First, a relatable story: when I was in college, I formed a pretty nasty addiction to coffee. I didn’t drink it as heavily as some of my more irresponsible friends, but when classes and assignments got overwhelming, coffee was a comforting quick fix. Need more energy? Coffee. Feeling blue? Coffee. Meeting with friends somewhere? Coffee! Basically, coffee was the solution to many problems and even some non-problems. With a single serve Keurig in my dorm room and unlimited (albeit stale and horrible) coffee in every dining hall on the sprawling campus of the University of Michigan, coffee was just about as accessible to me as bathrooms. But one day, to my horror, I realized that my body actually needed it.
It wasn’t until that fateful day when I rushed off somewhere one morning without getting the chance to grab a cup of that despicable bean juice, not thinking much of this, that my body gave me a glimpse into my all-consuming dependence. I was met with a pounding headache, nausea, and grogginess that I had never before (and have never since) experienced, and I had no idea why. Thinking through my whole day to try to figure out what in the world could be responsible for my debilitating symptoms, I realized that it was not something I had done that day, but rather something I hadn’t done. By not drinking my daily mug of that snake oil-like elixir, my body decided it would not function. It protested in earnest as the day progressed, still with no coffee, and I was forced to go home and lie down.
It was on that day that I realized what I needed to do: I needed to quit coffee. Now, I was very young and healthy, so I knew that this would be no problem at all, except that it was very much a problem. For the first week, I simple drank less, roughly half of what I was drinking before. I had a headache each day and thought, “This is the hard part, it’ll be over soon.” The next week, I drank half of that, and still the headaches persisted. When I went full-stop and didn’t consume a drop for a week, I was in constant agony; headaches that no over-the-counter medicine or natural remedies could treat and a sluggishness that made it difficult to do just about anything. As it turns out, I had developed an intense caffeine addiction even though I only drank about a cup a day. It was a chemical addiction that took me approximately five weeks to fully overcome.
A study conducted by California College San Diego found that 90% of all Americans consume caffeine, with coffee, unsurprisingly, the primary beverage consumed. Half of all Americans consume an average of 3 cups a day. That’s three times the amount I drank daily, and yet I still became fiercely addicted. Sure, there are certainly health benefits to caffeine, but coffee contains 95 milligrams of the stuff, and that turned out to be too much for my body to handle. When deprived of it, I suffered immensely. I didn’t notice the signs of my dependence until they slapped me in the face a hundred times, or at least it felt like it. This may not be true for all caffeine-drinkers, but it was true for me, and I was disgusted when I realized what had been happening. I wasn’t going to let coffee control me, but I still needed a pick-me-up now and then. I was in college, after all. I’m sure you know where this is going, but that’s where tea came in.
I have always enjoyed a good iced tea, who doesn’t? But after coffee betrayed me, tea was my rebound, and we’ve since gotten married. Sweetened iced tea was an easy jumping off point, but I couldn’t always consume upwards of 30 milligrams of sugar; my metabolism was good but it wasn’t 30-milligrams-of-sugar-per-serving-of-tea good. I threw myself with the energy of a person who was sleeping better post-coffee addiction into finding the best teas, without even knowing yet what a terrific decision I was making. I would soon find out how great for my mind and body tea is, and from there would pledge my allegiance to it forever.
Once I started drinking tea regularly (at first, I liked aromatic greens best) I did a quick self-assessment of my health and noticed that I felt amazing. I was energetic, I felt fresh, my skin was clear, my stomach had never felt better, I wasn’t getting sick, and the list goes on. In case you haven’t heard, tea is packed with antioxidants; these nourish your cells and protect your body against disease with only plant-derived goodness. Read this blog post for even more health benefits. I was feeling peaceful and less tense from the relaxing effects of herbal teas, which were also fighting off my headaches. The inevitable stressors of college that I was used to experiencing 24/7 were so much easier to manage with the help of stress-reducing black teas (my current favorite type). And even though I didn’t know it, I was engaging in an ancient Chinese practice of consuming tannin-rich tea after a meal to aid with digestion, which explained why my stomach felt better than it had in years. If coffee was a bad-breakup, tea was a warm hug.
Since converting to the superior form of caffeine intake that is tea, I have never gone back to coffee. Tea only contains an average of 26 milligrams of caffeine, some varieties contain none at all, so my body can more than handle drinking it daily without negative side-effects if I decide not to have any one day. Tea is incredible for not only the reasons above, but also, plain and simple, because it’s delicious. I have never met anyone that simply doesn’t like a single kind of tea, and I hope that I never do. All tea ultimately comes from the same plant, but the geographical and harvesting differences are responsible for the six different types (read more about them in this article): black, green, white, oolong, dark, and yellow. In other words, something for everybody. Sure, there are different coffee beans, but the potential of tea is limitless, whereas coffee is, “Would you like a latte or a cappuccino?” If you’re looking for a replacement to your toxic, coffee-drinking ways, you want to be healthier, or both, tea is and always will be the answer.
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