"On the contrary" I stated. "People who drink coffee are insane. Insane and possessed and, what is worse, willing to be possessed. Most people in asylums drink coffee. If you let them stop drinking it, they would regain enough equanimity to leave. But, no, they don't stop. In fact, they drink more and more, and they get crazier and crazier. They're dehumanized with every single goddamned drop, and although they sense it, they're like lemmings, or buffalo who jump off cliffs. People drink coffee and it makes them insane.<p>"Must you drink coffee? Why not cocoa, tea, cola tea, mate, yoco infusion, or guarana? Why caffeine? Why not theobromine or theophylline? I have had an occasional square of chocolate. It is the cause of uncontrolled ecstasy, but, afterward, you sink into Promethean despair.<p>"Note," I demanded, "that caffeine was introduced to Europe in the seventeenth century, post-Renaissance. Why is it, do you think, that the art of the Renaissance and the classical period has never been surpassed? The great heights were reached on angels' wings, not via a filthy corruption brewed from a bean that poisons its own tree."<p>From Memoir From Antproof Case <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoir_From_Antproof_Case" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoir_From_Antproof_Case</a><p>as for serving coffee to children, my son can have some when he is able to go a minute without excitedly trying to kill himself in a new and innovative way - so about when he is 30.<p>on edit: added a closing quotation mark I forgot before, haven't had my morning cup yet.