Over the past few years, I have been transitioning into many different activities that I would have never done before. All of them are safe and legal!

For example, it took me until my last year to start drinking hot tea. I would always drink iced tea since the day I was born. My family and friends know this maybe a little too well. My mother visited me one day and gave me a box of twenty-four bottles of Arizona Green Tea. I was speechless. This is my favorite iced tea to drink and now I have enough to last me until I go back home again!

Now my liquid addiction is hot tea. Last year, I was sick with a terribly sore throat. The best I could do for it--because the doctor did not know what it was--was drink hot tea. I had a few bags from a gift box my mother sent me--see the trend--and decided to start then. Three hundred and sixty-five days later, I am concocting different blends with different types of loose-leaf tea from China in an infuser I bought at Teavana. I believe it is safe to say I have transitioned quickly.

However, it has taken me until last week to even consider drinking coffee semi-regularly. I have been against drinking coffee for this long for two reasons. First, I hated the taste of it. To me, it possessed a bitter taste that lasted far too long. I could barely take a few sips let alone drink an entire cup.

Second was the caffeine effect. I was afraid of getting addicted to the effects of coffee. Not only do I not need it, it is an added cost I do not want to add on. I see people almost always with a cup of coffee in their hands and I have to wonder how much it costs them per week, per month, per year. That is something I just naturally think about with rituals such as that. It is the same with cigarette smoking. The taxes on them keep increasing and people still buy a pack a day.

So then why did I decide to try coffee? Well, one reason is because of timing. I had class that started at 7:45AM and I wanted to know how much coffee affected me. I figured the best time to test this was during a time when I was least awake and alert. Once I have been awake for an hour or two, I am chipper and energetic as anyone can be! That is not really the best time to try it.

What I did was--right before I went to class--I created my first cup of Joe. Poured in the regular coffee, added a bit of half-and-half, poured in a nice little bit of caramel flavoring and stirred nice and well. I slowly sipped away the coffee for the next half hour.

What happened? Oh…I felt it. It took another hour, but the caffeine hit me harder than a Mac truck that lost its brakes. I was wired for the next hour or so. Then, I fell back down to my normal energy level. However, I was not entirely happy with how it felt, especially when I have to sit in a class with all of this energy ready to burst like a firework show. I wished I had my normal level of energy where I could concentrate and feel calm at the same time rather than wanting to swing from light to light like Indiana Jones.

I have only had two more cups since then and I feel great, in case you were wondering…I refuse to make it a habit. I am still eternally faithful to tea, but coffee for me is going to be a bit more like soda where the times I drink it are few and far between.

I guess you can say I am now part of the coffee culture…maybe? Probably not. That’s okay. Tea has my love. Forever and ever.