I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with coffee. During my Navy days I would drink multiple cups a day, which usually led to my being agitated. I often point to my coffee-drinking friends’ near-homicidal behavior during Hurricane Fran as reason enough to give up coffee.
I’ve mostly given up drinking caffeinated coffee. I’ve speculated to myself that the years of drinking coffee have carved canyons through my brain which can only be filled by the next cup of Joe. As with any addiction, each cup never seems to reach the level the prior one did.
And yet, I consider what the my heroes the Wright Brothers accomplished. Orville and Wilbur were avid coffee drinkers, and among the possessions they chose to drag across the sands to their Kitty Hawk shack was coffee. Those two brothers never suffered in the brains department, did they?
This week I read an enlightening article on lifehacker about this mysterious drug called coffee. The lifehacker article was based on a book by Stephen Braun called Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine. Entertainment Weekly describes Braun’s book this way:
Award-winning science writer Stephen Braun, in this zippy little tome, mixes concise explanations of how everybody’s favorite mind-altering substances work with a stimulating dash of related cultural tidbits
I’m seventh on the Wake County Public Library’s waiting list for this book and I can hardly wait to read it. If you’re like me and can’t wait, read the lifehacker article above and also see this interview with Braun about the book.