the general boundary ive seen for heavy intake is 4 x 12oz cups of coffee. i know somebody who has 10 and they don't seem like an outlier, really. especially when the same boundary is 2 energy drinks.

one time they were in some situation where they couldn't get any for 18 hours... like a storm with power outage or whatever, and they had a splitting headache no pain meds could touch and had to stay in a dark room all day under covers until they could get more.

the withdrawals alone seem completely unacceptable to me. you can't tell me that doesn't accompany psychological dependence and some pretty wild rewiring.

but, before the temperance movement, employers were expected to provide alcohol for workers to get and stay a little in the bag all day, which was considered healthy and normal and all the domestic abuse, rage, and dying young or in accidents and from everything else was just personal moral failure.

when i learned about the traditional alcohol at work thing, my first thought was how analogous it was to caffeine today in terms of being a free chemical provided by the bosses to induce desired behavior.

when i was in my 20s, i was a fiend. its hard not to be, but somewhere in my 30s as part of a personal drug inventory check-in, i went off it and many others. im not some anti-drug weirdo and still dabble occasionally. i expect to play around with weed more again in my retirement/sunset years.

but out of all the commonly used, commercially sold drugs, caffeine is the one where the most people act like i must be a serial killer for not partaking in it as soon as i am on my feet. like my existence offends them.

i have suspicions about the mental cost and lack of critical analysis of pathologies surrounding its heavy, daily use.