I can't imagine normal healthy people routinely taking a drug and teaching their children to take one. And yet this happens with coffee all the time. Many are even proud of their addiction ("coffee snobs").
Caffeine, like heroin,isn't completely bad in and of itself though. It's the effect of taking too much and becoming dependent on it that are the real problems. Even vitamins can be harmful to your health if you take too much (which is luckily quite hard to do because the body just can't absorb them efficiently, at least in pill form).
Drugs aren't bad. Behaviors are bad. What we do with them are bad. I'd have no problem having a cup of coffee with my child (if I had one and the kid was old enough). Now, had I not experienced real, severe addiction myself I don't think I'd feel this way and I can understand if others can't understand why I feel this way.
- Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
I decided later on that I really liked the regularity of coffee; something hot and stimulating every morning, that I would be able to look forward to. I also like the taste of coffee (once I acquired a taste for it). And caffeine does improve productivity; the additional wakefulness and concentration are helpful. Now, when you get addicted, you lose that benefit; the same amount of caffeine puts you back at your baseline performance. But I can, on occasion, have a second cup of coffee when I need a little boost; it's a lot easier for me to do that when I'm drinking coffee regularly, since if I have caffeine when I'm not drinking it regularly, I find it makes me a little too jittery and anxious. Being used to it helps smooth out its effects.
And furthermore, there is research that has shown that caffeine can be neuroprotective. There are several pieces of research linking caffeine intake to reduced incidents of Alzheimers, in both mice: http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/16938404/reload=0;jsession... and humans: http://epicentre.massey.ac.nz/EJC/Stuff/PastPapers/Papers_20...
Now, that's not to say that caffeine isn't without its downsides. That week of withdrawal symptoms did suck; and if I need to quit again, or don't have access to caffeine for a few days, it sucks all over again (especially if I'm too sick to drink coffee, I now wind up with withdrawal symptoms on top of my existing problem). And for some people coffee is too hard on the stomach, or can cause other problems like anxiety; whether that's the case for you depends on your body.
Caffeine can be either helpful or harmful, depending on the person and how you use it. The harm generally is fairly mild. I started drinking it this time around consciously, knowing full well what it's like to quit, and knowing what the advantages are, and I decided that the advantages outweighed the disadvantages, at least for myself.
Very unlike caffeine.
That said, all addiction is very similar. I would say that people more often than not really mean dependence rather than addiction when it comes to caffiene but the problem is that most people think of those terms as being the same thing. They're not. Dependence can exist separately of addiction but addiction will always go together with dependence. Dependence is (very simplified here for brevity) when your body relies on a substance from outside itself to function normally. Usually that's because you've put a substance in for so long that your brain downregulates certain chemicals because you're replacing what's already there with something from the outside. Take the substance away and it takes a bit for the body to realize you won't be putting in any more nicotine or caffiene or opiates so it takes a while before it starts producing enough acetylcholine or adrenaline or endorphins or whatever the case may be. Addiction is dependence plus a certain set of behaviors (again, trying to be brief and simple here). A caffeiene "addict" (read: dependant) isn't going to rob the local Starbucks to get a fix like a true addict would. You don't see these caffeine addicts ruining their lives because their persuit of coffee is interfering with their jobs or their marriage and such.
There's a big difference not only between the withdrawal syndromes but I also think an important point is to stop thinking of these people with such stories as addicts. They're probably just dependent. A guy who gets sick if he stops taking his antidepressants is dependent. A guy who can't stop himself from downing medication X and puts his persuit of substance X above all else with serious negative consequences in other areas of his life is an addict.
Unlike alcohol, for example.
But, yes, drug and alcohol detox units save the beds for alcoholics (who can die during detox) and not for heroin addicts (who tend not to die during detox).
I've quit caffeine several times. Each time I get headaches each morning (which can be controlled fine with aspirin) for about a week. Then I'm done. I've always gone back though after a couple months. I'm also addicted to chapstick. Those are my two addictions and I'm fine with them.
It also happens with sugars, salt, corn syrup and tons of other stuff.
Lots of things can be a "drug". Coffee, when drank in moderation, is actually absolutely beneficial to one's health.
Your definition is so broad as to make the term "drug" meaningless, as it means that even water is a drug. Yes, after swimming in the ocean waves for an hour, cold freshwater is pure pleasure, and if I haven't had enough water for a while I start to suffer from dehydration.
A friend of mine has to eat a small amount every few others, else she becomes irritable. I've sometimes forgotten to eat until the afternoon, with little effect on my personality. Does that mean that food is a drug to her, or that she's more addicted to food than I am?
Obviously not.
Can you come up with a better definition of "drug" which makes makes sense? That is, one where "water" and "food" are not drugs, but for which salt and corn syrup is a drug?
One of the problems is that we have this value judgement associated with the word "drug." Once you label something a "drug", it acquires a negative connotation.
One thing that distinguishes a drug from something like water is that you actually, physically depend on water; you cannot live without it. You can, however, live without sugar (though of course, your body will break down complex carbs into sugar). You can't live without salt, though there's a wide range between how much you need and how much many people eat.
Your definition is one characteristic between a drug and a non-drug, but it doesn't suffice. Meat is not essential, as the various vegetarians and vegans on this planet confirm. Does that make meat a drug? A Google search says that a few dozen people have asked, and answered that in the affirmative.
While Vilhjálmur Stefánsson and others showed that people can survive on just meat and entrails; are vegetables drugs?
Anyway, I read the paper. It concludes "we suggest that sugar, as common as it is, nonetheless meets the criteria for a substance of abuse and may be “addictive” for some individuals when consumed in a “binge-like” manner. This conclusion is reinforced by the changes in limbic system neurochemistry that are similar for the drugs and for sugar. The effects we observe are smaller in magnitude than those produced by drug of abuse such as cocaine or morphine; however, the fact that these behaviors and neurochemical changes can be elicited with a natural reinforcer is interesting. _It is not clear from this animal model if intermittent sugar access can result in neglect of social activities as required by the definition of dependency in the DSM-IV-TR_ (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Nor is it known whether rats will continue to self-administer sugar despite physical obstacles, such as enduring pain to obtain sugar, as some rats do for cocaine (Deroche-Gamonet et al., 2004). Nonetheless, the extensive series of experiments revealing similarities between sugar-induced and drug-induced behavior and neurochemistry, as chronicled in Sections 4 and 5, lends credence to the concept of “sugar addiction”, gives precision to its definition, and provides a testable model."
As you can see (assuming my HN markup-foo is strong), sugar has not been shown to (or shown not to) lead to the definition of "dependency" for humans, which is a neglect of social activities. So this remains a conjecture with some supporting evidence, but not enough to make the statement that sugar is or even can be an addictive substance.
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/high-fructose-c...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_addiction
Drug in this context is not something that makes you hallucinate or teens do in urban neighbourhoods. It's all about the addiction.
In nutricional and biological context, their drug-like behaviour is well known.
In any event, the evidence of the ills of caffeine is so poor as to suggest a smattering of false positives. The studies showing positive effects should be viewed with similar skepticism, although if it does have some role in preventing Alzheimer's surely that's enough on its own.
Some may not feel they need caffeine as much as others: so be it. But the idea that any of us can really be deemed healthy or not, due to whether or not caffeine is part of the diet, seems to me to lose the forest through the trees
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/11/the-case-f...
Citation needed