Do you consume caffeine? If you do, why? If you don’t, why not?
Why did you make this particular decision?
I’ve been without the funds to buy my normal Diet Coke for about a week, and in that process I’ve undergone some pretty strong withdrawal symptoms, which has surprised me (since it’s “just” Diet Coke, after all), so I’m trying to decide if I want to quit or continue to consume caffeine once I get paid.
I do but the caffeine is incidental to the fact I like coffee, chocolate and tea.
I’m consuming some right now (big cuppa joe).
I drink about 2-3 cups of coffee/day, but I’ve also abstained for a week or two. When I’m sick (head colds and the like) coffee just doesn’t taste good, and I don’t drink it. I may have some tea occasionally, but usually go with herbal (no caffeine).
I remember that when my uncle kicked the habit several years back he had major headaches for a week or two.
I once thought I had insomnia, only to realize I drank an obscene amount of coffee after dinner every night.
I used to drink coffee by the gallon. Never had any use for tea (still don’t, but drink it because it’s supposed to be good for me). I went off coffee and had the usual headaches, etc. for about a week. Now I have a coffee just when I feel like, about two or three times a week, and enjoy it more because I want to drink it, as opposed to drinking it just out of habit.
I have never been a fan of colas. When I was a kid we used to use Coke to strip rust off bicycle parts. Cola has no appeal to me as a beverage.
djm
I usually drink 3 cups of tea a day - regular black tea in coffee mug sized cups, with 2 spoons of sugar and evaporated milk. Sometimes I’ll have a Frappicino or an FRS energy drink at work if I’m dragging.
If I don’t get my caffeine, stay away! 
Here’s a list of the caffeine content of various drinks: http://www.energyfiend.com/the-caffeine-database
I drink one cup of black tea in the morning (no sugar, no milk).
I’ll drink green tea throughout the day.
If I feel the “onset” of a migraine coming, I will have on Diet Coke to see if that will kick it. No more than that - more caffeine and I WILL get a headache.
I do eat chocolate, but not often (and usually 70% or more Cacao).
Tom drinks at least one pot of coffee a day. And it’s dark roast. I don’t know why he bothers drinking it - he should just hook an IV up and go that way.
Most mornings, I drink either 2 cups of French Press-brewed coffee, or 1 cappucino (made with 2% milk).
Every now and again I drink a Coke Zero in the mornings first, then coffee later, usually on the mornings I wake up too bleary to consider myself safe to use the cappucino machine. 
There are still the rare mornings that I don’t drink any caffeine. Sometimes this leaves me with a headache; other times, no headache, just a very slow, quiet, relaxed morning…until somebody wants something, which gives me a headache, and then I have to get caffeinated.
As for the decision, it was made years ago when I was working 12-hour night shifts. Coffee became the fifth food group to me back then.
There was a period of about a year when I kicked the caffeine habit entirely. I remember it as one of the most miserable times of my life.
–James
Tom drinks at least one pot of coffee a day. And it’s dark roast. I don’t know why he bothers drinking it - he should just hook an IV up and go that way.
Dark roast actually has less caffeine then a lighter roast. French and Italian roasts are often used for espresso, which ounce per ounce has more caffeine then coffee, but that’s because of the way it’s brewed, not because of the coffee roast.
If you make regular brewed coffee with darker roasts, the coffee you produce has less caffeine than a lighter roast would. You get used to drinking French roast, for instance, and switch over to a Full City roast, and it’ll kick yer butt.
–James
How many food groups do you have?
Hmmm…
Meat
Caffeine
Salty
Fried
Sweet Tea
Roots (as in potatoes and root beer)
…
Looks like six.
–James
He is referring to the USDA suggested food groupings which has suggestions on what your food intake should be. Back in the day there was only four, now there are six.
I know.
–James
Where there is caffeine there is hope.
Coffee is too strong for me. Round these parts it’s mostly instant.
I have an Ibrik, and now and again I like a little cup of Turkish Coffee (with a big glass of cold water). But I buy some ground coffee and make it three times in a week and forget about it and the next time I look at the coffee it’s gone mouldy.
So I stick to tea. Like DJM I have no use for cola drinks. In fact, swizzle-sticks were invented for the likes of me, as I like my fizzy drinks unfizzed, if possible. Excepting sparkling wine and champagne. I’ll put up with those.
I drink coffee, maybe 2 mugs, every morning.
Although I am not all that sensitive to the effects of the morning caffeine dose, I’m sure that the drug aspect contributes to my overall enjoyment of the coffee, but the coffee itself could almost stand alone, sans caffeine. If it tasted as good. It usually doesn’t. It would not do for me to drink bad coffee just for the caffeine–the coffee has to be really good coffee.
Hence, I brew organic, song-bird happy, arabica, yummy, really good coffee.
Oh, I also make it half-decaf, so I can drink twice as much.
I will get a headache for up to 2 days if I go cold-turkey. I try to avoid this.
I occasionally drink tea–usually green or assam, but tea does not delight me the way coffee does. And I find it a little drying.
I drink a rare Coke–maybe once every couple weeks, but I never like it much after the first couple ounces.
I think that for most people, caffeine is a reasonably safe way to self-medicate, and that it can be done deliciously it a big plus. I wouldn’t do it otherwise.
You can freeze ground coffee. It needs to be in a completely non-permeable container, or it will absorb “odors” and off flavors from the other stuff in your freezer. Since you make it so rarely, I’d find something that you could freeze single pot amounts in.
I don’t drink coffee (even though I worked with the darn stuff for years). I can’t taste bitter, so all I get is the burnt flavors (the pyrazines especially).
By the way, there is now apparently good evidence
that green tea forestalls the onset of dementia (Alzheimers)
by four years or so. There may be other health
benefits too. Green tea is available as a cold
drink in small plastic bottles, and there are big bottles
of it too; also diet versions, which actually
taste very good. So integrating this stuff
into one’s life is pretty easy and enjoyable.
There isn’t much caffeine in green tea, though.
So what about the aspartame in diet soda? Does it do anything like prevent diseases?
Four years is not enough. Find something that forestalls it for 40 years and I’ll be a’swillin’ it.