Midterms are upon us; Bass is as crowded as the Toad’s dance floor on a Saturday night, and people are, well, actually studying in the stacks. Innumerable hours are spent reviewing notes, cracking open textbooks, and figuring out what combination of font size, spacing, and margins allows you to write the bare minimum for your term paper due at midnight.
In light of the stress and pressure stemming from the number of people in your review session who have memorized the entire course packet despite claiming to have “just started studying 46 seconds ago,” a vast majority of frazzled students turn to drugs to cope.
Yeah, there are the obvious choices. Drinking that third (fourth?…fifth?) cup of coffee to pull an all-nighter, which is bound to be followed by several celebratory long island iced teas from Amigos, a “mind eraser” a la Box 63, or alternative methods to handle this thing we call “life” at Yale.
If you are like me, or 80% of Americans, you consume caffeine on a daily basis–especially in the weeks surrounding exams. Little known to many, caffeine is the world’s most abused drug.
Here are the basics: caffeine is a stimulant that tricks your body into feeling more awake when your actual level of alertness remains unchanged. On the plus side, studies show that if you are tired and show signs of fatigue, consuming caffeine is correlated with improvement on basic working memory and concentration tasks. On the other hand, excessive amounts of the drug can leave one feeling jittery and anxious, and it actually decreases memory and concentration.
Where you get your caffeine also affects your dosage intake. At Blue State, Willoughby’s, or if you are drinking Fair Trade, one cup of coffee provides you with 80-180 mg of caffeine. Each serving of espresso delivers about half of the caffeine in a cup of coffee.
Starbucks, on the other hand, jacks up the caffeine in their java—each serving of Starbucks coffee delivers almost twice the caffeine load of a cup at any other café.
Then you have dining hall “coffee”—I swear they serve us decaf out of spite.
Of course, there are other ways to get your caffeine fix this midterm season. Many types of tea, especially green or black, can give you the boost you need when you are dangerously close to being that kid in the fetal position in a Bass armchair amidst a pile of books and entangled in your computer charger. A good, strong cup of green tea actually doles out the caffeine equivalent of an espresso shot.
Energy drinks are another way to go, although some pack in so much caffeine that law suits are being brought against the companies due to adverse side effects experienced by users. Living Essential, the company that produces 5-hour Energy shots, has a host of personal injury suits pending due to side effects of their product; including numbness, heart palpitations, chest pain, and insomnia.
Redbull is generally a fairly safe choice. The drink packs 80mg of caffeine–about equivalent to a regular cup of coffee.
Yet there is a whole host of options that deliver an absolutely enormous serving of caffeine in a relatively low dose. Wired brand energy drinks can hold up to 500 mg of caffeine per can. This is equivalent to a little more than 6 cups of regular coffee. That would revive the comatose.
Symptoms of caffeine poisoning are all around us. You know that kid in the library that is nodding, smiling, and tapping his toes incessantly to some absurdly upbeat music? Or maybe the guy that is sweating profusely and keeps twitching beside you in Starbucks? Or the kid crying in the corner of Sterling music library? It is possible that they are not overzealous, overtly nervous, or deeply depressed people. Rather the curse of caffeine poisoning has caused them to behave in a manner abnormal to their human nature.
Withdrawal is another side effect that can turn any good-natured Yalie into a beast of immeasurable irritability. Take, for example, the Yale Dining staff. If the Yale Dining staff only drinks the coffee-like substance served in Yale dining halls, which provides absolutely no caffeine, this would provide a logical explanation for their unprecedented and inexplicable grumpiness.
Anyways, case in point, once your body is accustomed to a certain dose of caffeine on a regular basis, like any drug, you will experience symptoms of withdrawal once administration of the drug ends. Headaches, dizziness, nausea, irritability, and exacerbated fatigue can result from a lack of caffeine. Moral of the story: caffeine is a beautiful thing, but like any beautiful thing, tread lightly—anything beautiful usually has an ugly sister who is not afraid to fight dirty.