My Favorite Mood-Altering Drug

That would be 1,3,7-Trimethxylaxanthine, better known as caffeine. My mornings get a lot better after the first dose, usually contained in a mug of Colombian roast coffee, black no sugar. This comes to mind due to a tragic news story about a University of Pennsylvania student who, according to her family, died after drinking a Panera Charged Lemonade. The charge in the drink comes from caffeine to which, it is alleged, the young lady was sensitive. Any stimulant can be a problem for those with certain sensitivities or disorders such as tachycardia and arrhythmia. Caffeine is not an exception. However, most people are highly tolerant of the stuff, which is fortunate since it is present in a wide array of drinks and foods – often as a natural ingredient rather than something added.
 
As long ago as 1916 the FDA nearly put Coca-Cola out of business (see United States vs Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola) because of caffeine. The FDA alleged it was an adulterant that (it would be hard to make this up) promoted promiscuity in youth. Coca-Cola countered that caffeine was not an adulterant but a natural ingredient; it wasn’t added, the company argued, but was naturally present in the kola nut just as it was naturally present in cacao and coffee beans, neither of which were targeted by the FDA. (In 1916, one should keep in mind, opium and cocaine could be bought over the counter.) The case was touch-and-go for a while, but there is still caffeine in Coca-Cola today.
 
Direct lethal caffeine poisoning is possible to achieve but it takes dedication for an average person of normal metabolism. 5 grams is a low-end estimate of fatal toxicity for adults, though actual known cases involve much higher doses (such as from diet pills). 5 grams is equivalent to 23 liters (6 gallons) of coffee (standard McDonald’s blend) drunk at a single sitting. 23 liters of anything (even water) drunk all at once is likely to cause trouble. Indirect health risks are present at lower doses of course such as from an accelerated heart rate, especially in someone who has preexisting cardio issues. For most people, however, the effects of mild overdoses are limited to sleeplessness, jitteriness, and anxiety. I experience none of that from the one or two mugs of coffee with which I start a typical morning. The effects on me are all positive.
 
Tea is the caffeinated drink with the deepest known history. (Black tea has about half the caffeine of coffee of equivalent volume and strength.) Chinese legend credits Emperor Shen Nung in 2737 BCE for accidently discovering it when leaves blew into his boiling water. He enjoyed the flavor and the stimulation. Olmecs in Mesoamerica cultivated cacao from around 1000 BCE if not earlier. The Aztec “xocolatl” (which means “bitter water”) was favored in part for the stimulatory effects. Coffee, originating in Ethiopia, spread across the Islamic world in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Coffee was popularized in Europe in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Coffee houses at the time were noted mercantile centers where shippers, traders, and financiers made deals. They were an improvement over taverns, at least for business, which generally is better conducted sober. Coffee just might have been the unsung fuel for the budding industrial revolution.

 
Decaffeinated coffee seems a strange idea to caffeine lovers. Yet, it is older than one might think. It was developed in 1903 in Bremen, first marketed in Germany in 1905, and first sold in the US in 1909. The brand name Sanka derives from sans caffeine. Orange was the signature packaging color, which is why decaffeinated coffee of any brand in diners to this day is in pots with orange tops.
 
I won’t personally be switching to decaffeinated beverages anytime soon. On the other hand two mugs of full strength coffee are enough. I’ll encounter enough caffeine in other meals, snacks, and beverages to carry me though the rest of the day without actively seeking it out. We all have different sensitivities though. So if Java makes you jittery, by all means fill your cup from the pot with the orange top.
 

Rival Sons - Black Coffee

Running on Empty

Even as earth’s population tops 8 billion, much public discussion lately has centered on declining birthrates around the world. Elon Musk famously called it mankind’s greatest existential threat. One informative treatment of the subject is Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson.

Half the countries in the world have fertility rates lower than 2.1, the rate needed to sustain a constant population over the long run. (The US is currently 1.78, which is a bit higher than most Western countries.) Most of the other half are very close to this replacement rate. Global population is still rising, but only 8 countries in Africa and Asia will account for the majority of the increase between now and 2050: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, and India. (India actually has slipped slightly below 2.1 already, but longer lifespans and the burgeoning elderly population will keep India’s population rising for a few decades.) Bricker and Ibbitson contend that the UN projection for global population to rise to 11 billion in this century before leveling off is in error, for it is based on current birthrates and doesn’t account for the ongoing birthrate decline in presently high-fertility regions. The authors instead project a peak population of 9 billion followed by steady decline. Immigration keeps populations rising in most Western countries despite low birthrates. Low-fertility-rate countries that are culturally resistant to immigration however (e.g. China, Japan, Hungary, Russia, Korea, et al.) are already experiencing actual declines. The authors cite the usual list of economic problems that accompany declining numbers: notably, fewer working-age people struggling to support social welfare programs and a much larger generation of old people who live longer than ever.
 
