refutes the point you are trying to make. The term “chemical addiction” is not really used anymore because it really just refers to mechanisms of chemical dependence, which are neither necessary or sufficient to cause addiction on their own.
There has been a major shift in how addiction is understood in modern research, but you have it backwards- your perspective of chemical addiction or direct chemical mechanism being important is the old discredited concept, not the new one, which sees it as a psychological process that requires no direct chemical mechanism at all.
The chemical dependence is quite a factor in the psychological process you refer to. It nudges and reinforces this psychological behaviour. You can broaden the definition to include addiction without chemical dependence, but it does not mean you can omit the chemical dependence factor from the equation.
This chemical dependence is often the number one reason people cannot physically stop their psychological process. Potential effects from quitting include simply dying, or with less strong chemical dependence, feeling anxiety or generally ill.
This chemical dependence is learned behavior in some cases, chemically induced in others.
I get what you’re saying. Dopamine withdrawal is real though and if you no longer get dopamine from an action or you physically prevent yourself from receiving that dopamine, it can be just as debilitating as cigarette withdrawal or kicking a (soft) drug habit.
> Dopamine withdrawal is real though and if you no longer get dopamine from an action or you physically prevent yourself from receiving that dopamine
Exactly, this is why the idea of addiction is more appropriately focused around the actual real world impacts rather than specific chemical mechanisms- the difficulty quitting and the negative impacts on your life. If it's strong enough to overpower your will and destroy your life, that is sufficient, it doesn't matter exactly how.
When it comes down to it, something like an amphetamine drug or other stimulants that directly increase synaptic dopamine, vs a behavior like gambling addiction that exploits the brains instincts and wiring in other ways to still cause the increase in synaptic dopamine are not fundamentally, categorically different in a way that one or the other shouldn't be taken seriously and considered a "real addiction." Either can completely destroy some peoples life, and for other people can be easily controlled and used in moderation.
Yes this is absolutely true, it is a factor in addiction- I initially mentioned this in my comment but deleted it because I felt I was making it too complicated.
>That lancet article very well refutes the point you are trying to make.
No. That lancet article very well refutes the point you are trying to make. I'm flabberghasted by your interpretation. Could you please try to support this interpretation with quotes? I can't even begin to understand how to converse with this point of view since such a POV does not exist in the lancet article. I've read it a handful of times and now once again trying to understand you. But it's not there. I recommend you re-read the article.
I have quoted the appropriate bits supporting my, and the articles very title's, claims already in the other comment in this thread and you may refer to it.
> I'm flabberghasted by your interpretation. Could you please try to support this interpretation with quotes? I can't even begin to understand how to converse with this point of view since such a POV does not exist in the lancet article.
It's hard for me to know where to start, because I feel similarly confused about where you might be coming from, and I don't know your level of background in reading and interpreting biomedical papers. However, I can elaborate a bit on my thinking and mention that I am an academic biomedical researcher that reads, publishes, and peer reviews biomedical papers - but I am not a psychiatrist or medical doctor. This is not my field of expertise, I'm not trying to argue from authority, just mentioning where I'm coming from.
First, for context, this correspondence article is in The Lancet Psychiatry, so is targeted at psychiatrists, and is able to avoid a lot of background that they can safely assume the reader already has, like the diagnostic criteria for common conditions.
You are using the term "chemically addictive," which is not used in the article, and which is a term that simultaneously implies both "physical dependence" or "substance dependence" and "addiction" from back when the two were mistakenly assumed to be one in the same. This article is emphasizing the fact that they aren't the same thing, and both can exist independently of one another. Since that is really the only singular point in the article, and is really hammered home over and over, I cannot see how pulling out quotes would help. I think our disagreement comes from the surrounding context not mentioned, not the contents of the article itself.
The article describes that as of the DSM-5 they directly address the confusion between the two, and separate them into two entirely different things. While not explained in the article, it is important to realize that the DSM-5 now includes behavioral addictions together with drug addictions, and considers physical dependence and/or other types of direct chemical modulation of the reward system to be a contributing factor in many cases, but not essential, for addiction.
This distinction is extremely important, because it allows for addiction without substance dependence to be taken just as seriously, and properly treated and addressed clinically or by other means.
Previously, because of the history of this mistaken connection, psychiatrists and patients would wrongly dismiss (as you are with caffeine) the possibility of serious addiction without a direct chemical dependence mechanism. This left people whose lives were being destroyed by things like gambling and sex addictions to be dismissed as not serious, and not allow them to get real help. On the flip side, it also made doctors wrongly afraid to administer drugs that caused chemical dependence but not addiction, for fear that it would lead to addiction in patients.
However, I would argue that while addictive, the level of addiction potential from caffeine is pretty limited because of the fact that it has pretty severe adverse/toxic effects if you take too much, and the enjoyable aspect saturates out pretty quick. Taking a lot more than a normal amount, enough to damage your health, feels awful, so people aren't likely to become addicted to doing so. Counter-intuitively, the most addictive drugs have low acute toxicity and so you can take increasingly huge doses of them and it continues to feel good rather than just make you uncomfortable and sick like a high dose of caffeine.
That's called chemical dependence and it's the point I'm trying to make. Dependence is not addiction. Addiction means wanting is hijacked, not that stopping is aversive.
Addiction and dependence have real medical meanings and in the context of this discussion and we shouldn't mix them up. See this very short and to the point lancet medical journal summary, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
>Addiction (synonymous with substance use disorder), as defined by the DSM-5, entails compulsive use, craving, and impaired control over drug taking in addition to physical dependence. The vast majority of patients taking medications such as opioids and benzodiazepines are doing so as prescribed by clinicians, with only 1·5% of people taking benzodiazepine being addicted, for example. Physical dependence is much more common than addiction. Importantly, withdrawal effects occur irrespective of whether these drugs are taken as prescribed or misused.
>Failure to distinguish between addiction and physical dependence can have real-life consequences. People who have difficulty stopping their medications because of withdrawal effects can be accused of addiction or misuse. Misdiagnosis of physical dependence as addiction can also lead to inappropriate management, including referral to 12-step addiction-based detoxification and rehabilitation centres, focusing on psychological aspects of harmful use rather than the physiology of withdrawal.
>It should be made clear that dependence is not the same as addiction. The problems with prescribed drug dependence are not restricted to the small minority who are misusing or addicted to these drugs, but to the wider population who are physically dependent on and might not be able easily to stop their medications because of withdrawal effects. Antidepressants (superkuh note: and caffeine) should be categorised with other drugs that cause withdrawal syndromes as dependence-forming medications, while noting that they do not cause addiction.
The explanation for the headaches is that coffee raises blood pressure short term, and the blood vessels in the brain prepare for the predicted caffeine ingestion, and if it doesn't come there will be a mismatch.
What triggers the blood vessel constriction on the brain? Will avoiding e.g. certain places at certain hours also avoid the preemptive blood vessel constriction and associated headache?
I try to not let taste or smell overrule other decisions made by my brain. Of course it is so visceral that one can not escape it; some stinky fish challenges show how powerful smell is. Some people can not control their body's reactions to bad smell.
I also enjoy my morning ritual of preparing the grinds and brewing a fresh pot. But I'll be honest, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter where I get it -- brunch at a nice restaurant, Starbucks, McDonalds, a cheap hotel buffet, lukewarm from a flight attendant ... as long as I get it. Sounds healthy, right?! ;)
