Bottled up energy

I’m sitting at my laptop staring at three empty cups of coffee standing proudly at the edge of my desk and mocking me for my dependency.

I’ve heard caffeine is a drug, and I’m sad to report I’ve recently become an addict.
I wake up every morning – only a few hours after I went to sleep – and the anticipation of the climb to the caffeine high is my motivation for opening my eyes.
My parents tell me to get more sleep, my friends tell me to better manage my time, and my agenda tells me to suck it up. I have no choice – and I’m not the only one.

Monday through Friday, Starbucks could be mistaken for the venue of a Caffeine Addicts Anonymous meeting – except these addicts aren’t trying to get clean. They’re indulging by pounding shots of espresso and chugging lattes.

These patrons are standing in line, squinting to see the menu on the wall behind the cash register, and avoiding contact with the others like them. Socializing is kept to a minimum since crankiness is acceptable before the morning caffeine intake.
Students need their coffee. It helps us stay awake during class, late night study sessions and the dreaded finals week. But even though we witness the ways in which caffeine helps us, what we don’t see is how it might actually be harmful.

Without reading labels and doing research before consuming a caffeinated product, we don’t even know how much of this drug we’re injecting in to our bodies.
Coffee is a quick route to caffeine, which is a performance booster. But there are intense and potentially dangerous shortcuts that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is allowing on the market as nutritional supplements.

I’m talking about energy drinks that contain up to 505 milligrams of caffeine per bottle. It’s like drinking 14 cans of Coca-Cola. You’ll finish that dissertation in ten minutes flat if your hands can stay steady enough to type coherent phrases
Aside from the fact that dependency on any drug or the concept of overdosing on caffeine is never a good thing, a study at Johns Hopkins University conducted by Dr. Roland R. Griffiths shows that caffeine could be the gateway drug into illegal use of prescription drugs like Ritalin.  
 
Griffiths might be on to something.

Students who “need” their coffee in order to function in the morning will probably be more open to trying another method of a performance enhancer – and the number of new coffee drinkers increases every year.

Young adults who drink coffee are now averaging 3.2 cups a day, acording to the National Coffee Association. This number is significantly higher than the 2.5 consumed in 2005. 

I’d be a hypocrite if I advocated sacrificing the bean that tag-teams with the drug that, let’s face it, is partially responsible for our passing grades. But it’s a good idea to limit our consumption of caffeine, especially since the FDA hasn’t been able to stop the caffeine companies from upping our dosages. We should be on the alert – beyond the coffee buzz.