The drug that fuels the world
Do you consider yourself an addict to a psychoactive substance? I guess most would not do so. However, there is a strong chance that you are and have been for years.
There are many psychoactive substances in the world, yet the impact on our society of the one we find in the brown liquid we consume daily is second to none. While morning rituals are as individual as people themselves, most involve a nice cup of coffee or tea. With that comes the first dose of caffeine for the day, perhaps followed by more throughout the day. In our modern age, having some kind of caffeinated drink in the morning is deeply rooted in our society. Yet, not many people know the profound impact and effect that caffeine has and had on us.
However, before investigating how caffeine changed the world, it makes sense to investigate why it even exists.
Why does caffeine exist?
Caffeine is an alkaloid found in various plants, among them the Coffea plant as well as the camellia sinesis plant, the basis for black tea, green tea, and others. Furthermore, there are also plants that have minute amounts of caffeine in their nectar. Thus, there is a variety of ways on where caffeine can be found in plants and why it even is produced in the first place.
Even though there is the previously pointed out variety, the primary purpose of caffeine in most plants is as a pesticide. Most insects do not react well to caffeine, and the drug can seriously affect the insects. An interesting study showed that spiders that were exposed to caffeine web almost useless nets. Yet caffeine isn’t particularly good at killing insects.
However, even though killing off the pest might seem more effective, this would only be so in the short term. If the plant’s pesticide would kill the pest, the resistant insects would be favored, rendering the pesticide useless. Hence, it is ingenious to affect the insects in a way that makes them harmless for the plant.
However, as pointed out previously, there are also plants that have small amounts of caffeine in their nectar. This is special, as nectar is an attractant and hence putting a substance that is usually a repellant seems counterintuitive. Yet, researchers have found out that bees are more loyal to a plant if the plant’s nectar has a small amount of caffeine in it. Like the effect the drug has on humans, bees get more productive, and they better remember the floral scent. Hence they are more loyal and in turn more likely to pollinate the plant.
However, it is not all good for the bees, as they also start to misjudge the quality of their food source and will continue to use it even if it is rendered useless.
Effects of caffeine
As aforementioned, bees are busier while on caffeine but also have a worse judgment on the quality of a food source. While one of those effects is certain also to appear in humans, because we have way more evolved brains, we certainly do not fall victim to the short-fallings of caffeine, or do we?
Well, before diving a bit deeper into the effects of caffeine on humans, there is a fact that may shed some light on that: Out of the ten most popular soft drinks in the US, only two are not caffeinated. While this is not a judgment on the quality of these drinks, it clearly shows that also we humans are inclined towards caffeinated beverages.
So what exactly does caffeine do? Of course, it helps to keep you awake and gives you a better focus, but why is that so?
The most prominent effect of caffeine is the effect it has on the receptors of adenosine. These receptors are blocked by caffeine, and hence the adenosine won’t be able to produce a reaction. Adenosine has a wide variety of functions in the human body, including wakefulness and sleep pressure (i.e., how strongly we feel we have to go to sleep). The higher the level of adenosine in our bodies, the more tired we are and the higher our urge to go to sleep is.
However, in order for us to feel this urge, adenosine needs to reach its receptor. This is where caffeine comes in. It is one of the best-known antagonists of adenosine and blocks its receptors.
Hence, we do not feel the mounting sleep pressure even though it is there, as caffeine does not stop the production of adenosine.
So, after all this biology, in short, caffeine reduces sleep pressure because it blocks the adenosine, the thing responsible for sleep pressure, from reaching its receptor, so despite rising levels of adenosine, we don’t feel the need to go to sleep.
While this is the effect of caffeine on a biological* level, the vast majority of us know what caffeine does to one viewed more holistically. It promotes wakefulness and increases focus.
However, these effects also have their disadvantages, as many people do not get enough sleep overall. But, we have a solution for that: Caffeine.
It gets obvious, caffeine is a double-edged sword, relieving us of the symptoms of not sleeping enough but also significantly contributing to the problem itself.
Furthermore, caffeine is addictive, and most of us are, in fact, addicted. Withdrawal symptoms include headaches, fatigue, and problems focussing.This is a curious influence on our behavior. As the half-life of caffeine is around five to seven hours, this neatly coincides with our biorhythm. One of the reasons why the first cup of coffee in the morning tastes that great isn’t just its taste but also because it relieves us of the first withdrawal symptoms that start to pop up after a good night’s sleep.
While I, as a college student, certainly wouldn’t want to miss caffeine as a productivity booster, the impact of 1,3,7-Trimethylxanthine, as caffeine is named scientifically, extends far beyond just enhancing focus and allow us to stay awake.
*Of course there are many more, less profound, effects of caffeine that go beyond the scope of this article
History of caffeine and humans
Contrary to other psychoactive compounds, caffeine has become part of the human experience fairly recently. Legend has it that a goat farmer in modern-day Ethiopia one day became aware that his goats became increasingly more active after eating a particular plant and did not rest like normal during the nights.
