Diet

by being asleep probably.

Some people actually improve under the influence of alcohol. I know people we have to feed alcohol the way some people need morning coffee in order to be an enjoyable human being. It's usually the tightly disciplined people: wound up all tight and a little booze is like popping free a spring and they're all fun and bouncing off the walls.

But there is a significant fraction of the population that just gets worse.

I feel bad for people who are dependent on coffee almost as much as I feel bad for people who are dependent on alcohol. I drink caffeine to stay alert very rarely -- only when I'm studying late into the night -- and I try not to at all. I can't imagine doing that on a daily basis.

its great

Until you miss your daily coffee fix for some reason.

My greatest caffeine dependency was my first year working in the salmon cannery in Alaska when I was 23. I was working 100+ hr weeks back to back and making a ridiculous amount of overtime but getting ridiculously little sleep. The Company kept unlimited cookies and black coffee in the break rooms to help us keep going, and when we'd get an early evening off they'd put out large totes of ice and beer by the time clocks to help us unwind (and keep some of us out of bar fights).

It's amazing how long you can function on that diet under extreme conditions, but after about 6 weeks of that my body had no reserves left. When I got home I was kind of a wreck. I went almost completely caffeine/sugar/alcohol free until Christmas and slowly got my endurance back.

After that I learned to use that trio only when I really needed it, and when I knew I could afford to crash on the other side.

if you go to bed hungry you'll never be able to fall asleep, but if you go to bed totally full, you'll sleep uneasy and have weird dreams and wake up nackered and super hungry. like eat-a-boar-hungry

i haven't been 2 a coffeehouse 4 7 hours

Damn, I'm jonesing for a grand mocha latte caramel cranberry frappucino ice right now.

Starbucks is to mainstream

its also owned by Elves.

CC12 35 wrote:Starbucks is to mainstream

Somehow I thought you might say that.

It's why I only go to Dunkin Donuts.

Ironically, of course.

Mrs Figg wrote:its also owned by Elves.

That rings a bell ? didnt we have a giggle over that & other things a long while ago ?

Dunkin' Donuts guy: You haven't been here in a while! Me: Oh, yeah! I learned how to make coffee at home. *everybody laughs*

How did I miss this conversation?

Like Eldo, I think caffiene addiction is an evil. Caffeine actually interferes with my ability to concentrate by putting me all up on wires and my brain can't settle on a thought it's firing so fast. I think the only reason most people need coffee to think straight is they go all dopey without it, and caffeine returns them to normal. No thanks.

according to doctors i'm addicted to diet coke so im only allowed 2.5 ml a day

An interesting book I've been meaning to read (which translates "if I haven't by now I probably won't".)
Caffeine and the Coming of the Enlightenment by Roger Schmidt

He makes the case that the coming of tea and coffee to Europe in the 17th century fundamentally changed the world as we know it.

"Caffeine, books, and mechanical clocks disrupted irrevocably the ancient architecture of human sleep, and with its collapse, the angels and their odd companions began to depart. The rise of Enlightenment science and the spread of capitalism reconfigured the world in spectacular ways, but their histories have obscured the more quiet, and equally profound, revolution in the world of sleep. Sleep deprivation is both a symptom of modernity, as well as one of its primary causes. At the very least, it seems worth inquiring whether that sense, common in the eighteenth century, of a newly widened gulf between the divine presence and human society, can be entirely dissociated from the chronic sleep loss the period's major thinkers and writers experienced."

coffee probably contributed greatly to the spread of democracy and free speech. The coffee houses of 18th century London and other great cities were as the historian Brian Cowan describes, English coffeehouses were "places where people gathered to drink coffee, learn the news of the day, and perhaps to meet with other local residents and discuss matters of mutual concern." The absence of alcohol created an atmosphere in which it was possible to engage in more serious conversation than in an alehouses. Coffeehouses also played an important role in the development of financial markets and newspapers.

Topics discussed included politics and political scandals, daily gossip, fashion, current events, and debates surrounding philosophy and the natural sciences. Historians often associate English coffeehouses, during the 17th and 18th centuries, with the intellectual and cultural history of the Age of Enlightenment: they were an alternate sphere, supplementary to the university. Political groups frequently used coffeehouses as meeting places.

Some historians even claimed that these institutions acted as democratic bodies due to their inclusive nature: "Whether a man was dressed in a ragged coat and found himself seated between a belted earl and a gaitered bishop it made no difference; moreover he was able to engage them in conversation and know that he would be answered civilly''.

thanks wiki

so coffee has contributed greatly to our society today, and its better than Ribena.

But surely people did that aleady in buckie houses? Im pretty sure the Scottish Enlightenment started in a pub in Edinburgh with a round of buckie and four packets of peanuts.