Tag: tea

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Kicking the Caffeine Habit

By Jim Spiegel

It was 2 a.m., and I awoke in a literal cold sweat. The room was warm, and I was layered in covers, but I felt freezing cold. My body ached as if wracked by the flu. But it wasn’t the flu. It was withdrawals. Not from heroin or some other hard narcotic. It was caffeine withdrawals, and this was the price of my finally kicking a two-decade long addiction. Well, at least part of the price. The next morning would bring a massive headache, which took several days to finally taper off. It wasn’t until day nine that the withdrawal symptoms fully abated and I felt that I was finally free.

220px-Koffein_-_Caffeine.svgMy love affair with caffeine began in the Spring of 1983, motivated by my second-semester Organic Chemistry class. (Thank you, Dr. Kelly.) At first, it was tea, but then I tried coffee and realized that I actually liked the flavor, unlike my father who had an innate distaste for the stuff. From there, I drank coffee periodically until the mid-90s when I slipped into a morning routine that featured coffee and cereal. Then came the Starbucks explosion of the late 90s and I was on-board for the ride, my standard choice being raspberry mocha. A few years later, the dirty chai became a favorite as well. Few things brought me more gustatory delight than these drinks.

So why quit? Why subtract from one’s life such a wonderful culinary aesthetic? It certainly wasn’t because I came to any conviction that caffeine consumption is morally wrong. In fact, now that the dust has settled and I know longer “need” my daily caffeine fix, I do drink the occasional Coke or decaf coffee or tea, which contains small amounts of caffeine. The problem was simply the fact that I was addicted, physiologically dependent on a chemical. The Bible says, “a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him” (2 Pet. 2:19). And caffeine had mastered me, as Amy had pointed out to me several times, usually when I suffered from headaches after going to long without my fix. And reading some classic spiritual works from the early church fathers (e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, John Cassian) this summer only reinforced the incentive to challenge my physical appetites. I began to fantasize about the idea of being free from the burden of supplying my body with caffeine every day. What would that be like?

So I decided to do it, beginning with a few days of decreasing my caffeine intake and then quitting altogether, which is what brought on the flu-like symptoms. Now that I’ve been addiction-free for over a month, it still feels strangely liberating. I do sometimes miss the morning ritual, which in recent years has featured tea rather than coffee. And I miss the full-bodied flavor of caffeinated coffee when I occasionally drink a decaf alternative. But it’s been worth it.

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Drinking from the Cup of Ritual

By Amy Spiegel

In these politically divisive times, there are lots of ways we see our nation divided and categorized: by political party, race, religion, occupation, beverage of choice. Okay, so maybe this last category doesn’t cut as deep a divide as the others, but nonetheless, I think you can tell a lot about a person by what they choose to imbibe. Now there is the classic divide of coffee or tea. People of both persuasions take the process of brewing or steeping, whatever the case might be, pretty seriously. I have seen people approach their coffeemakers, if they are hard core, like priests approaching the altar, especially if they have a French press.

Jim switched from coffee to tea a few years back, due to his battle with gastric reflux. While this was a great disappointment to the kids who had become accustomed to begging a swig or two from his coffee mug each morning, I think he is now in the correct camp for his disposition, not to mention his digestion. I see the coffee drinker as high energy/intense. This is not Jim, who relates much better to the methodical and slower pace of tea drinking.

Allow me to describe the typical process of making a cup of tea in our house. First, heat the water. This is actually a great controversy in our household because Jim much prefers the microwave, while I rely on the electric kettle. Next you forget that you have heated the water (in either way previously described) and you have to start again, because by the time you remember, the water has gotten cold again. After reheating the water, you choose a tea bag and once again walk away, perhaps to wipe a bottom (always a great pre-beverage-consumption activity) or to settle a dispute. Returning to your steeping cup, you realize that once again, it’s cold. After reheating, adding half and half and honey (if you are Jim, you use more honey than Winnie the Pooh) you try to drink it. But wait, it’s too hot. So you leave the tea, and do something else only to come back too late and find that your tea is—say it with me now—cold. So you give it one more zap in the microwave (it now contains enough microwaves to scramble a pacemaker) and drink, burning your tongue with each sip, but you’ve come this far, right? Gee, I don’t’ know why I don’t do that more often. My aversion to this process obviously reveals my issues with patience and instant gratification. I applaud Jim for his perseverance but prefer my beverage consumption not to be an exercise in self-discipline.

So, you might be asking yourself, what do I drink—water? Please. I am among an elite group of drinkers whose beverage of choice is the Polar Pop. Now allow me to enlighten those of you who do not have the honor of living in Indiana. The Polar Pop is a very large, very cold fountain drink. You can only buy it in a limited number of convenient stores in our area, though it has its imitators, like all greats do. You can get a Polar Pop in either brand you prefer, but I, of course, like all distinguished connoisseurs of carbonated beverages, head directly for the Coke side of the dispenser. I quickly fill my Styrofoam (that’s right, not only am I consuming 32 oz. of liquid goodness-knows-what, but it is all contained within a large, non-biodegradable container) with ice and fill with half caf and half decaf Diet Coke. In and out in less than a minute if the line is short, which is good thing because I am usually squeezing the stop in between either dropping off or picking up one of the kids and dropping off or picking up one of the other kids. The size of the drink is definitely a plus because if the kids are present, there is usually a lot sharing going on. If the choice of coffee or tea reflects on the chooser, then what does the Polar Pop reveal about me? Besides the obvious—that I am not as environmentally or health conscious as I ought to be—I think the draw of the Polar Pop for me is the ritual of it. I love the fact that with little variation I can go through the ceremony of getting my Polar Pop in a very orderly and predictable way each time, going to the same gas station and getting the same drink. I get the same style of cup (the cup holder-friendly model) and get cranky if they don’t have the blue straws as opposed to the skinny white ones. (I also drink tea, when I can endure the process, out of the same mug, eat the same cereal for breakfast every morning, and reread books again and again. It’s a sickness, I know.)

In an attempt to pull this post out of the abyss of complete triviality it has thus far been wallowing in, I will say this. There is a natural human tendency to cling to what is visible, that which we can touch and feel and even taste. While my near-obsession with the Polar Pop seems harmless enough, there are days when I suck down Diet Coke like a prayer to heaven, seeking comfort from the familiar. But I think that even in routine, God speaks and does indeed comfort. Otherwise, why would He make the sun rise and fall each day in pretty much the same way and have the seasons follow one another in the same order? If He likes order and routine, why shouldn’t we who are created in His image? Perhaps the draw of routine is part of the Imago Dei, however dimly disguised in the contents of a Styrofoam cup.