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Comment by xvector | Hacker News Reader

Only a matter of time before we are expected to take drugs to be better at our jobs.

We're all on caffeine already and no one is clutching pearls over it. How is taking harder drugs any different other than in effectiveness?

Caffeine wears off quickly, and seems to be good for you.

I go off cold turkey once in a while, and the worst I've ever gotten is a week of mild headaches.

Whether caffeine is good for you or not seems to be largely inconclusive, similarly to the question of whether caffeine is bad for you.

caffeine can be bad for you. There's direct issues it causes like heartburn which will wear down your esophagus.

Caffeine forms an addiction in a few weeks, and requires increasing doses just to keep you normal.

What's good for you are other parts of the coffee bean.

I avoid taking caffeine with any regularity, let alone daily. This is why I can get a full kick from a cup when I need it.

Hmm, I've kept a pretty steady dose of coffee across years without needing such an increase over time. A day with zero coffee is, indeed, not fun. But we live in the future and coffee is really available everywhere always. And even if the supply chains crash, it'll be a bad week and then I'll be fine...

Huh. I like a cup of coffee in the morning but I’ve never experienced the “I need a cup of coffee or it’s gonna be a long day” feeling people talk about. (Well now that I think of it I may have thought that a few times (in ~20years) but it was usually after a short night of sleep or something like that.)

I don't have to increase dosing unless I let it mess up my sleep.

Taking my last drink at the office and stopping for the rest of the day works.

I drink one cup in the morning, occasionally a second after lunch.

Increasing doses only works up to a point, your brain has only so much capacity to support caffeine; anything beyond that just affects the rest of your body but does nothing to the brain.

Much like nicotine, the addiction seems to be highly dependent on the person.

I can drink coffee for weeks and weeks, and the stop abruptly and suffer no ill effects. Same thing with oral nicotine pouches. I can use them for weeks and weeks, and then stop cold turkey and have zero craving or desire.

I know people who do the same and the withdrawal absolutely wrecks them.

There's a reason they are called "hard" drugs.

yep, the people who use that term are trying to convince you of something.

Whenever threads mention caffeine I am compelled to share that caffeine has no effect whatsoever on me.

To my sadness, it feels like I'm excluded from a common universal community and performance advantage

Try crack.

Pretty much the same here.. I drink a lot of coffee just to have a hot drink, but I can drink coffee at night and it doesn't seem to do anything. Maybe a little, but I hardly notice.

I had the same issue due to excessive coffee drinking. Stopping cold for 2-3 weeks helps to bring back some of the effectiveness later. But any regular dose even after this is rapidly tolerance-building.

Same here, I imagine this might be due to me drinking coke zero in huge quantities, and that somehow making me indifferent to caffeine even when i am not drinking coke.

Caffeine has a serious effect on me - it makes me jittery and screws up my sleep. I gave up caffeine in the late 80s - to my happiness, actually. I consider it a competitive advantage.

As a counterpoint whenever I have caffeine I am maniacal focused on something and turn into an asshole for at least 12 hours. It warps me as a human.

The only time I’ve felt effects of caffeine is horrible jet lag combined with 900mL of cold brew (about 1400mcg of caffeine). I was lifted from the dead and felt the highest relative improvement in mood and wellbeing in my life.

I once tried to improve my math exam scores by drinking 4 espressos but didn’t feel a thing. I can easily fall asleep after 2 cups of coffee.

True, I drink a beer a day so why not snort a line of coke instead, they're both drugs, right ? Or heroin for that matter, they're all the same thing obviously

No job expects you to take caffeine though does it? (Except in the coffee industry maybe.)

Its a question of where the line is drawn. Some, or many perhaps, would prefer a world where they aren't forced to alter their brain chemistry to the degree that a powerful pharmaceutical does. Caffeine, while substantial, does not have this same degree of power, whether positive or negative. There are reasons why one is a controlled substance and the other freely available OTC.

those reasons are primarily political

I've never seen any requirement, or even social pressure, to use caffeine at work. Plenty of people in all offices I've worked at didn't take coffee, or only very ocasionally. It was widespread, but no expected of you.

I wouldn't mind some coleagues taking some drugs, as long as they didn't make them very antisocial or generally bad to be around. But I would very much mind an employer expecting me to take something.

There's a web comic about something like this: https://www.powernapcomic.com/. The story is set in a world where the majority of people take a drug that eliminates the need for sleep, but the main character is allergic? to it so suffers a "handicap" for being what we would call normal.

Great one. I was looking for that the other week but could not for the life of me google it, having forgotten its name.

Unfortunately, a lot of people already are. Long-haul truck drivers have an underbelly of 5-hour-energy drink and barbiturate use.

The coffee is always free.

To quote Peep Show: “hey, Corrigan, you’re management, how about 200 lattes?”

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