Café Society: America Runs on Adreno-Cortico-Stimulants

    Ah...as I sip my hot-water extraction of roasted coffea arabica beans from Guatemala blended with the cream of cow's milk, typing on my laptop, feet not planted firmly on the floor, I can only say...God bless America! Now....
     "Wake up!"
                       and smell the coffee burning at the bottom of the pot, taste the acids churning inside your intestines, disrupting the bacterial flora that regulates your immune system;
                              feel the tension in your jaw,
                              write home to Mother all your racing thoughts as you babble vapidly to friends
on sidewalks and traincars, endlessly listing off the categories of Infinity....

...O, to be young and write poems in cafés and chainsmoke as if life had no consequence...

now: reality: 
                     you need coffee to function, to work, to write, to get up and make the kids breakfast, to raise up the nerve to even talk to anyone.
now: back from the initial stimulus and bliss, that 1st sip of poetry, down to the prose of this post:

     America is addicted to coffee. We need it every day just to function. Coffee is originally from Africa, although some people think it is from the Americas. In fact, it was the Dutch who expanded the coffee industry beyond Africa and Arabia, and it was they who brought it to Central and South America, where indeed so much of the world's coffee is now produced. Brewed coffee in the form we drink today was developed in Yemen. The first coffee-houses among the Arabs were indeed a political innovation as they became a powerful yet affordable and accessible social forum, and for this reason were quickly recognized as dangerous. Coffee became popular in the North American Colonies in the late 17th Century, and it was at a coffeehouse that the Boston Tea Party was concocted.

"In the year 2000 in the US, coffee consumption was 22.1 gallons (100.468 litres) per capita.^[6] More than 150 million Americans (18 and older) drink coffee on a daily basis, with 65 percent of coffee drinkers consuming their hot beverage in the morning. In 2008, it was the number-one hot beverage of choice among convenience store customers, generating about 78 percent of sales within the hot dispensed beverages category.^[7] " - Wikipedia 

     So coffee is at once an industry of oppression, colonialism and exploitation, but also a tool for political dissidence. My primary focus of enquiry is not political, moral or ethical, however, but sociological, nutritional, and endocrinological. Caffeine, and other compounds present in the coffee bean, stimulate the cycle of adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline is very useful for an animal that needs to fight, run, or otherwise respond rapidly, decisively and forcefully to a situation or stimulus. It is not healthy to have adrenaline always blazing, as this leads to adrenal fatigue and exhaustion. However, proper diet and exercise can mitigate some of the effects of excessive adrenaline. Of more concern, to me at least, is the cortisol spike. Fasting and lowered blood-sugar levels already tends to elevate production of cortisol, the primary 'stress hormone.' Many people drink coffee on an empty stomach, and many women and men, generally out of commercially misguided vanity, use caffeine- and other stimulant-containing products to lose weight...the problem is that cortisol ends up breaking down muscle tissue, yet in the long run will prevent fat loss...I myself no longer take sugar in my coffee, but perhaps the sugar does help to mitigate the gluco-consumptive properties of caffeine and reduce the stress that coffee often causes.
    Adrenaline should not be discounted for its danger, either. We are an aggressive nation of car-crashers, bar-brawlers and murderers. My wife has suggested that caffeine-induced aggression is likely a primary contributor to violent crime and accidents in America (and in other caffeine-addicted industrialized nations.)
    Caffeine is a phenethylamine. These psychoactive compounds are all derived from the amino acid phenylalanine, and include its metabolite tyrosine, the hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine, as well as drugs such as cocaine, amphetamines, the prescription-anti-depressant Welbutrin (or bupropion) and mescaline. Of these, mescaline (and related alkaloids in various cactii species, somewhat legal with the exception of peyote) is the only phenethylamine that has the full potential to activate man's Higher Mind, whereas the rest have a tendency to be addictive, despite or rather due to their tremendous benefit to active, organized and socialized human populations. For this reason peyote is illegal, because we are racist Christian vigilantes who have condemned the beautiful traditions of the Native populations of the Americas and supplanted them with an abstraction forged of Christianity, war and colonialism. Peyote would allow one to access the 5+1/2th Chakra, the secret Sephira Daath, denied by Hebrew Kabbalists as heresy due to the loss of trans-Atlantic trade in ancient times.
     Of greater import for modern America is the question of the legalization of marijuana. It is incredible that human beings are branded as criminals for utilizing a plant that has for ages been a sacred food, medicine and ally. Perhaps the dis-attenuation of peripheral awareness could cause more car accidents from stoned drivers; this is probably the most legitimate argument against legalization, IMO.  However, as we have mentioned, it is highly probable that caffeine already does contribute to traffic accidents, as well as aggressive crime. Marijuana, overall, would reduce violence and aggression. Most of the association between marijuana and crime is, in fact, due to its being criminalized (duh!) It would be a wonderful world where high school students could buy marijuana from someone who didn't also deal in addictive pharmaceutical narcotics; if legal, marijuana would never be a 'gateway drug.' 
     Coffee, however, doesn't even need to be a gateway. Middle-class teenage girls learn that they should wear tight black riding pants and bring their laptops to Starbucks. Just in Harvard Square there are three Starbucks, plus one a seven-minute walk and another a twelve-minute walk away. This is saturation. Monopoly. At least independent cafés have some character and distinction. And then there's the slogan, "America Runs on Dunkin'." How proudly perverse, our culture's celebration of its own addictions, even as we make (successful) strides to curb smoking...even then, an addict can pat themself on the back for two weeks without drugs or alcohol, as they congregate together outside the church smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. 
    (ok, case-in-point, I'm just typing on the computer drinking coffee and now I'm yelling at the kids 'cause they're making too much noise...I think caffeine also lowers the tolerance for loud noises, by turning everything into a stimulus for adrenaline and cortisol, as mentioned, and making every noise or word a cause for panic and reaction.) 
     Before the coffee beans are roasted they are actually green, and contain much higher amounts of chlorogenic acid, with relatively less caffeine. Cholorogenic acid has been shown to have many health benefits, including blood-sugar regulation and, by extension, purportedly weight-loss. It will be interesting to see if the interest in green coffee bean products grows in the future, and somewhat replaces our addiction to roasted coffee beverages.
     Of course, coffee is not the only caffeinated beverage we drink. Tea, however, contains theanine, an amino acid which relaxes the mind and mitigates the effects of caffeine (one must watch out for the tannins present in tea, however, as they are highly acidic.) The biggest problem is probably the artificial energy drinks, which use other stimulants as well such as l-tyrosine, further contributing to adrenal fatigue, and generally without the addition of antioxidants, which are naturally present in coffee, tea, cocoa and yerba maté, and lend these plants much of their health-promoting benefits. Obviously these drugs should be regulated, far more than ganja.