As a youngster my friends and I would play dress up and instead of having tea parties, we would have coffee parties. When our parents would ask us why, the answer was always because we were acting like adults. To 6 and 8 year-olds, drinking coffee was the adult thing to do.
Honestly, I’m not sure if it was because of the years of coffee parties, but even through my teenage years I always viewed coffee drinking as some sort of adult-ness. Moreover, in the beginning of my college career when I would try to drink coffee, I never really liked it but part of me always envied students casually drinking a cup in between classes. Needless to say it took 4 months of living in India drinking copious amounts of filtered coffee to finally jump on the coffee bandwagon, and now I love it.
http://vi.sualize.us/coffeeaddict2_coffee_word_art_picture_8U7y.html
I think this brings up an interesting point; does drinking coffee make you an adult or just addicted to caffeine? It’s not secret that an average cup of coffee contains anywhere between 65-135 milligrams of caffeine, not even counting all the sweetness, milk, and flavors we add. Regardless, one cup or even two a day isn’t bad. Better yet, only drinking coffee few times a week, after a meal, or socially, has actually proven to be beneficial for your health.
The imaginary line from adult to addict gets crossed with an entire pot in the morning, drinking coffee all day, and of course, with the dreaded caffeine headache. When assessing friends, and myself, the majority of us drink a cup in the morning, many throughout the day, or at least a few times a week. As I talked with my coworkers they all drank coffee all day or were irritable before they had their morning cup. After doing some asking around I realized what I was calling “caffeine addicts” were a lot more prominent.
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/coffee-and-hormones
This made me reconsider the questions I was asking and what I was looking for. In the end I never came to a conclusion where the adult/addict line was but I realized, moderation is key (wow, I sound like my mom) but seriously, do what works best for you. Although I don’t think headaches as a result of not drinking coffee is the answer; there is a happy medium. To my childhood self, instead of being a nation of adults maybe we are a nation of caffeine addicts, but that’s not a bad thing.
http://thehungrygoddess.com/2013/07/hgeats-give-us-coffee-chat-731-12n-e…