I drink.
Almost daily from my home supply. More days than not away from home. Usually during the day, but sometimes after dark. I drink alone and I drink with others. My nose isn't red. I've never had delirium tremens. My liver is fine.
I drink coffee. My pattern is a couple cups of the hard stuff, with cream and artificial sweetener, when I arise. Then, later, a tall latte or short cup of the house brew at Starbucks. If I feel tired, I make the latte a double. My limit is a double latte and a couple cups of brew per day. When night clubbing, I sometimes drink Irish coffees. Seems harmless. But, according to yesterday's The Wall Street Journal, I may have a drinking problem.
It isn't just the long lines and high prices that are outsized at Starbucks and other specialty coffeehouses. There's also the caffeine.
In pursuit of a bolder taste, coffeehouses typically brew their blends much stronger than a trusty cup of Folgers. But a powerful side effect is unusually high levels of caffeine, according to a national test of ready-made coffee run by a laboratory for The Wall Street Journal. House blends at Starbucks Corp., Gloria Jean's and other gourmet coffee chains have an average 56 percent more caffeine than samples tested at 7-Eleven stores and 29 percent more than at Dunkin' Donuts nationwide.
One of the strongest happens to be the most successful: The Starbucks house blend had 223 milligrams of caffeine on average per 16-ounce "grande," or medium, cup size. Starbucks says that on average, its array of coffee drinks contains even more — 320 milligrams in a medium cup. That's nearly double the caffeine in Folgers, the leading grocery-store brand.
The reporter observes that the extraordinary success of Starbucks and other specialty coffee house chains may owe some of its vigor to the fact the product makes customers "physically dependent," i.e., is addictive.
Researchers say that those of us who drink (coffee) have the same rejection characteristics as other 'habituated' persons. If we try to give the java up, we suffer headaches, drowsiness and inability to concentrate. They believe we crave that cup when we get up because we are in or about to go into withdrawal.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
oh, it is a bad addiction.
i keep thinking i've hit the limits of my coffee snobbery....and then some new brewing device, esoteric grinder or micro-roaster comes along.
in fact, just recently i switched to a vacuum pot: one glass sphere sitting on top of another (i swear, it looks like a science experiment)...but what a fantastic brew it makes.
and of course i bought the pot at a recently discovered micro-roaster, where the beans are guaranteed to have been roasted in the past 24 hours.
where will it end?!!!
2 - Hal Pawluk
Great "excerpt," MD.
And all the stories are all too true (oh, the shame of it :-)
3 - sheri
I think I am addicted to the smell of coffee aswell. I need to smell it in the morning, and at certain places,like work or Barnes and Noble. When I'm feeling down, I need to smell coffee,because it has a soothing affect on me.
4 - Mark Edward Manning
Caffeine is an addictive substance, a sister substance of the opioids. This is not self-promotion (I assure you), but I encourage you to read this and this. One is a column I wrote way back when and the other is a recent entry from my primary blogsite. It will serve to illustrate that you're not alone in your addiction.
5 - Mark Edward Manning
Well, my links didn't work. Oh well. Just know that I know where you're coming from.