Why coffee, despite it’s clear interactions with the brain as a drug, isn’t as bad for your health or as physically dependent as most other drugs like cocaine or opioids?
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Most drugs aren’t *directly* as bad for your health as one might imagine. Most of the bad health effects come from circumstances that often accompany drug use.
For example, afaik(NOT 100% SURE OF THIS) there’s no large immediate technical health risk to be an opioid user, even a heroin addict. The risks come from the lifestyle you’ll likely be forced into. It’s so very extremely addictive that you may do very rash things to get your next fix, but in a hypothetical scenario where you have an unlimited clean supply forever? No big deal. It’s really only a problem when the supply runs out, or it’s laced with something else, or you screw up the dose.
Personally, I take substantial amounts of amphetamine every single day. Prescribed ADHD meds. It’s basically coffee 2.0. There’s no high or any drama, and I get zero side effects, and no obvious long term ill effects either. It’s not even very addictive tbh.
Another pretty surprisingly harmless example is Nicotine. It gets a bad rep because of cigarettes. Cigarettes are absolutely horrible for your health, but the nicotine isn’t the issue. The problem is the huge amounts of other nasty substances a lit cigarette produces. It’s fricking smoke, from a fire, after all. Breathing concentrated smoke is not healthy! Just nicotine by itself though isn’t very bad at all and may even have quite a few beneficial properties.
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