(August 21, 2023 at 10:22 am)Ahriman Wrote: Caffeine makes me anxious, but reduces my dysphoria. I read, on a certain website, that caffeine boosts euphoria, and reduces boredom. Just reading that information, made me want to ingest caffeine. So I've been using caffeine for several years. I purchased a caffeinated product at the store, several years ago, and really loved the way it made me feel, so I continued purchasing caffeinated products, up to the present day. I am now addicted to caffeine, and I have no way of knowing if this would have happened if I had not purchased that very first caffeinated product. I'm assuming it would've still happened, but I don't know. Did I have free will when making that decision? I'm actually not sure, but it doesn't matter, the bottom line is that I am now addicted to caffeine, and I just have to live with it, for better or worse. Perhaps being addicted to a substance isn't such a bad thing, if that substance helps you in some aspect of life, such as improving your mood? It's a fair trade off, I think. Free will might not have had anything to do with it. But if this "choice", to become addicted to caffeine, was in fact, pre-determined, I would like to think it only happened for my own good.
There's much worse things to be addicted to. Does it help you? I've never found caffeine to help kill my ennui, or do much else other than make we slightly more awake and go to the toilet more. But it affects people differently, and may also depend upon dosage. How much caffeine were you taking to notice positive effects?
As for freewill, I suspect your addiction was baked into the early stages of the universe and was just the inevitable outworking of natural laws. It was always going to be.