Lower fertility rates are associated around the world with rising education of women: the more years in school, the fewer kids. It is also independently correlated with increasing urbanization. This was as true in the 19^th century as it is today, and already was well noted by demographers at the beginning of the 20^th century when all but a few national populations were still mostly rural. The one historical exception was the immediate postwar period when the birthrate rose despite ongoing urbanization. The Baby Boom has to be regarded as a freak anomaly in an otherwise century-plus long downward trend – an odd ephemeral reaction to the outsize traumas of Depression and World War. By the mid-‘60s, however, the longer-term fertility decline had resumed.
 
While most commentators propose social and economic causes, some analysts wonder if something more fundamentally mammalian is at work. They refer to the famous rodent studies conducted by the wonderfully named Dr. John Bumpass Calhoun of the NIH from the 1940s to the 1970s. Rats and mice notoriously breed profusely in adverse conditions. All major cities battle rat populations to little avail. Calhoun, working first with rats and later with mice because of the latter’s shorter life cycle, decided to see what would happen if he created rodent habitats with abundant food and ideal environmental conditions. How crowded would they get? The results were counterintuitive. Yes, as expected, the population of each habitat soared at first, but then strangely fertility would fall, eventually below replacement rate. Population would peak at well below the enclosure’s carrying capacity at which point it would start to drop: slowly at first but then headlong. A crash never reversed itself once it started. Mortality in the habitats was 100% every time.
 
A typical example was Universe 25: a mouse utopia abounding with tunnels, nests, nesting materials, plentiful food, pleasant temperatures, and no predators. Universe 25 was able to accommodate 3000 mice easily, but it never got there. Calhoun placed a handful of breeding pairs in the enclosure in 1968. The mouse population doubled every 55 days in the “exploit period” reaching 620 on day 315. Fertility then began a long decline though at this point it still exceeded the replacement rate. The mice acted ever more oddly as crowding grew. Mice huddled together in some nests while leaving other nests nearly empty. The females grew more aggressive while the males became either passive or violent. There were bursts of hypersexuality. By day 560 a generation of mice that had grown up amid this weird adult murine behavior showed diminished interest themselves in mating, competing, or raising young. A few took possession of upper nests (mouse penthouses) exclusively for themselves and a handful of their favorites – Calhoun dubbed them the “beautiful ones.” The beautiful ones didn’t reproduce much either. The Universe 25 population peaked at 2,200 on day 920. The fertility rate then slipped below replacement level and the population began to decline. The rate of decline accelerated even when population dropped back below 620. The last baby mouse was born in 1973. The remaining mice grew old and died to the last mouse.
 
In his paper “Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population” (1973) published in The Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, Calhoun comments that part of the problem for the rodents (in addition to simple crowding) was precisely the lack of struggle for resources that keeps urban street rats in their brutal environments socially healthy and relentlessly fecund. Calhoun wasn’t shy about suggesting parallels to human societies: “I shall largely speak of mice, but my thoughts are on man.” To the rejoinder that humans, with few exceptions, are neither mice nor rats, he would answer that in many ways we kind-of are. However much we rationalize our behavior as ideology, philosophy, and lifestyle choices, he suggests our actions may be at least as much rooted in biology.
 
If Calhoun was right, growing global affluence is a big factor in declining human fertility. It is hard to see that as a bad thing. In any event, I think Bricker, Ibbitson, and Calhoun are all too pessimistic. To start, we are not yet at the equivalent of day 920 of Universe 25: human population is still rising. Further, I think the socioeconomic challenges of declining numbers are more manageable than the worrywarts imagine. The population of Japan, for example, is dropping by over a half million per year. Nonetheless, Japan remains a pretty nice and well-run place. There are advantages to smaller numbers including a lower strain on resources. When I was born the global population at 2.5 billion was less than a third of what it is today. The US population was 152,000,000: well under half of what it is today. Yet, no one was complaining back then that there weren’t enough people. No one will make that complaint if we return to those lower numbers either – which even according to Bricker and Ibbitson will not happen in this century anyway or probably the next. That is plenty of time to come up with a “solution” if indeed a solution is necessary.
 
