How Caffeine Changed The World

The world’s most-used psychoactive substance, caffeine; one many of us prefer not to live without (as I sip from my own cup of coffee). But why did this drug become so accepted and on such a global scale, what are its seductive powers, its history, its health benefits, and its side effects? For the full story, you can learn more from, “Caffeine: How Coffee and Tea Created the Modern World” by Michael Pollans.

Before caffeine, it was a very different world. People drank alcohol morning, noon and night because it was safer than water which was how most people got diseases, but if you fermented things, it would kill all of the harmful microbes that are in unfiltered water. Even kids were given hard cider to drink for breakfast. Caffeine comes along around the 1650’s and was as safe as alcohol because it was made by boiling water which made it even safer.

Having a new form of clean drinking water was an after thought, but it gave an incredible public health boost. There is a lot of evidence linking coffee and tea consumption with the enlightenment in France and with the age of reason in England. When you’re doing physical labor outdoors, which was most of history, you could be buzzed. You didn’t need to know what time it was. You just worked from sun up to sundown, but when you start working with running machines and doing double entry bookkeeping, you need a clear head. And when jobs started moving toward requiring night shifts and overnight shifts, you couldn’t do that with beer, but caffeine freed its consumers from the rhythms of the sun.