The plant was, of course, the coffea plant. He brought the fruits to a local monk, which after first throwing them into a fire because he believed it was the devil’s work, made a brew out of them because the beans in the fire smelled that good. As this beverage allowed them to study late into the night, they shared their knowledge, and the tale of the energizing fruit began to find its way around. While this tale is almost certainly a myth, people drinking beverages with caffeine actually goes back quite a long time.
We often think of coffee when thinking of caffeine, but also tea has some caffeine in it. Tea drinking has a rich history in Asian cultures, especially China and Japan. By the late eight century, tea was firmly rooted in the Chinese culture and later found its way to Japan. Coincidentally the Tang Dynasty (618 AD — 907 AD) is considered one of the high points of Chinese culture.
While the Asian cultures got their caffeine fix from tea, by the 15th-century, coffee had arrived on the Arabian Peninsula and a bit later the Middle East. The trade with coffee gave an incredible economic boost to the local economies, especially Yemen. The local cultures quickly adapted the beverage, and coffee houses began to spring up across cities. These coffee-houses connected communities, and to this day, there is a highly cultivated coffee culture in the Middle East. Coffee seemed to be tailor-made for the Arabic culture that contributed immensely to our modern understanding of mathematics.
As trade with Europe started to thrive, the European travelers to the Middle East noticed the brown beverage the locals were drinking. The coffee houses were a meeting point and visited by all societal classes and also the European merchants.
However, in order for coffee to fully expand its reach globally, the plant had to be smuggled out of the Arabian Peninsula. As the local civilizations, especially the Ottoman Empire, benefited immensely from the trade with the new commodity, all exported beans were either roasted or sterilized before they were sold. Only after some beans that could still propagate were successfully smuggled out, coffee went global.
Soon there was coffee being produced in the dutch territories on Java and in other exotic places. However, not only the plant went global but also the idea of coffee houses.
Similar to the spread of the plant over the globe, the coffee houses spread over Europe. Soon Paris, Rome, London, and others had such places, serving as meeting points for all classes (Lloyds of London originated from a coffee house owned by Edward Lloyd, and there are more examples of similar stories).
While coffee in itself has the effect of providing better focus, it also had another significant effect in medieval Europe. As coffee (and tea) requires boiling water, it drastically improved the quality of the drinks consumed. Before introducing those hot beverages, water was the cause of numerous illnesses, and it was safer for people to drink fermented beverages like beer, wine, and cider. With people constantly being buzzed due to their constant consumption of slightly alcoholic beverages, the introduction of coffee rid the people of the alcohol-induced buzz and further increased their ability to focus.
In the spirit of enlightenment, like people freed themselves of some of the shackles put on by religion, monarchs, and beliefs, coffee lifted the restraints of constant alcohol drinking.
Caffeine and capitalism
Like previously for the Arabic culture, coffee seemed to be tailor-made for the changes happening in Europe. As people started to experiment with machines, steadily progressing towards industrialization, inventing new, more complex ways to finance (double-entry bookkeeping), a drug that allows you to stay awake and focus better fits perfectly. Caffeine, amongst other things, immensely facilitated the introduction of night shits.
Today caffeine is deeply rooted in our culture, from Coffee breaks at work, the morning ritual with your favorite coffee, and the seemingly unlimited Starbucks venues around the globe. Caffeine fuels the lives of many, from college students to c-level managers to doctors and farmers. The reasons to go to a coffee shop are as manifold as were the crowds in the coffee houses about six centuries ago. But not only does coffee fuel our daily lives, but it also fuels the global economy.
Coffee is one of the most traded commodities globally, and the market is expected to grow even further. In 2020, the global coffee market was valued at 465.9 billion dollars, and a daily total of around 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed. Furthermore, about 3.7 billion cups of tea are also consumed on a daily basis.
Even though one has to point out that not all teas have caffeine in them, and some coffees will be decaf, still, these numbers show us just how addicted humans are to caffeine.
The human bees
Humans clearly have a tendency towards caffeinated beverages. So, are we, despite our way bigger and more complex brains similar to the bees. Fueled by caffeine while disregarding the quality of our work?
Well, I wouldn’t go so far. However, one has to admire the plants that came up with producing caffeine. Producing a compound that, among other things, interacts with a primate’s brain in a way that makes it more focused and less sleepy. It is an evolutional strategy certainly not without risk, yet it seemed to be worth it. The coffee plant, originally only found in Ethiopia, now grows all over the globe due to humans’ desire for its pesticide. Likewise, tea plants were native to East Asia and now can also be found growing in many parts of the world.
So, is it only us that exploit the plants’ drug for our benefit, or did the plant also control us? Our desire to constantly be high on caffeine.
In the end, it is safe to say that while we humans benefited and still benefit from caffeine, the plants did so as well, using the brown liquid as nectar for their human bees, carrying its seeds all around the world.
Stay safe
Raffael
- Apart from the linked articles and images, most of the information for this article stems from Michael Pollan’s recent book: “This Is Your Mind on Plants”. So are most of the historical connections.
