1 cup (250ml, not one 60ml serving) of espresso has the same caffeine content as 2L of pepsi... but 2L of pepsi is 233g of sugar!

I would think that when drinking litres and litres of soft-drink daily, there's going to be health consequences from factors other than just the caffeine content!

I used to drink tonnes of instant coffee all day long in the office, to keep myself focussed... but then I discovered that fresh coffee is almost an entirely different drink than instant!

These days I'll have one real coffee (freshly ground and extracted) in the morning, and maybe one in the afternoon. I find the whole ritual of making the warm drink, the act of drinking it, and of course the effect of the caffeine to be great at lifting my mood and getting me "into the zone" in the morning.

A second afternoon coffee is usually too much and causes a bit of a "burnt out" feeling after a while, but is worth it on sleepy days. It's also a social experience with other people, like going out for a beer

If I keep up that routine for a few weeks, then I start to develop a coffee dependency. If I skip my morning coffee at that point, then I get the withdrawal symptom of strong headaches and irritability, and if I do have my morning coffee then I just feel "normal"... which forces me to have a second one, which is bad, as it's a downward spiral. To avoid this, I try to not have too much daily, and try to have "zero coffee" days fairly regularly.

I also mix it up between espresso, drip, moka and French press, as they all produce different caffeine content and flavour

p.s. could your caffeine, sugar and oxygen threads all be combined?

Between the ages of 12 and 22 I never drank water once. I literally refused to drink from water fountains, sink faucets, bottled water, etc. I literally did not drink just water.

I had only cola beverages such as Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper.

From 22 to 27 I started to drink water slowly.

After 27 I mainly only drank water.

I never drink coffee or tea. Since childhood I was under the impression that drinking coffee is a sign of being an adult.

That means you have to pay bills and your body is ailing you, which is why you need to resort to coffee to get that extra charge in the first place. I’m not interested, and it doesn’t taste good anyway (I had it once when I was 5).

In my experience, caffeine is only a placebo anyway. I’ve never gotten any charge from it etc. During the 10 years I drank nothing but caffeinated beverages I felt no difference in my overall energy levels or ability to stay awake. If it really does have any effect in keeping one awake, physically it is trivial. It mainly works because people think it will. Speaking from experience.

As someone who hates tea and mostly dislikes coffee, I certainly chose the wrong country in which to live.

I’ve been on full-day acting jobs in which there were literally no other beverages other than green tea, the national past-time of Japan.

Ironically, I am wearing the t-shirt for the film and the main shoot that stands out in my mind in this regard.

I went thirsty for the whole day because the only other option was to drink green tea. I was literally yelling my curses that they chose to provide about 300 bottles of green tea instead of the only liquid on the planet that all humans are willing to drink: water. Hello people; not everyone likes tea you know!

L. Spiro

That sounds extremely strange to me. When I was a kid and now, I drink no caffeine at all, but in the center of my life I drank only caffeine.

That puts me at both extremes (either 0% or 100%, nothing in-between) and I noticed no difference at all either way in any aspect of my life. Not in my sleep cycles, energy levels, whatever.

Are you sure these things did not happen to you just because you have heard about the effects of caffeine before and you simply believed what you heard?

As for sugar and oxygen I have replied in those threads.

L. Spiro

Indeed I go through cycles of caffeine dependency. Like fir, cola was my beverage of choice during my college years. I regularly drank a 12 pack of Coca-Cola a day. I could also put away a large pizza all by myself in a meal, too. My metabolism was off the charts. Luck was on my side that I never got a kidney stone. Drying off the caffeine addiction one summer was just about the most painful 2 months I can recall. Now that I'm older and my metabolism is slowing down, I limit my caffeine intake and try not to overeat.

It goes without saying that everyone is different and that their own reactions to caffeine will be personal and different than most other people.

The effects of caffeine vary widly between people and the particular preparation. You may just have a high natural tolerance, L.Spiro

My girlfriend becomes extremely excitable, irritable and head-ached from any amount of coffee, but she's relaxed by chocolate. It's not likely just placebo, as she'll break out in hot flushes and sweats, as well as the behavioural changes, even from desserts where she didn't know there was coffee in them.

Personally, I can feel espresso coffee "working" in my brain (like a very mild nicotine rush), but I've never gotten the same effect from regular soft-drinks or chocolate.

If I do have a block of chocolate at my desk, I can stay up for long periods without losing too much focus by eating it over the course of the night. That's not an intentional thing, more of an accident where you suddenly realize "oh crap, it's 4am and I've eaten that whole block".

With Instant-coffee or "energy-drinks", my brain feels "tight", like it doesn't fit in my skill, and I feel tired soon after.

With any form of caffeine, I know I've had too much when I get dehydrated -- when you get the urge to drink a litre of water but are still thirsty afterwards, your eyes dry out, etc... The main cause of hangover symptoms is also dehydration, so it makes sense that you can feel 'hungover' from drinking too much strong coffee.

Like I said above, instant-coffee and real coffee are almost completely different drinks. Also America is renowned for their love of terrible drip coffee, so there may be a different preparation that you do like. I personally didn't really like it that much until I moved to Melbourne where there's a good culture surrounding it (and a lot of coffee snobs). The method that's used to extract the coffee from the beans (the grind, the temperature, the pressure, etc) has a huge impact on the chemical composition of the resulting liquid.

It's like hating all pasta dishes, because you had a seafood pasta once that you didn't like