The Buzz on Caffeine

Is there a down side to our favorite upper?

When a young German physician named Friedlieb Runge first extracted caffeine from a fistful of coffee beans in the early 1800s, Europeans were already high on the Old World’s newest drug.

A caffeinated hot chocolate was all the rage of Spanish aristocracy, and Londoners idled away so many hours downing full-caf java in the city’s 2,000-plus coffeehouses that King Charles II moved to shut them down—without success. Tea-sipping Asians had been buzzing centuries earlier, of course—and perhaps cola nut-chewing cavemen well before that.

Whole ages have passed since then, and still we’re hooked on caffeine. “Some 85 percent of the world’s population today uses substantial amounts of caffeine on a regular basis,” says Bennett Weinberg, co-author with Bonnie Bealer of The World of Caffeine and The Caffeine Advantage. “That’s far more than those who use alcohol, nicotine and any and all other drugs put together.”

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