The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee (1830)

I used to drink a lot of coffee, eventually settling on the SkullCrusher brand, which I loved, for my single coffee of the day; My morning coffee.

One day, I decided that I would quit, and what followed was around 8 days of the worst headache I have had in a long time.

Now, I wake full of energy and feeling sharp.

The smell of coffee makes me want one, but the dullness and headache are good deterrents.

Worth a read (5-10 minutes). I found myself agreeing more than disagreeing.

That aside, some gems:

“…Among certain weak natures, coffee produces only a kind of harmless congestion of the mind; instead of feeling animated, these people feel drowsy, and they say that coffee makes them sleep. Such individuals may have the legs of serfs and the stomachs of os- triches, but they are badly equipped for the work of thought.”

“If the experience of the English is typical, heavy tea-drinking will produce English moral philosophy, a tendency toward a pale complexion, hypocrisy and backbiting.”

I have a theory that the renaissance and perhaps more critically the industrial revolution that followed was in a large part driven by coffee.

Middle ages, things are a bit sleepy, dopey. Everybody is drinking beer all the time. progress runs at a slow pace.

Then there is this popular new tea sweeping the scene and boy howdy does it get you up and going. Now people are waking up and doing things.

Caffeine, It's a hell of a drug.

I really like this essay and I managed to track down the original in French, for anyone who reads French:

https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Trait%C3%A9_des_excitants_mod...

The part about coffee is halfway down the page under the heading §III — du café.

If you suffer from any kind of anxiety, and you drink caffeine, you should seriously consider quitting. Even if you only drink as little as one coffee per day. There's a very high chance that caffeine is the source of a large part of it.

I've been drinking coffee for 20 years and had always assumed that I was just an anxious, paranoid person. Quitting made me realize that I really wasn't.

Quitting/reducing has also cured my itchy skin problem.

I also highly recommend the subreddit r/decaf as a great source of information.

This seems like it was influenced by 1821’s Confessions of an Opium Eater, which is a very interesting read, far more than you’d probably assume.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opiu...

Fun read :) Balzac has been on my reading list for some time, I see a lot are on https://standardebooks.org/ebooks?query=balzac&sort=default&... – anyone have a recommendation for first Balzac book?

I was recently asked, unexpectedly, what would I do if AI took my job.

The first thing that came to mind was to become a coffee grower, farmer, producer or something with coffee.

Now I cant shake that thought!

reminds me of "Memoir from Antproof Case" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoir_from_Antproof_Case which wikipedia really does not describe well, as the plot really details the protagonist's life long war against coffee drinking, the following review handles that part better:

https://web.archive.org/web/20121008201138/https://www.nytim...

Wonderfully written. If I have had too much caffeine I also look forward to the time when it burns off: "finally the tension on the harp strings eases, and one returns to the relaxed, meandering, simple-minded and cryptogamous life of the retired bourgeoisie."

this kind of intellectual insult is just not hurled anymore with as much precision and bite as in former times

I love this, very fun writing

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