2010-11-11: Chapter Forty-Seven Commentary

[Puppetic Shultz]

So what is so wrong with caffeine? I start a pot of tea or coffee as soon as I wake up, and usually finish the last pot shortly before going to bed. I generally have between 1.2 and 1.4 grams per day from all of it.

Maybe I'm lucky, but I've never had issues with caffeine. And my Google-foo only turns up the standard "caffeine is bad for you" / "we aren't sure" / "it's fine so quit whining" results.

[Sareth]

God, i feel for you, Impy.

Owing to lung damage, I can't drink things that are acidic or I end up coughing my lungs out. Owing to PTSD I'm not supposed to have Caffeine (it's like throwing gas on a forest fire. I'm already on Red Alert, so... yeah.). This means that about the only things I can drink are water (which I despise) and very sugary non-acidic drinks like strawberry juice and Sprite. As a result I drink enough sugar to be constantly wondering when (not if) I'm going to contract diabetes.

Sounds to me like Poe is similar for whatever reason. Which further means that, again, if he's like me, if he doesn't get his fix he gets mighty cranky. So I feel for you.

[pillar_of_hate]

Honestly, the thing that got me off soda as a young man was beer. When you wake up at lunchtime with a splitting headache, the LAST thing you need is something that will dehydrate you more.

Not to say I don't have unhealthy addictions: caffeine-fueled all-nighters once a week, boozing to various degrees the other six. Ah, student life.

[Imp-Chan]

So what is so wrong with caffeine? I start a pot of tea or coffee as soon as I wake up, and usually finish the last pot shortly before going to bed. I generally have between 1.2 and 1.4 grams per day from all of it.

Maybe I'm lucky, but I've never had issues with caffeine. And my Google-foo only turns up the standard "caffeine is bad for you" / "we aren't sure" / "it's fine so quit whining" results.

Caffeine is a highly addictive psychoactive stimulant. Most people consume it without a second thought and never notice that much of a difference, but that doesn't actually mean that it's harmless. It alters the chemical balance in your brain, which can affect everything from short term memory to your mood, and it has other physical effects as well, including acting like epinephrine on the heart. People develop a tolerance to caffeine really quickly, so at first they need progressively higher doses to feel the same lifting effect, but then they rapidly reach a point where actually there is no lifting effect, they're just experiencing the diminishing of their withdrawal symptoms. In other words, they effectively no longer "drink to get drunk" and instead just "drink to stay drunk." When they don't, they crash... with results varying from a mild headache and irritability to deep depression.

However, the effects of caffeine are still fairly subtle, and unless you have a good reason to be paying attention (such as a mood disorder that requires constant self-monitoring), you probably would never notice most of the effects, let alone a problem. About 90% of adult Americans use caffeine on a daily basis in varying amounts, so it's a drug that fits easily into the pattern of our daily life and doesn't cause much disruption. It becomes a bigger problem mostly when people have other health considerations... such as high blood pressure, or mood disorders. The irony of both Poe and I being in the category of people who should not abuse caffeine when our studio is NAMED for the stuff has not escaped me.

^-^'

[Nell]

What got me off carbonated drinks was finding out their multiple other uses, esp as industrial cleaners... coke is excellent for toilet cleaning in fact (we use it consistently). You can even dissolve teeth in it by leaving them in long enough.
http://www.members.tripod.com/~Barefoot_Lass/cola.html

After enough time drinking nestea and juice and chocolate milk I couldn't stand carbonated drinks, they burn now.
I also am into tea (plain or with honey). But since that won't work on poe just smoothies will do. Juices are good too.

[No One]

Hmm... Is it bad then that I was pretty much able to go cold-turkey on drinking soda since about two years ago (when my doctor told me "you need to stop drinking this because it aggrevates your stomach problems and is probably not helping with your depression and anxiety either"), despite the fact that prior to that I would go through at least two cans of Mountain Dew a day?

Now, I admit that caffeine has never affected me like it seems to affect most people. I get no lift from it at all. I just drank that much soda because I liked it.

[Sareth]

Two cans? Piker. When I was in Afghanistan I was drinking two sixpacks a day...

Probably why my Doctor said I had a *little* problem...

[Dallen Andair]

Two cans? Piker. When I was in Afghanistan I was drinking two sixpacks a day...

Probably why my Doctor said I had a *little* problem...

Lightweight.

I've killed half a twelve Cream Soda with lunch before. And thats after the two pots of coffee since breakfast. Lack of caffine makes me angry. People don't like me when I angry.

[lyze]

On the subject of weening off sugary drinks: Have you tried reducing serving size rather than number of times drinking? Like instead of two cans a day, go down to 3 half cans, then 2 half cans, etc? Buy the 2 liter bottle and measure it out. I think maybe that might help cause rather than having limited number of drinks with long periods of no drink you can kind of average out the sugar intake over the course of the day and start lowering that average slowly? I'm kind of basing this off one of the ideas on quicking smoking where instead of cutting down the number of cigs you cut down the amount smoked per smoke break or whatever. Let's your body adjust to both the biological and psychological dependency.

In other news, Sara looks hot in that sleepwear, myrrrow!

[Puppetic Shultz]

I've killed half a twelve Cream Soda with lunch before.

I may be wrong, but I had always been under the impression that Cream Soda was caffeine-free by its very nature.

As for weening onesself from sugary drinks, there are plenty of inexpensive fruit-flavored water drinks (that are sugar-, caffeine- and calorie-free) that are available. I use those when at the desk (only water is permitted at the desk at work) and prefer the Clear American brand; they sell for $0.67 per liter at Walmart. Walmart has their own brand, though it isn't as strongly-flavored, for even cheaper.

Just don't add sugar to them, in attempt to slowly ween yourself from the sugar, because they (or Clear American, at the least) are carbonated and WILL make you regret your sugar addi(c)tion.