Absolutely! But it's not easy to find good whole bean decaf coffee.

There is no more point than there is to alcohol, tea, or sweets. It's mostly just for enjoyment- perhaps together with a good book.

Caffeine can also be employed strategically for exceptional circumstances, but that's a less common application.

This appears to be focused on post-15th century America and England; I was talking about world history, where each of these drinks' use predates Western social interpretations. But you're right that economic status often dictated social behavior, and so different things were drank by different social strata, but often because that's just what a person of that social class would do. Tea was originally treated as a very high social strata drink, but by the 18th century nearly all colonial americans were drinking it, up until the revolution supplanted it with alternatives like coffee.

Cities and towns have often historically been located next to rivers not only for transportation, but for agriculture, to remove waste, and for people to drink it. In order to have a "city" you have to solve the transportation of waste, which involves getting in water, and evidence for this goes back well before 3,000BC. The locations for cities were often chosen for good water quality, or avoided due to poor water quality. If water wasn't nearby, they'd pipe it in, and it they couldn't do that, they'd dig wells, often hundreds of em. In Rome, access to water completely transformed the idea of a city and built the biggest one in history up to that point. Cities often had not only public wells, but also fountains specifically for both drinking and hand-washing.

Some famous cities in history had poor access to water, and as they grew they suffered due to a lack of sanitation and clean water. But that has nothing to do with who drank what or for what purpose. All societies have drank different things for different reasons, but almost never due to an inability to get drinking water.

Even today, remote villages that are barely touched by modern man don't boil water or drink alcohol or tea. They just drink straight-up water, and 100,000 years of evolution has proved the idea that we figured out how not to die from it.

Personally, I find tea to be a much stronger diuretic. Even herbal tea (zero caffeine). Coffee used to cause diuretic symptoms, until I reached the point where I drank it every day. I drink tea most days now, but the diuretic effects never subsided.

/rant. Bodies are weird.

I went from seven cups+ a day to zero caffeine - I was most surprised that I didn't suffer any sort of physical withdrawal - I was anticipating immense suffering.

I used a product called Wean Caffeine to successfully avoid the headaches. It steps you down by 10mg every three days. For anyone wanting to quit, I highly recommend.

https://www.weancaffeine.com/

Can confirm. Went from drinking 2-3 cups a day to no coffee about a week ago and the headaches were very bad for a solid two days. As in, lay on the bed feeling like an unproductive potato bad.

That was the worst of it though. By day 4 everything felt back to normal. Hoping to keep this up for at least a month or two.

Having been addicted to caffeine and nicotine I found the migranes were equivalent, only with nicotine it would be every 30 minutes after injesting rather than 5 hours.

In both cases they were gone after about a week or two, but I could see how it would be difficult for people who have an easy time smoking (low vs high sin taxes, happen to be at places where you can smoke all the time like your own car and home vs. a restrictive apartment and public transit, whether or not your friends also smoke all the time). My addiction was only for about 2-3 years, too, not half a lifetime like with some people.

Yeah, I've gone through them. Often times it starts on a Saturday afternoon since I don't drink coffee as frequently on weekends.