An obvious answer is to pay people to have kids. Many countries already do this both directly in cash payments and indirectly via subsidized child care – in some cases the assistance is extraordinarily generous and includes mandated lengthy paid parental leave. These efforts haven’t made a notable difference in fertility anywhere, true enough, but that just means the payments still aren’t high enough. I’m not suggesting they should be made higher at the current time. I’d rather see some negative population growth first. Taxpayers after the year 2100 then can step in if they wish. Meantime, I think “Empty Planet” has rather a nice ring to it – emptier anyway.
 

Metric – Empty

  

The Actuarial Gamble

Some recent unexpected hefty expenses brought back to mind a brief review I wrote in June of Bill Perkins’ book Die with Zero in which the author argued that if you die with money in the bank you either retired too late or failed to experience the full benefit of your savings. The caveat, of course, is that timing is everything: no one wants to go broke before the big sleep, yet none of us knows when that is. Actuarial tables can give you odds within populations, but those are pretty useless for any one individual. So, it is best to err on the safe side. That is easier said than done, especially in a time of market volatility – and of unexpected expenses. Even if one manages to keep nominal savings constant, inflation erodes their real purchasing power. It is no wonder that the risk to a retiree of going broke is so much greater than risk of dying rich.
 
The surprising thing is that the risk of impoverishment isn’t even higher. According to Sudipto Banerjee of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, in the first 18 years of retirement, about one-third of US seniors actually increase their assets. For his study he divided retirees into three groups: those with more than $500,000 in investments (excluding the primary residence), those with at least $200,000 but less than $500,000, and those with less than $200,000 (median was $32,000). Unsurprisingly, seniors with more than $500,000 were the most likely to see assets increase. Most of the gainers had ignored the traditional advice to shift investments out of stocks and into bonds (which are safer) as they age; stocks historically yield higher returns over time, but of course they are risky. They can crash in value in any one year (or stretch of years) so the stockholder needs enough alternate savings for living expenses to wait out bear markets. Those in the middle group on average spent down a quarter of their savings in the first 18 years after retirement. This is a lot, but not terrible. However, this average is misleading, since 16% of this group already exhausted 80% of their savings after 18 years. Those in the lowest group also spent down about a quarter on average in 18 years, but again the average disguises a substantial minority: one-fifth of this group spent 80% of their savings in only 4 years. After 18 years the majority of seniors in all groups showed a decline in net assets.

I never had an actual piggy bank but I had and still have
this. It previously had been my father's when he was a boy.

 
The largest single cause of asset depletion in all groups – again unsurprisingly – was health care costs. Despite Medicare and other supplements, the remaining out-of-pocket medical expenses can be devastating in the case of serious illness, the risk of which increases with age. The cost of a nursing home or assisted care should that be necessary is breathtaking. Less obvious causes also can contribute to the problem such as late life divorce and aid to adult children.
 
In light of all this I think Perkin’s advice is, to put it gently, insufficiently cautious. Flipping burgers in one’s 70s or 80s just to get by is not a welcome prospect, even if one is healthy enough to still do it. I’d rather risk having savings survive me. I just hope they can.

 

Bessie Smith - Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (1929)

The Booze Bin

I peered into my liquor/wine cabinet today and gave its contents a quick assessment. I hadn’t opened it in all of September. I am not a teetotaler (though I was for about a decade following a spate of excess in my 20s), but simply hadn’t had occasion to open the cabinet in the past month. I don’t have a routine of a daily wine glass or cocktail, but will join with company and participate in toasts and so on; there just didn’t happen to be that sort of company at my house in September. Some months are like that. Anyway, I don’t keep an opened bottle of spirits more than six months (a year if only a shot or two has been poured from it) since the exposure to oxygen spoils the taste. Unopened bottles have unlimited shelf life if not exposed to excess light or heat. So, I occasionally check to see what, if anything, should be removed and replaced. Lately I’ve considered deliberately upping my consumption. Yes, really.
 
