Furciferous Quaintrelle Bex's Reviews > Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us

This turned out to be a far more interesting and well structured book than I was expecting. I've previously enjoyed the likes of 'Dopesick', 'Methland' and 'Dreamland' which all go into the backstories and personal accounts of people involved in the importation/supply/purchase/consumption of Heroin, Fentanyl and Meth, weaving all the facts and data available into eminently readable narrative structures that take the reader along for the ride.

This book was written in exactly the same vein and pulled off the same engaging combination of history, science, the pitfalls of manufacturing chemicals overseas, real life tales of people whose lives have been affected by this drug (because make no mistake, caffeine IS a drug...regardless of how socially acceptable it is in our culture) and a mini travelogue through the rural country areas which grow and harvest coffee beans from their cherries.

Carpenter himself makes no bones about the fact that he is one of the many billions of people who consume caffeine daily; and he's a bit of an expert in all the various permutations available out there on the market...some of which seem to truly blur the boundaries between 'food' and 'drugs'. At no point does the author try to besmirch anyone for their daily fix, but over time, as he was investigating the various themes in this book, he found himself noticing more and more, just how many of us seem at the very least, to be habituated users of caffeine in our day to day lives. I guess once you start to look for something you start to see it everywhere.

The cultural differences between the traditional tea-drinkers in China (who treat each cup as some kind of part of a sacred ceremony, to be enjoyed, slowly, appreciating the whole experience) and the Western consumers of Monster, Rockstar, 5-hr Energy etc (who down 500ml cans of their sparkling beverage of choice...made with synthetic caffeine from factories based also in China) was a nice juxtaposition of globalist trade, versus cultural and societal norms. I liked that angle.

I also really liked the history of Coca Cola and their infamous legal battles, vesus the struggle of the FDA to seem to be able to come to any kind of consensus as to how caffeinated energy drinks should be classified. It's a very confusing market and open to loop-holes and weird abuses of systems for self-report. Finding military issued caffeine gum (removed from the market) in a random little convenience store in 'frick-knows-where' was as indicative of our western obsession with caffeine, as was the evidence of how so many entrepreneurs wanted to get on the coffee-craze bandwagon.

Carpenter writes with a conversational light-hearted tone for the most part, whilst affording due respect to the parts which require a little more tact and diplomacy. The entire book is bursting with links to the outside studies which support the claims he presents (and I'm not going to lie...half the reason I took so long to complete this book was because I kept wandering off to look up the data and the validity of said studies, only to find myself equally as fascinated by what they revealed, as I was by the book itself.)

I think this is a book which ought to be read by anyone who likes there couple of coffees every morning to get going and would like to understand the drug it is that they've become habituated to. Caffeine might not be generating as many sexy, sensationalised, headlines as meth, fentanyl or heroin, but there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between the behaviours of the users and the likelihood that consumers will suffer some form of withdrawal when they try to cut it out from their lives. Like I said, Carpenter isn't trying to get you to feel bad about your everyday cup of morning Joe, just offer you a bit of behind-the-scenes information about the drug we all so willingly consume without really giving it all that much thought.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in any kind of drug that we as humans like to seek out and consume. If you liked any of the other books I mentioned in this review, definitely check out 'Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, And Hooks Us' for yourself. It's a well-written, interesting book that totally exceeded my expectations.