Are You Really Addicted to Caffeine?

I love to drink coffee. Am I one of those douchey connoisseurs who buys and tries different blends and types of coffee and then comments to whomever I’m with about the taste and qualities of the specific roast? No. In fact, I almost exclusively drink black iced coffee from almost any coffee shop within 100 feet of where I currently am at any given moment. So I do in fact, enjoy coffee, both the taste and the lifestyle. But am I addicted? I don’t think so.

Sure, some people are probably “addicted” to caffeine and may actually need it in order to get a jolt of energy throughout the day and for someone like me who is usually a 2–4 cups a day kind of guy, I do sometimes notice a bit of a difference by the end of the night. But for the most part I can have roughly the same day with or without a coffee intake — get out of bed around 10, work online until 6, leave my apartment around 7, return around 11:30, not go to sleep until 1:30–2.

I don’t know if it’s the mere fact of being legitimately addicted like you can be to drugs or booze I suppose, but I think people fall in love with the idea of being addicted to caffeine rather than actually relying on it on an hourly basis. If you sleep the same amount of hours each night, I bet you could have roughly the same amount of production in a day without 6 cups of coffee. Try it.

Now espresso? That’s a different story.