Jonathan Simone at Psyche:
When it comes to caffeine, we often speak about ‘needing our fix’ but I’ve yet to hear of an intervention staged for the friend who drinks three double espressos before noon. In fact, when it comes to caffeine, we rarely worry about things like tolerance, dosage or long-term effects in the same way we do for other substances. We don’t speak in terms of use, misuse and psychoactivity. But caffeine, like other drugs, directly alters neurochemistry and functionality. Like other drugs, it affects mood and cognition and can lead to behaviours that are akin to chronic use and dependence. And, like other drugs, abstinence can lead to symptoms of withdrawal (albeit to a lesser extent than its illicit counterparts). By all scientific standards, caffeine is a psychoactive drug. So why do we struggle to accept this fact? Why do we treat caffeine like nothing more than a productivity hack? And what would happen if we treated caffeine the way we treat other drugs?
More here.
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