Sitting in Psychology 101, we started learning about all the drugs under the sun like alcohol, meth, marijuana, and cocaine. On this list of drugs was the loveable caffeine; caffeine is the one dosage that most college students, business workers, and all sleep-deprived human beings need to deal with early mornings. The easy fix? Coffee. Coffee is sweeping the nation and now is becoming so expensive that in a short amount of years, getting coffee at a restaurant will be like getting a glass of wine. The world is literally running out of coffee.
After some intensive research, I put myself in a scenario related to coffee if this world epidemic were to ever occur. I would consider myself as a typical coffee drinker but drink more when I’m stressed, have to stay up late when I have an assignments due, or I have to work late. In this experiment, I attempted to switch from drinking two-three cups of coffee a day to drinking only tea. It was a challenge to say the least, and I found myself going through a physical withdrawal. I’ve been drinking coffee every single morning since my senior year of high school and to go without it completely was frightening to my physical nature. I was irritable, exhausted, and had the worst headache imaginable. I found it hard to complete any work I needed to get done and I felt that my bed was the best place for me to be.
I pressed through with the experiment and tried another step the next day. I wanted to trick my brain, so I bought TeaVana’s Matévana, which smells like chocolate but tastes like coffee. Here’s a description of it from their website:
It’s not coffee, is it tea? Taste this coffee-like maté and red rooibos blend.
Sweetened with cocoa and chocolate chips, this mochaccino inspired blend
infuses smooth, dark rich sips that are soft and robust.
The best thing about this tea, and what really matters, is that this tea is on the lower end of the caffeine scale. The other thing I love about this tea is that it doesn’t require any cream and certainly doesn’t have nearly as much sugar as well. On top of that, tea is able to hydrate you when coffee cannot because of the caffeine content.
After I drank this “coffee tea,” I felt the same alertness I would have with a regular cup of coffee. Unfortunately though, the tea didn’t keep me alert for the entire day. I suffered the horrible hump at 2:30 p.m. where I started to slow down. I think once there is a complete daily routine of drinking tea, the slowing down will cease and I will feel more comfortable drinking tea in my mornings rather than coffee.
The switch was well worth it. Coffee does have its benefits like heart health, lowers the chances of having Alzheimer’s, and protects the liver. But the amount of caffeine is massively different from a whopping 150 mg compared with tea being on average a 25 mg. The caffeine intake is what should be concerning because as I personally learned, it can be physically harmful. Towards the latter part of my Psychology 101 class, the lecture ended with the fact that caffeine can be just as hard to eliminate from daily life as any other drug. This could be a scary aspect to deal with in later years to come. So if you can’t completely wean yourself off coffee, try tricking yourself into drinking hot herb-flavored water which has less caffeine and more antioxidants that are more beneficial for you than coffee will ever be.
