America’s Deadliest Drug Addiction Affects Everyone

Today, my *web browser* is insisting that I “can help curb opioid abuse.”
Here is my contribution:

Stock photos in the West universally use the presence of a mug in the shot to connote work, just as the presence of soda or alcohol drunks connote fun. The mug presumably contains coffee, a psychoactive compound which may enhance mental performance. What is shocking is that we not only sanction a chemical dependency on caffeine but celebrate not just the coffee, but our very dependency on it.

Americans see no contradiction with celebrating their own drug addiction to coffee and alcohol while jailing millions of their neighbors who happen to use a different plant for entertainment because of a different economic and cultural context. Cannabis, methamphetamines or cocaine may be stronger per coffee per dose — but make no mistake — if coffee were made illegal, the caffeine density of a single dose would increase to those of banned drugs. Keep in mind that cocaine, heroin, and other banned drugs started out as additives to health tonics and soda drinks, while the THC dose in cannabis rapidly increased after the U.S. banned it in 1937.

I have no problem with coffee as such. I drink it most working days specifically for its psychoactive properties and as medication for occasional tension headaches. However, I would be ashamed to be addicted to caffeine and would consider it a moral failure and a threat to my health. Caffeine addiction is a real health threat, though surprisingly little studied given that perhaps hundreds of millions of Americans suffer from it.

While excess caffeine usage is only mildly harmful, there is a far more serious substance addiction which even more Americans suffer from: sugar. Excess sugar consumption is a primary cause of metabolic syndrome, which is a leading cause of obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and mental illness, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Alzheimer’s, as well as many types of cancer.

Virtually all Americans consume unhealthy amounts of sugar, and 70% of U.S. adults age 20 years or older are overweight or obese.  Sugar kills more people than all other psychoactive drugs combined. Excess carbohydrates in the diet are the primary cause of obesity, and bad diets rather than genetics or lack of exercise are the overwhelming cause of obesity.

There is sufficient evidence to link excessive sugar intake to the pandemic of obesity and cardiovascular disease. – AHA

The growth of sugar in American diets is primarily linked to U.S. agricultural policy and regulatory capture of agencies by the farming and food industry. This (not our prosperity or sedentary lifestyle) is why obesity is strongly linked to income levels, as wealthier Americans are less affected by sugar additives in food influences by agricultural policy.

Metabolic syndrome is the result of a dangerously addictive diet, just as addictive and difficult to break as heroin or methamphetamines. “Hard drugs” do kill people faster, but only addiction-vulnerable members of society tend to become dependent on them, whereas sugar is a low-level high which has nearly completely infiltrated the American food supply. One big secret of the War on Drugs is that vast majority of people are unlikely to ever become addicted to hard drugs (whether prescription or illegal) because addiction is the result of certain genetic, social, and psychological attributes.

The *primary* cause of any drug addiction is not the pleasure of the high or the pain of withdrawal, but the lack of mental and social structure to provide healthy alternatives to addictive behavior. This is equally true of cocaine, meth, alcohol, pornography, coffee, or sugar. Drug addicts of all kinds universally suffer from a lack of a social support network which advocates and enables healthy dopamine-generating activities.