JUSTAFINE RECREATIONALDRINK

SO I WAS sitting here thinking about road rage you know road rage and how
all these people are so frustrated they are shooting each other and
stabbing and hurling dogs out of windows and doing bumpernudging and I was
thinking about the offices I have been in lately the dot-com-type offices
and how free sodas and coffee are de as it were rigueur and also Peet's I
love Peet's and I was thinking and I emphasize here I have had only two
cups maybe three no more than four that perhaps caffeine might be linked to
some irrational explosions of anger and other kinds of manic behavior
because frankly we have addicts all over the place and pushers like dot-com
executives and Peet's did I mention Peet's and in what universe is caffeine
not a drug?

That is my question.

My beloved readers are already fully aware of the idiocy of the current
drug laws. My beloved readers understand that the distinctions made in such
laws are based on economic and class issues, not medical ones. An illegal
drug is one whose cartel got powerful too late -- period.

That leads us to various kinds of twilight drugs -- semi-legal prescription
drugs, legal but restricted drugs like alcohol and nicotine, and entirely
legal drugs like caffeine.

The evidence of my own body, plus sundry scientific studies and reams of
anecdotes, suggests that caffeine is a powerful stimulant, a mood-altering
drug pushed by large corporations everywhere in the belief that using the
drug will make their employees more productive.

That is a questionable assumption, because caffeine has a powerful rebound
effect, making the daily balancing act difficult (as anyone who's had a
caffeine crash -- and I assume that's almost everyone reading my words --
can tell you).

Also, addicts who try to quit cold turkey, perhaps for health reasons --
caffeine's malign effect on hypertension has long been noted -- experience
the vicious caffeine-withdrawal headache, a pain impervious to Advil even
at non-recommended dosages.

Do I speak from experience? Oh, my yes.

I AM NOT advocating government regulation of caffeine; that way lies
madness. But as long as we pretend that the law maps to pharmacological
reality in any way, we are doomed to misunderstand the problem.

Maybe if every adult were able to take responsibility for his or her own
drug use, maybe people who drink coffee and wine would not be quite so smug
about their habits -- and people who use marijuana and cocaine would not be
quite so in-prison-forever.

And, as it happens, I do think that caffeine is a factor in the stresses of
modern life. If you take a human with a high-pressure job, a human who has
to fight traffic for two hours every day, a human who works without a union
or a health plan in a field where every geek out of college is a viable
threat to job security -- I speak of the life around us here in city.bay
area.bioregion -- and you pour 12 ounces of coffee per hour into said
human, you'll get one angry human all day long.

The occasions of rage are everywhere -- talk radio and toll plazas,
construction zones and national politics.

Do we need a drug that promotes inappropriate venting?

I wonder.

SOMETIMES WHEN I think of, say, a 12-step meeting, where people talk about
being clean and sober while meanwhile pouring gallons of coffee into
themselves; or press conferences called by Barry McCaffrey in which
everyone has a nice Styrofoam cup of foul, inky java and gets really
overexcited about the menaces that are stalking our children; or people
downing joe because they are pulling all-nighters programming the guidance
systems for the missiles in our nation's Stealth bombers and I know how
many typing mistakes I make when I have one cup over my allotment as I
struggle with my leetle problem and oh God was that the Chinese Embassy --
as an American, I worry.

We're drinking my friend to the end of a brief episode, so make it one for
my baby and one more for jrc@sfgate.com.