gonna be a long one

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Coffee / energy drink drinkers sound like drug addicts
- That's because they are. It's just a socially acceptable drug addiction.
  
  I currently work as a barista, but I've also previously been a pharmacy assistant in a methadone clinic for recovering opioid addicts.
  Honestly apart from the paperwork and the stakes involved if one messes up, the jobs are pretty similar.
  
  It boosts our economy....
  
  But I’d say (at least that’s my experience) it’s not a very addictive substance. Or it depends heavily on the person.
  I drink 0-5 cups a day. I like the taste and I like drinking it in some social settings. I don’t need it in the morning to get my body awake. I can just stop drinking coffee any time for longer periods of time without any issues.
  Once I was working in Bavaria for about 6 weeks. We drank around 1l of beer every dinner. Returning home I wanted to drink a beer after the first dinner. This made me stop drinking alcohol for two months and since I made this experience I regularly stop consuming substances that may be addictive. I never experienced this with caffeine.
  
  Caffeine is physically addictive. You get withdrawals if you're addicted and stop cold turkey. It does vary person to person. But most people get a splitting headache.
  
  Maybe it's not very addictive for you. It is for most people.
  The way you are with coffee is the way I am with nicotine. I've smoked. I've quit smoking. I've started again. The most craving I've gotten for a cigarette was incredibly mild. Once I read that nicotine could trigger certain diseases that run in my family, I quit tobacco completely and I've never looked back. I haven't had a cigarette in about 18 years, and quitting was trivially easy for me.
  Based on this, I could say "Cigarettes aren't very addictive. They're easy to quit!" And of course, I'd be dead wrong.
- I'll never understand caffeine addicts. It's such a boring drug to get hooked on. How do people find it pleasurable? It does nothing but slightly increase your concentration at most. You don't even get a dopamine hit.
  
  I'm in the Top 10% of players in my league, but I'll never be in the Top 1%.
  Why? Because everyone there is either cheating or on something.
  Caffeine is legal and not banned by most sporting jurisdictions, so if that's the only thing you can take to enhance performance -- you take it.
  With a caffeine addiction, I can skirt Top 6% and lie to myself that I deserve that position.
  
  You sound like you think coffee drinkers are trying to get high by drinking coffee.
  
  Well they sure act like it gets them high, especially when people say that they literally cannot function without caffeine. Sure sounds like drug addiction to me.

27 comments