A study published in The Lancet has gotten much play lately in the popular press. The study, a meta-analysis of global studies on alcohol, purports to debunk the notion that there are health benefits to moderate consumption of alcohol. The authors conclude that there is no safe level of consumption. Any amount is associated with negative health consequences. But what of multiple studies over decades that show light to moderate consumption is associated with better cardio health and reduced risk of strokes? Are they simply wrong? Well, no. The Lancet study and the others are measuring different things. The Lancet is looking at all risks ranging from accidents to breast cancer to TB to the development of alcohol dependency. A single drink per day is associated with a 0.5% increased risk of developing one of 23 health problems, and the risk increases nonlinearly with each additional drink. The Lancet study also employs global data rather than just national data. The older studies examined specific health issues in specific populations.
 
This difference gives some researchers pause about The Lancet study’s conclusions. Harvard professor of epidemiology and nutrition Walter Willett, for one, told Time that data supporting particular benefits of moderate drinking are well established. He added, “Our decisions about drinking in the United States shouldn’t be influenced by what alcohol does to tuberculosis.” He acknowledged, as does everyone, that heavy drinking and binge drinking are serious health problems. What are the established particular benefits to moderate consumption? The results of a new 2023 study that included more than 50,000 people was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and it confirms older studies. The Harvard Gazette reported the findings: “The researchers found that light/moderate alcohol consumption was associated with a substantial reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease events.” Of those for whom CAT or PET scans were available, the researchers found “the brain imaging showed reduced stress signaling in the amygdala, the brain region associated with stress responses, in individuals who were light to moderate drinkers compared to those who abstained from alcohol or who drank little.” Correlation doesn’t prove causation, but it is easy to speculate that stress reduction may have something to do with the better cardiological results.
 
Nonetheless, senior author of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology study Ahmed Tawakol warns, “We are not advocating the use of alcohol to reduce the risk of heart attacks or strokes because of other concerning effects of alcohol on health.” This is surely a wise disclaimer. Alcohol abuse (including but not limited to outright alcoholism) is responsible for 88,000 deaths in the US per year due to health effects (e.g. liver disease) and accidents. According to a CDC press release, “1 in 3 adults is an excessive drinker, and most of them binge drink, usually on multiple occasions. In contrast, about 1 in 30 adults is classified as alcohol dependent.” Other studies, however, define alcohol dependence less stringently and so give much higher numbers for it. A study published in JAMA Psychiatry as reported in The Washington Post, for example, said 1 in 8 adult Americans meet the criteria for alcoholism. It depends on where you draw the line, but we can acknowledge that alcohol abuse is bad for oneself and others whether or not it meets some specific definitional standard for alcohol dependency or alcoholism. Obviously, there are no health benefits for alcohol abusers.
 
The contents of my cabinet remain unchanged after my inspection, by the way, at least with regard to hard spirits. (I removed one bottle of wine, but not to drink it; it will marinate a roast.) I have just one bottle each of several spirits types: bourbon, scotch, Irish whiskey, rye, Tennessee whiskey, Canadian whisky (everyone outside of the US and Ireland spells “whisk(e)y” without the “e”), vodka, rum, gin, and tequila. All are mid-shelf brands (none as much as $50, some under $30) since I’m not enough of a connoisseur to warrant spending more, while on the other hand I see no point in stocking rotgut. For now, those are enough. I do not stock the various flavored whiskeys that have become popular in recent years (honey, cinnamon, apple, etc.) since they do not appeal to me at all.

The only Jacks in my cabinet are an Old No. 7 and a Rye (not pictured)

 
What is “moderate” consumption? Though the CDC has indicated it may revisit its guidance in light of the Lancet paper, its current definition of moderate is no more than 14 drinks per week (one US “drink” being 1.5 ounces [44.36 ml] of 80 proof [40% ABV] liquor or its equivalent) for a man and no more than 7 for a woman. On any one day consumption should not exceed 4. I don’t think there has been a week in the past ten years when I’ve come close to 14, nor has there been a day when I’ve exceeded 4.
 
At this point in my life (any impulse toward excess being long past) the cardio benefits of moderate consumption may well counterbalance or exceed any other risks. My amygdala might thank me. On the other hand, I recall Frank Sinatra’s remark that he feels sorry for people who don’t drink because “when they wake up in the morning that is as good as they are going to feel all day.” That is not really as encouraging as he might have intended.
 

David Allan Coe – Jack Daniel's, If You Please