Caffeine And Other Drugs

As a stimulant substance that can amplify certain mental states, caffeine is a drug, and one that can enhance energy for a time, although it can also prolong or deepen exhaustion when used in exclusion of rest.  It might not be called a drug openly by some people.  After all, it is a rather culturally entrenched drug in many places.  One would be able to use and talk about it freely in places where one might be shunned for using even something as relatively soft a drug as marijuana.  With various other substances like alcohol, there is widespread social acceptance, but usually with restrictions of when or where or possibly how much one is drinking or using it.

Caffeine is distinct from many other drugs, yes, but it is a drug that is looked to for daily or fairly regular stimulation in plenty of cases.  Despite having the potential to over-accelerate one's heart, it does not get people high or drunk as opposed to jittery or alert even when sleep is what a person really needs.  What is arbitrary and hypocritical about this is that people who condemn all use of other drugs, save for some that are medically prescribed, might object on the basis of addiction being likely or even merely possible, whereas caffeine addiction is fairly normalized.

As for biological and mental health, is regular caffeine use automatically dangerous?  Intaking up to around 400 milligrams of caffeine a day is generally expected to be safe for adults, with smaller amounts like 100-200 milligrams being safer, even if ingested all at one time--it is just that some people might be very sensitive to caffeine and have extreme difficulty sleeping afterward.  Drinks (and sometimes foods) of varying cultural popularity have miscellaneous amounts of caffeine, and the extreme popularity of the likes of coffee shows that caffeine is a socially accepted drug.

Danger to health is not what makes something an addiction.  Still, people can suffer caffeine withdrawals or become dependent on it to simply navigate basic waking life.  Upon discontinuing use for even a time, someone could experience headaches and lethargy.  This, however, is likely to be ignored or dismissed though it is addiction.  Addiction is not as easy to pinpoint as some think [1]--is someone addicted to air because not breathing it has adverse effects?  Is needing food to live or liking a particular dish an addiction to food?  Not at all!  By being hypocritical, though, certain people who are dependent on caffeine disregard the nature of reality as they come to caffeine for comfort or pleasure to the point of undergoing withdrawals without it.

Caffeine is not like cocaine; it is not that the latter being highly destructive by default means the former must be as well.  Nonetheless, addiction is often celebrated, perpetuated, or trivialized when caffeine is involved, for people misunderstand it, assume it is not a drug or encourage dependence when they would not do the same for equivalent substances, or think it a personal necessity for their lives when it is not.  The way my culture at large regards drugs is very selective.  Some psychological dependencies are encouraged and others are not.  The very nature of caffeine as a drug might be highly under-recognized.  All the while, many of the legitimate and incomplete factors of addiction alike are present in how some consume caffeine, as blind as they are to double standards they might hold to.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/12/what-is-addiction.html