I’ve been talking here about a chemical—caffeine—but of course we’re really talking about a plant, or in this case two plants: Coffea and Camellia sinensis, aka tea, which, over the course of their evolution, figured out how to produce a chemical that happens to addict most of the human species.* This is an astounding accomplishment, and while that was not the plants’ intent in concocting this molecule—there is no intent in evolution, just lots of blind chance that occasionally yields an adaptation so good that it is extravagantly rewarded—once that molecule found its way into the human brain,
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