My OperaCaffeine Junkies
Thursday, November 6, 2008 11:25:19 PM
So, on my seemingly endless travels all in the name of business I found myself sitting in a Starbucks and reading a copy of the motorcycle diaries. Quite a normal place to find oneself (unless you live in a remote wasteland of a country without Starbucks of course, but thats another whine...)
Like i usually do, i was taking time between chapters to look around and just watch the people around me. I found myself thinking 'God school children in England really dress like sluts.. if i was a parent i wouldn't let my clearly underage child go to school in a skirt which doesn't even cover her bum when she walks'. But thats when it really hit me, the entire place was full of school children..
I was reading up some statistics and some scientists believe that between 80-90% of the population are addicted to caffeine, i couldn't help but wonder if these children are too? They probably get a coffee on the way to school and meet up with their friends and have one on the way home. I find the whole thing quite worrying. We have restrictions on the age from which you can start smoking, drinking alcohol or having sex but we are perfectly happy to let our children ritually consume copious amounts of caffeine a day?
The whole thing irked me slightly, my mother used to consume so much caffeine during a working day that before she even turned 45 she had an irregular heartbeat. She was told to not drink caffeine again and has to take medication to attempt to stabilise the rhythm of her heart. Now she is an from the generation before me, she probably didn't start drinking caffeine until she started working at 20+. I looked around the café and some of the children there probably had a 10-15 year head-start on my mother, God knows what its doing to their less than stable metabolism...
Now, i'm not saying there should be age restrictions on caffeine, maybe society already has too many rules and restrictions. I just think that its something we should pay attention to, i can tell what caffeine does to my body just from taking a few days without drinking it. What worries me the most is that i can notice this effect and i'm a 24 year old fully matured human being, not a 12 year old school child.
Like i usually do, i was taking time between chapters to look around and just watch the people around me. I found myself thinking 'God school children in England really dress like sluts.. if i was a parent i wouldn't let my clearly underage child go to school in a skirt which doesn't even cover her bum when she walks'. But thats when it really hit me, the entire place was full of school children..
I was reading up some statistics and some scientists believe that between 80-90% of the population are addicted to caffeine, i couldn't help but wonder if these children are too? They probably get a coffee on the way to school and meet up with their friends and have one on the way home. I find the whole thing quite worrying. We have restrictions on the age from which you can start smoking, drinking alcohol or having sex but we are perfectly happy to let our children ritually consume copious amounts of caffeine a day?
The whole thing irked me slightly, my mother used to consume so much caffeine during a working day that before she even turned 45 she had an irregular heartbeat. She was told to not drink caffeine again and has to take medication to attempt to stabilise the rhythm of her heart. Now she is an from the generation before me, she probably didn't start drinking caffeine until she started working at 20+. I looked around the café and some of the children there probably had a 10-15 year head-start on my mother, God knows what its doing to their less than stable metabolism...
Now, i'm not saying there should be age restrictions on caffeine, maybe society already has too many rules and restrictions. I just think that its something we should pay attention to, i can tell what caffeine does to my body just from taking a few days without drinking it. What worries me the most is that i can notice this effect and i'm a 24 year old fully matured human being, not a 12 year old school child.
