Decaffeination processes

Not all of our bodies react the same way. Caffeine is highly addictive for me, more so than any of the recreational drugs that I--I mean my friend Zeke--experimented with in my--I mean his--adventurous youth. It releases endorphins and makes me happier than I've ever been except for a handful of the true highlights of my life. And then of course there's the inconsolable endorphin-debt that follows.

There's been a separate thread on this but I have ruined my life a couple of times through caffeine addiction. After having some I get an intolerable craving for more the next day, and if I get too strung out I get actual physical symptoms like headache as well as psychological symptoms like being the world's biggest asshole. It also interferes with sleep, making all of these symptoms worse.

Cocoa solids contain a substantial amount of caffeine. Today's boutique dark chocolate bars with their prominently touted cocoa percentages have more than enough caffeine for me to regard them as a dangerous drug. Not that this stops me, especially since my wife is a chocoloatiere. I've just become strong enough to go cold turkey the next day and put up with the physical symptoms and she loves me enough to put up with the behavior.

Cocoa also contains theobroma, another psychoactive drug. The effects of a recently-identified drug like theobroma are not as well studied as legacy drugs like caffeine and alcohol, so we don't know how the effect varies from one person to another. In general, although theobroma is a stimulant, it seems to have a mood-mellowing affect on many people, which counteracts the edge that caffeine often imparts.

This combination of caffeine and theobroma was obviously one of the attractions that motivated the Aztecs to put so much effort into figuring out how to render an ingestible substance out of cocoa beans. As it is, the "chocolatl" they invented would barely qualify as "cocoa bean soup" by modern standards. Nonetheless "cocoa" took Europe by storm, especially augmented by milk and sugar. (The Aztecs couldn't invent "milk chocolate" because there were no dairy animals in the Western Hemisphere.)

It wasn't until the late 19th century that chemical engineering technology allowed the refinement of cocoa into the concentrated, solid form we associate with the word "chocolate" today, with a caffeine content that rivals coffee and tea.

BTW, white chocolate is pure cocoa butter. It has some of the flavor and much of the texture of complete cocoa, but no caffeine.

You just said caffeine doesn't do anything much to you and now you're saying that coffee makes you hyperactive!

People metabolize caffeine at different rates. I'm very slow, two ounces of cola in a measuring cup keeps me bouncing off the ceiling for two days. Stimulants affect your blood sugar level and can start a chain reaction. By the time you drink the third cup you might be at a low point that more than compensates for the stimulant effect of the caffeine.

I can often drug myself to sleep after a caffeine binge by stuffing myself with dessert before bedtime. About an hour later I experience a crash and fall asleep with my face on the keyboard. My body can regulate itself to stay asleep for a few hours but I wake up early, not terribly well rested, with a craving for more caffeine and an attitude that urges anyone nearby to just give it to me.