CUP OR TWO HELPS HIM FACE THE GRIND

He drove in the predawn darkness to the familiar parking lot, stopped, and
waited.

He knew he was too early but was anxious and didn't want to waste a second.
How he hated to run out of it and feel like this. His wife had used the
last and forgot to tell him. His left hand trembled as he raised his watch.
Almost time. He'd soon get rid of his headache, calm his nerves, and be
better able to concentrate on other matters.

Finally, the person he had been waiting for unlocked the door he had been
watching. He entered the building, walked several paces and picked up a
small bag, held it to his nose, and inhaled deeply of the fragrance.

Then he reached for his money, hoping he had enough for two bags. That way,
when they emptied the first it would be the signal to buy more and he never
again would face an empty cup precisely when he needs some in the worst way.

Gotta have that cup o' java He just can't get started without caffeine.
That first swallow of coffee wakes him up, makes it possible for him to
find the "good" in "good morning." And the first is followed by others
throughout the day, at home, at work, dining out ...

Back in the 1500s, when coffee first came to Egypt, folks in charge there
thought it was bad stuff. Why, if you could go back there in a time machine
and tell those Egyptians how our modern society views caffeine, they'd be
shocked: "You mean you actually allow your children to drink freely of
bottled beverages and hot chocolate that contain the same drug that makes
coffee so dangerous?"

Officials in old Egypt viewed coffee as officials in our modern United
States view marijuana. Selling it was illegal and anytime the coffee cops
found a stash, they burned it.

But you don't have to venture that far, either geographically or
historically, to find serious opposition to caffeine. Consider Dr. T.D.
Crothers, who was author of the 1902 work Morphinism and Narcomanias from
Other Drugs and served as superintendent of the Walnut Lodge Hospital in
Connecticut.

This physician rated caffeine addiction on par with alcoholism or being
hooked on morphine: "In some extreme cases delusional states of a grandiose
character appear; rarely violent or destructive, but usually of a reckless,
unthinking variety. Associated with these are suspicions of wrong and
injustice from others; also extravagant credulity and skepticism."

He told of a Civil War general who "appeared on the front of the line,
exposing himself with great recklessness, shouting and waving his hat as if
in a delirium, giving orders and swearing in the most extraordinary manner.
He was supposed to be intoxicated. Afterward it was found that he had used
nothing but coffee."

Dr. Crothers considered caffeine a gateway to more harmful substances and
what he said then sounds much like what you often hear said nowadays about
marijuana: "Often coffee drinkers, finding the drug to be unpleasant, turn
to other narcotics, of which opium and alcohol are most common."

I got the information about caffeine from "The Consumers Union Report on
Licit and Illicit Drugs" by Edward M. Brecher and the editors of Consumer
Reports magazine. It was published 28 years ago but remains an impressive
compilation of information.

Potent poison in large doses According to research cited in the report,
caffeine is a potent poison if taken in very large doses. A fatal dose for
a human is estimated at 10 grams -- 70 to 100 cups of coffee.

It is interesting to compare coffee habits to the part of the report
dealing with marijuana, where it says, "It would appear that there are
normally no adverse physiological effects or withdrawal symptoms occurring
with abstinence from the drug, even in regular users." And also says that
"no deaths due directly to smoking or eating cannabis have been documented."

The report says that by keeping coffee legal, "society has avoided
extortionate black-market prices that might otherwise bankrupt coffee
drinkers and lead them into lives of crime. And coffee drinkers are not
stigmatized as criminals, driven into a deviant subculture with all that
criminalization entails."

The section on caffeine concludes by suggesting: "That other drugs now
deemed illicit might be similarly domesticated, with a similar reduction in
the damage they wreak on individuals and on society, is a possibility
readers may wish to keep in mind."

You may access the report at
www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm.