Today, students from junior high to graduate school are dependent on caffeine consumption in order to stay awake. College campuses and high schools have even opened coffee shops within their own walls.
Coffee has historically been a part of American culture, becoming popular during the early 18th century when it was a patriotic act to boycott tea during the American Revolution.
And yet, consumption of coffee has seemed to become only more patriotic over the years as the beverage is a daily necessity for many Americans, especially students and workers.
This is reflected immensely at PV. The majority of students at PV would consider caffeine a necessity; 63% of polled PV students claim to consume caffeine habitually. If caffeine were considered a drug, the world would surely consider this an epidemic.
As a whole, caffeine is used daily by 80% of the population, making it the world’s most popular psychoactive drug. Although caffeine can be a useful tool to balance scholastic success with social life, its use has been eerily normalized and even encouraged for decades.
This is because it is capitalism’s unrivaled drug.
In the age of 40-hour work weeks and monolithic student loan debt, no other thing can keep the working class awake to work and the learning class awake to learn how to be a part of the working class.
The truth is, caffeine is found in more than we think. It can be found in gum, vitamin waters, pills and various snacks. Because caffeine is always around us, a tolerance can build quickly. This is why one cup of coffee can evolve into needing five cups of coffee to stay awake.
For any other type of drug, this susceptibility to addiction may sound concerning. However, because caffeine is normalized in our society, a high tolerance to it is something that is relatable to many.
Even more so than ever, America demands productivity at all hours of the day. So why would we not encourage a drug that helps us keep up with this demand?
Author Margaret Meagher commented on this in her novel. “Coffee has [expanded] humanity’s working-day from 12 to a potential 24 hours. The tempo, the complexity, the tension of modern life, call for something that can perform the miracle of stimulating brain activity, without evil, habit-forming after-effects,” she stated.
While many find a cup of coffee refreshing, caffeine still encourages a dystopian world of ever-productive robots, locked behind cubicles and computer screens.
