I was reading
this article today, as part of my recent attempt to get myself up to speed on happenings in the world outside my little bubble of existence.... we also signed up for Scientific American, Discover and The Economist in a bid to round ourselves out a little.
But anyway. this issue with caffeine has long been, well, not a peeve of mine, but certainly something that's made me look twice at the people around me. At Penn, two groups of people stood out to me as caffeine drinkers... the geeks (or dorks... for some reason people take offence to one word or the other) and the business school students. In both those groups (and elsewhere, just to a lesser degree), it seems that coffee drinking, much like philosophical malaise in our generation, or pride in the Christian community, was the 'vice' of choice. With coffee drinking, people then proceed to take one of two stands: the oh-my-god-i-couldn't-survive-without-it, throw-hands-up-and-feign-despair stand, made up of people who closetly think it's cool to be on a drug of some sort, and the oh-no-i'm-not-addicted-to-it-i-just-have-to-have-some-everyday-or-i-get-headaches stand, made up of people who have some sort of moral stand against addiction but refuse to admit that their caffeine dependence is at the very least strongly leaning in that direction.
Why do people brush dependence aside so casually? we joke about addiction to shopping, movies, video games, what have you.... when did it become ok to become dependent in this fashion? And, equally importantly, why do I care so much? Why am I obsessed with dependence and people's cavalier attitude to it?
It all started with caffeine. I got really tired of friends boasting about how little sleep they needed and how much coffee they drank. I didn't
want to be functioning on 4 hours of sleep unless i had to! I started making it a point to treat myself better, making an effort to get a reasonable amount of sleep so I could function during the day without a jolt of tea in the morning. but most of all it was simply striking to me that most of the people I knew would not be able to function if they didn't have a morning java, and possibly a few more over the course of the day. it was even more striking that many of them reported needing more and more coffee because it wasn't affecting them as much, but this wasn't setting off any warning bells in their heads. even
more striking was that they still refused to admit they were addicted.
maybe addicted is a bad word.... how about dependent? If you can't function without something, that makes you dependent. As humans, we are naturally dependent on certain things, e.g. food, water, oxygen, warmth. why does the prospect of becoming dependent on other things, e.g. caffeine, anti-depressants, painkillers, bother me so much?
I think it's because well, we can't control the natural dependencies. but we can control the rest. and, moreover, we don't know what they're doing. more importantly, i think reliance on things like caffeine, anti-depressants and painkillers often mask the problem at hand. We seem to prefer quick fixes to facing things head on. If you always need caffeine to stay awake, you are most likely chronically tired. painkillers similarly treat symptoms without dealing with underlying causes.
anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs.... now that's trickier. It certainly comes down to your personal philosophy of where the underlying causes lie. are they biological? are they psychological? both? unfortunately this is compounded by a lack of good scientific evidence in any direction. depression and anxiety, like most psychological disorders, are diagnosed by symptoms, not by causes, because we haven't a fucking clue as to what's behind either.
I am anti-medication for psychological problems. not because I don't believe they have a biological element. but because we as yet do not have a clear understanding of how the biology works, AND the only scientific evidence we have about treatment efficacy shows that cognitive and behavioral therapy are on par with pharmacology. not only that, there's a big placebo effect as well. so why tinker with your brain if you don't have to? Also, good therapy is structured with the goal of getting you to the point at which you no longer need therapy. medication, in part because it is pushed by large drug companies, is rarely prescribed in that way.
There's also something about not invading the brain with our axe-like drugs... studying brain function and neuroanatomy has only reinforced to me how complex we are, and how that complexity is built up by our day to day interactions. our brains have millions upon millions of intricately connected neurons, communicating with each other using neurotransmitters that we are only barely beginning to understand. to then take the equivalent of a club and bludgeon it (which is what you do when you take a drug that indiscriminately and brainlessly acts on a particular neurotransmitter throughout the brain),
when there are viable alternatives, just seems.... callous and well, silly.
that's a particular issue though, and definitely a personal peeve. I still haven't hit the nail on the head as to why i'm bothered by dependence in general. I think part of it is that it's simply unnecessary, and not even a worthy luxury. I'd much rather understand myself and learn to live better than to use drugs (caffeine included) to artificially stop up a leaky dam. and I suppose part of it is my philosophy of being able to live off as little as you can, because who knows when what you have may be taken from you? This is also behind my preference for frugality rather than luxury, because wealth and comfort are just addictive as anything else. I guess to me the strongest person is the one who is strong by himself, even when deprived of his artillery of drugs, money and whatever else.
still need to think about this though.
