I think a lot of the difficulty in quitting can be mitigated by slowly titrating down the dose over a month or two instead of quitting cold turkey.
But your experience mirrors mine in going cold turkey which I think demonstrates that caffeine can cause both physical chemical dependence, and psychological addiction.
That lancet article very well refutes the point you are trying to make. The term “chemical addiction” is not really used anymore because it really just refers to mechanisms of chemical dependence, which are neither necessary or sufficient to cause addiction on their own.
There has been a major shift in how addiction is understood in modern research, but you have it backwards- your perspective of chemical addiction or direct chemical mechanism being important is the old discredited concept, not the new one, which sees it as a psychological process that requires no direct chemical mechanism at all.
The chemical dependence is quite a factor in the psychological process you refer to. It nudges and reinforces this psychological behaviour. You can broaden the definition to include addiction without chemical dependence, but it does not mean you can omit the chemical dependence factor from the equation.
This chemical dependence is often the number one reason people cannot physically stop their psychological process. Potential effects from quitting include simply dying, or with less strong chemical dependence, feeling anxiety or generally ill.
This chemical dependence is learned behavior in some cases, chemically induced in others.
I get what you’re saying. Dopamine withdrawal is real though and if you no longer get dopamine from an action or you physically prevent yourself from receiving that dopamine, it can be just as debilitating as cigarette withdrawal or kicking a (soft) drug habit.
> Dopamine withdrawal is real though and if you no longer get dopamine from an action or you physically prevent yourself from receiving that dopamine
Exactly, this is why the idea of addiction is more appropriately focused around the actual real world impacts rather than specific chemical mechanisms- the difficulty quitting and the negative impacts on your life. If it's strong enough to overpower your will and destroy your life, that is sufficient, it doesn't matter exactly how.
When it comes down to it, something like an amphetamine drug or other stimulants that directly increase synaptic dopamine, vs a behavior like gambling addiction that exploits the brains instincts and wiring in other ways to still cause the increase in synaptic dopamine are not fundamentally, categorically different in a way that one or the other shouldn't be taken seriously and considered a "real addiction." Either can completely destroy some peoples life, and for other people can be easily controlled and used in moderation.
Yes this is absolutely true, it is a factor in addiction- I initially mentioned this in my comment but deleted it because I felt I was making it too complicated.
There is no real importance to the concept of “chemically addictive” and it has largely gone out of favor in psychology. Even physical behaviors like gambling and sex that obviously cannot directly, chemically act on reward system pathways, can still be just as life destroying addictive and challenging to quit as any drug. The dsm now classifies gambling disorder as an addiction.
Caffeine, unlike some drugs and alcohol, doesn't cause severe withdrawal symptoms. Because of that, experts don't label regular caffeine use as an addiction.
There’s so many layers to this. First, there’s history: Coka-cola (originally made from a Kola nut and cocaine) was told they couldn’t put cocaine in their “medicine” anymore so they just sold it as a “soft-drink” without the cocaine.
Then there’s the beverage industry who pointed out there’s caffeine in tea leaves and other plant material and that it’s not a threat: (1) US vs 40 barrels and 20 kegs of Coka-cola. Ultimately reducing the amount of caffeine in soft-drinks.
Round and round we go allowing companies to use chemicals to keep us buying their consumables.
While it is a contributing factor, physical dependence- withdrawal is not anymore considered necessary or sufficient for addiction. The author there is using an outdated pre-DSM5 definition of addiction which failed to recognize that there are two separate but related phenomena here. Things like gambling and sex addiction obviously cause no withdrawal symptoms from chemical dependence at all, but can be almost impossible to quit and serious enough to destroy someone’s life.
Severity of withdrawal symptoms from caffeine also varies substantially from person to person. It’s probably not directly killing anyone, but for some people it can be brutally unpleasant and disabling for at least several days.
I never knew that “acute intermittent hypoxia” was a known treatment for depression, but I’ve found both freediving and Wim Hof breathing to be effective at treating my depression- however never the two at the same time as that is extremely dangerous.
Interesting… I will look into that. Part of Wim Hofs teachings include breathing with an extremely long exhale while humming which sounds related. I’ve heard of research showing that any type of breathing with longer exhales than inhales activates a parasympathetic response, calming you down.
I suspect you’re missing something important- not surprising since Wim is a really unclear teacher. The low oxygen and/or high co2 causes your body to panic and you are supposed to use that as a stimulus to gradually train conscious control of your heart rate and stress response and calm yourself down. This is where the benefit comes from, not the short term physiological panic itself, whose symptoms you are describing. In fact, those symptoms should go away entirely when you learn to calm the panic and consciously control your autonomic nervous system. This then also primes you mentally to be able to go into ice water, which is also a large stimulus to learn to calm, plus trains your brain to more easily jump into anything difficult. All of this takes months or years of consistent practice to gradually develop a relatively permanent sense of calm and internal strength among other things, and is really just a simplified form of tantric tummo meditation.
