Then there’s the newspaper with the article about caffeine abuse.
Emergency physicians, it turns out, don’t ask us if we’ve ingested caffeine before running stress tests or admitting young people complaining of heart palpitations or chest pains into the hospital. Recent research found, however, that young people were abusing caffeine in about two thirds of the cases researchers at Northwestern University investigated.
These researchers, who presented their results at a convention of emergency physicians in October, were talking about caffeine supplements. Pills. They weren’t asking about the caffeine we drink as food but about the caffeine we take as an over-the-counter stimulant. A drug.
The Cox News Service, however, made the connection and presented the caffeine content of some of our favorite beverages.
My café au lait had between 104 and 192 milligrams of caffeine, according to Cox. If I had bought it at Starbucks instead, it would probably have contained 200 milligrams. Even if I drank more Coca-Cola, I would have consumed only 34 milligrams. Iced tea might have contributed as few as nine milligrams. Even Red Bull or Rockstar energy drinks would have had fewer milligrams of caffeine (only 80).
One No Doz tablet contains 200 milligrams.
The doctors who commented on the research presentation at the American College of Emergency Physicians said that caffeine abuse is rarely recognized because we consider the stimulant safe because it is a food, not a drug.
Dr. Danielle McCarthy, one of the study’s authors said:
"We want people ingesting caffeine pills and supplements to know that caffeine is a drug, and overuse is potentially harmful, especially when mixed with other pharmaceuticals for euphoria. There is a trend in the pro-drug culture towards promoting legal alternatives to illegal drugs, and it can be very harmful."
The article reminded me of some of the few times I have feared for my safety in public or on the road. I had just arrived at a coffee shop in Chapel Hill, N.C., which has a thriving coffee culture, and parked my 11-year-old Geo Metro (aqua with a pink racing stripe) next to a black SUV.
When I opened the car door, it touched the running board on the SUV. The vehicle’s owner leaped out of the driver’s seat, cell phone still in hand, and stalked toward me, shouting. I have seen eyes like his before when people had too much coke or when they were about to beat someone to a pulp. Submission seemed the best strategy for avoiding violence. I called him “sir,” apologized for touching his car and listened quietly while he heaped verbal abuse on me and my car. (If I’d had a better one, I would have cared.)
His paint job intact (not even a chip of aqua on the black), his words and mine carried over the airwaves to whomever he was talking to, I apologized again and dared to walk toward the coffee shop.
He must have had quite a few milligrams of caffeine to have felt the touch of my happy little car’s door as a threat.
Several times in Austin, home to 40 Starbucks and numerous other chain and local coffee purveyors, drivers have directed their rage against me on the city streets. Red faces and yelling, even on an early Sunday morning a block or so off Congress Avenue (near a Starbucks location, incidentally) when I waited for the birds to fly out of the lane instead of moving forward immediately. That one included leaning out the driver’s side window shouting and shaking a fist.
Seguin hasn’t developed a coffee culture. Usually, I think that’s a problem because I want to sit among other coffee-drinking book readers. Maybe I need to rethink that. We have one friendly coffee place/ chiropractor’s office (I like the combination of stimulation and relaxation), ChiroJava. We can get adjusted after a caffeine binge, or keep our drinking in our homes and off the streets.
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