That reply completely misunderstands the quote. It is about how people with integrity, who are willing and able to put out effort and endure difficulties to build a better future, do usually manage to make things better than those who do not.
It’s essentially a truism warning people that problems you ignore don’t fix themselves, and has nothing to do with gender or gender stereotypes, that’s a linguistic misunderstanding. In this context, “men” is gender neutral and means “people.” In old english, the word “men” is explicitly gender neutral and there was a different word, “wēr” for male people, which is still used in some contexts, e.g. “werewolf” means wolf man.
American pickups are very practical for what they are designed for. Your 4 cylinder hatchback is not going to pull a 20,000lb trailer up a steep grade, or haul enough lumber to frame in a house, or a 7,000lb bed full of gravel. While there are very visible idiots in the USA that drive big trucks for aesthetic reasons, there are also plenty of farmers, contractors, etc. that need them as a practical tool to haul heavy loads. For them, it’s not an oversized car but a smaller and more economical alternative to a large commercial truck.
> American pickups are very practical for what they are designed for. Your 4 cylinder hatchback is not going to pull a 20,000lb trailer up a steep grade or haul enough lumber to frame in a house, or a 7,000lb bed full of gravel.
An f150 can do none of these things.
> While there are very visible idiots in the USA that drive big trucks for aesthetic reasons
That is 95% of the market.
> there are also plenty of farmers, contractors, etc. that need them as a practical tool to haul heavy loads.
For the average contractor a panel van would be more capable and useful. You can put 3 metric tonnes in a man tge (and actually have the space for it) and tow a 3.5 tonnes trailer. And it’s available bare if you need an open bed, or a custom rear (e.g. for a lift).
So? I gave specs for a typical 1 ton truck. A 1/2 ton F150 is smaller, cheaper, and more efficient. It depends on what you need.
A panel van is more useful for some things, a truck for others- it depends on what you’re doing. You’re not going to fill your panel van with manure or gravel and then transport it across a muddy field without getting stuck. I grew up in a rural area of the USA where everyone owned trucks they needed and used for work, most were old and rusty and they all also owned a regular passenger car they used when they weren’t hauling something heavy… people were poor and did not waste fuel driving a truck except when it was essential- not a fashion statement, just a tool.
My family owned a 3/4 ton truck that we needed for hauling our boat and livestock, but we drove an old Volvo at other times. My dad built the home I grew up in, and he had to transport all of the materials to build it himself.
I think the hate on here is coming mostly from a place of ignorance about what life in rural America is like, which is what full sized American trucks are engineered and perfectly suited for. Where transporting thousands of pounds of materials across a muddy field in 4WD isn’t something you do once a year but often twice a day just to survive.
So that's a small fraction of the market, and literally none of what's already landed in europe.
> I grew up in a rural area of the USA where everyone owned trucks they needed and used for work, most were old and rusty and they all also owned a regular passenger car they used when they weren’t hauling something heavy… people were poor and did not waste fuel driving a truck except when it was essential- not a fashion statement, just a tool.
OK. Apparently you're waking up from a coma and missed the last 20 year of US car trends?
> My dad built the home I grew up in, and he had to transport all of the materials to build it himself.
Cool. My grandfather did the same for his family, using an R4. And the odd rental when that wasn't enough.
> I think the hate on here is coming mostly from a place of ignorance about what life in rural America is like
Or you could just read what people actually write, and see that your "thinking" could not be more wrong.
There's never been less farmers in the US, or more trucks sold. And full-size trucks are nowhere near sales leaders.
My point is that full sized American trucks are uniquely effective at what they are actually engineered for, and plenty of people do need and use them for that. The fact that they are even more popular with people that have no practical need for them doesn’t invalidate my point in any way, despite your rude and dismissive tone. If you dislike people misusing a tool for something other than it’s practical purpose, that’s fine, but why project that onto me, or the tool itself?
I very much appreciate the capabilities and utility of American pickup trucks, despite not owning one because I don’t need one. I also find it distasteful when people use them as urban passenger cars to project some sort of “personal brand” without having an actual need, but that in no way diminishes my appreciation for their practicality when used appropriately.
I suspect people are in part so aggressively hateful of American pickup trucks because they see it as a symbol for an opposing side in a culture war. However that perspective seems really silly to anyone that uses them properly to meet a practical need.
The only culture war is between your ears, people are “hateful of American pickups” because as I already wrote multiple times and you refuse to read the overwhelming majority of their uses and users are what you claim to find distasteful. When “used appropriately” is closing on nonexistent and the misuses cause massive harm it’s a reasonable response. Even more so when per TFA your leaders are aiming to spread that plague by (economic) force.
> my appreciation for their practicality when used appropriately.
You can do that and still acknowledge that pickups are a massive problem. These are not exclusive thoughts despite your refusal to see it. It might be easier if you substitute pickups for mine trucks, excavators, or rollers, which I assume you don’t have the same emotional attachment towards.
> You can do that and still acknowledge that pickups are a massive problem
I never said they aren't, you seem to be trying to have an argument against a position that I have never stated or held. I was explaining how these vehicles can be practical when used for their intended and engineered purpose, and your rebuttals are targeted as some other assumed perspective or position that I simply don't have. Please drop the insults- that isn't how we discuss things on HN.
My acknowledgement of the practical utility of American pickups for their engineered purpose doesn't come from any kind of emotional attachment, or affinity for them, nor any delusion that most of their owners actually need or use them properly- that's all coming from you. I'm a European car nerd/snob and wouldn't personally be caught dead driving any American vehicle, I just really don't like them. I own a fuel efficient diesel German SUV that I tow a flatbed utility trailer behind, so I can do some of the things one would usually do with a pickup, without having to own one.
(In the context of the discussion about these vehicles in the EU)
In the EU, neither would any American pickup truck: If registered as a normal class B vehicle, the total gross vehicle weight would be limited to 3500 kg (7700 lbs), and it would at most be permitted to tow 3500 kg (7700 lbs) with full independent trailer brakes, 750 kg (1650 lbs) without. You can add roughly 1000 kg if you tow a semitrailer, but getting the vehicle certified with a fifth wheel would probably be infeasible.
It doesn't make sense as a class C truck here (special driver's license, tachograph requirements for commercial use). It's way less nimble than our Scania/Volvo trucks (their turning radii are way tighter, and and have much smaller footprint for a given capacity), and is obviously a lot less capable than a vehicle that can be build from small utility up to the ~100k lbs range.
At the same time, if a farmer is outside the scope of a regular personal vehicle, they're most likely going to use their go-to tractor (e.g., Lamborghini, John Deere) which can haul anything anywhere, otherwise if they really need to haul they'll be reaching for a Scania/Volvo.
(It is common to register smaller, 7500 kg class C vehicles, but that's usually stuff like large Mercedes Sprinter vans, often built up as specialized service vehicles - think sewer inspection and repair.)
In the context of the US: It might seem like the best choice given the common options there, but I think the issue is with the options and perceived utility. It's the same with large trucks: The common ones in the EU are much more powerful, rated to haul more, are more comfortable, safer, have much smaller footprint for the given load and turns on a dime compared to US options.
Yes, large heavy unibody SUVs like the Q7/Touareg/Cayenne with all of the safety tech of a high end German luxury car are likely the safest cars possible- for the passengers at least.
If botox is required to secure an engineering job when you have a long proven track record of solving hard technical problems successfully- the company is a fraud and the jobs are fake.
“Companies” don’t hire people, a few human individuals acting autonomously, with their own beliefs and biases, are ultimately responsible for bringing someone new onboard.
Once you hit 40s just get the botox anyway. Looks better. Only lasts 3 months or so. Good for a few rounds of interviews.
The way hiring works is a reflection of company culture. If they can’t execute a hiring process that hires the most skilled and competent instead of the youngest and best looking, guess what kind of coworkers you will have to deal with?
Anyways, I am in my 40s- I am an amateur strength athlete and eat healthy and already look almost inappropriately healthy and youthful for a sedentary job- enough so that I feel sometimes I’m not taken as seriously because I don’t look like a stereotypical elder nerd.
An ageist company culture does not mean the company is a fraud though or that the jobs are fake. It’s all very real, you are just rejected, that’s what makes it so frustrating, you could be living the good life if only those people weren’t so ageist. Now imagine being a POC and your whole life is like that, just racism everywhere keeping you out.
In both cases- ageism and racism, the employer culture is hiring less qualified workers based on criteria other than skill and competence. That necessarily means they have a lower caliber of expertise on average, as they are artificially decreasing the pool size of potential candidates. Moreover, if they have a discriminatory hiring practice in the first place, it is very unlikely that they are really selecting for competence even within the preferred demographic. For an extreme example, look at the current US administration, hiring only people with "Mar-a-lago face" combined with them needing to have a particular ideology and extreme lack of ethics, necessarily makes virtually all of the hires incompetent. They aren't, presumably specifically seeking incompetent hires, it's just the only people left given the fact that they select for things other than competence first.
I hire software engineers, and given all of the discrimination in the field, my willingness to hire women, minorities, and older people gives me a substantial advantage over those I am competing against that have discriminatory hiring practices. Although I'm not selecting for discriminated against groups, in practice I hire almost exclusively from them, because there are a surplus of extremely qualified people in those demographics that are getting rejected from everywhere else. I'm sure there are a ton of competent young white men in software engineering, but they're never among my top applicants, presumably because they've already been hired elsewhere.
This widespread discrimination pre-loads the applicant pool, such that the effect is enormous: you are getting substantially inferior employees if you have discriminatory hiring practices, because so many others do to, so your "preferred demographic" is already depleted of competent applicants.
But your experience mirrors mine in going cold turkey which I think demonstrates that caffeine can cause both physical chemical dependence, and psychological addiction.
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