I just can't quit my one cuppa Tea (Coffee)

"I can leave everything, except Tea!" 

"But even doctors say you can have one cup of tea (one cup of coffee) a day"

"I have got to have something warm after waking up" 

"Without coffee, I don't feel fresh. I can't go to work / do house hold chores / do blah blah blah."

"I am not addicted like you were Deepti. I just like to have it. Nothing will happen if I don't have tea, but I still have it."   

"You are vegan. Well I am vegan too." (After some follow up clarification questions from me...) "Well I mean, little-bit-vegan. I don't like cheese. Ya, I can eat cheese in pizza, but not otherwise. I eat paneer [cottage cheese] very rarely. Like once a week. Ya chai is one thing I can not leave." 

"Arey Deepti I already know tea / coffee is not good! That's why I have only one cup a day." 

"Bas too much hoagaya. [Enough of your lecture] I don't want to listen to how cows are treated, else it will become 'so difficult' for me to have my tea. I cant live without my tea."

"I 'don't like the taste of milk'. So I add a little bit tea to it. After that it tastes so much better. Thats the only way I can have milk, otherwise it tastes so bad"

And more...

Did you ever want to leave tea or coffee, and thought you can't? And if yes - do you have your own unique and different excuse (politically correct phrase: 'genuine reason' thats preventing you from doing so? 

Each week, I have a brand new voice telling me, they can not become vegan because, they can quit everything made from dairy; but the tea (coffee)! The responses above, are actual responses given by real people as a part of our conversation! 

First of all for God sake, stop telling me you have tea, cause thats the only way you can intake milk in your body. Cows are surviving and thriving without human milk since eons! So can you without steeling theirs! 

Now My Dearies, allow me to BREAK YOUR MYTH! If an ordinary person like me can quit tea and coffee, so can YOU! For many of vegan friends, quitting all dairy, meat, eggs, fish has been an overnight deal. For me it took me one full year. Especially when it came to tea - partly the relaxation my addiction gave me, and partly the social acceptance I received on sharing a cup of tea with friends and family, I had three iterations of quitting and restarting tea within the first year of being an aspiring-vegan.  

As I learnt later in life, any residual craving in the after years, was either due to lack of sleep or some emotional need; and unlike my earlier belief of tea as one-fix-for-all; required either resting, going for a walk or distraction methodology such as watching TV or 'retail therapy' (usually the last one as hubby's credit card info safely resides in Amazon.com's 1-click. Or if nothing else the Alderwood Mall is just 10 minutes away :) 
None the less, I can not emphasize more. The freedom I felt from over coming my addiction was priceless. 

And if are still in doubt about your addictions - I can gladly put you in touch with my colleagues from work; or prior to that - my Bangalore's Paying Guest aunt or even way before that - my college time friends. Even after a decade and half, my ex-room mates sometimes talk about the enormous amounts of time and energy I would spend to acquire one cup of special request post-dinner tea; which unlike the morning, noon or evening servings was a privileged cup, as it was not a part of the hostels menu's scheduled servings.  

But, lets begin with the chat-pati [spicy] story first.  

Duration: Courtship. Circa 2004  

Location: Jaya Nagar, Bangalore

Time: Never too cold, never too warm nice (read: romantic) Saturday afternoon. 

Scene: I haven't had my fix since several hours now. And my body is craving. Having managed to survive on alcohol since college days (Yups! Poor guy - he was completely normal, before he married me!!!), Abhinav is not yet entirely familiar with x-y coordinates of tea and coffee stalls in Jaya Nagar. As a reminder, this is the pre smartphone / yelp / google-maps age. I share the idea of having a cup of chai / or the yummy Madras coffee, which ever could be spotted first. Another 10 minutes have passed and so I remind him. In his usual gentle voice he tells me he thought there was one was in the direction in which we both were heading; but since there isn't, he will keep looking as we continue to stroll. Another 10 more minutes; and my head is pounding and aching so badly that I almost yell at  him - "I need it and I need it now!" I leave the rest of the conversation and our evening to your imagination :) Anyhow, the one good outcome of that fateful evening was that, until up to 2011, we both knew if I didn't get my anticipated fix, who was in trouble! :) 

Fast forward to 2010; I was contemplating whether there was any truth to all the violence the animals were shown to experience, or whether there were more secrets to this whole notion of veganism. Unlike other vegans, I did not have one single person in my life, to hold my hand and show me the path. Instead I had the support system of (then 2000) people, all of whom I had never met, heard or seen before - except on the facebook forum Indian Vegans. Here people who shared their experiences and responded to my doubts and fears came from all walks of life. From musicians, to engineers, lawyers, teachers, librarians, judges, doctors, students, models, athletic trainers, body builders, sports players, actors, singers, etc. There were 80 years olds, who had been vegan since over 5 decades and there new and curious ones like me; There were seasoned ones - extremely confident about their vegan pregnancies, and al categories falling somewhere in between. As I read people's stories and experiences from all walks of life, I instantly gave up all things dairy. Paneer, Cheese, Pizza, Butter, Khoya, Creamery, Yogurt, Butter-Milk, Ghee plus all dairy based sweets, cookies, bread and related items (I had already quit meat back in 2001 when my cousin Piyush shared his thoughts back then)   

Tea was something that needed some work. Post meals I would become a potato couch until I had a cup of tea. My life was surrounded by either tea, or the thought of having tea, or from the lingering memories of the tea that I had the last time. House hold chores were planned around my tea. First tea - then this. First tea - then that. No tea - no this, no that! 

So it was during those days, I was experimenting with almond tea and other non-dairy alternatives tea. Abhinav ji started liking those too. For a long time, we ended up consuming home made non dairy tea / coffee. It struck me one day, that I can have home-made or store-bought vegan milk stand by in the comfort of my own home; but what when I am away? What when I visit a friend straight from work? What when I end up being at a new place unplanned? How would I survive without my doze then? 

Around that time, I also happened to visit India. A few weeks into my trip, owing to my weakness I caved in and gave up my resolution. The four to eight times a day, tulsi, black pepper and ginger added to that perfectly brewed dairy milk chai spreading its soothing aroma into every nook and corner of the home was way too tempting to care about a voiceless non-human's life and death. In other words, no matter how gruesome the thought of cows being raped, new born calves being torn away, or no matter how heart wrenching the recorded cries of those new mother cows dying to feed their baby; it took me almost an entire year to be able to kick out dairy based caffeine and nicotine from my life. 

Coming to the only important part  - 

In my various attempts to leave these socially accepted addictions, one of the experiments that turned out super successful was pretty easy to implement too. This is what I did: 

Add the usual 1-2 spoons of regular sugar into boiling water. Add extra sugar if you feel like. Forget calories for a month. For some frame of reference, that one can of coke you had yesterday, had one cup of sugar in it. Plus your body is anyhow way toxic and dehydrated from the tea and coffee from years of consumption, that a few extra spoons of sugar for a month would make no difference to its overall health and wellbeing. On the contrary, its rather going to thank you in less than a couple of months from now when you are have quit. If you in the mood, also add any or of all of the following - tulsi leaves, black pepper, ginger powder or freshly grated ginger. In short, make your regular tea, minus the tea leaves and minus the dairy milk. 

Now drink this! I guarantee this combination alone is going to give you instant satisfaction. I would be surprised if you said otherwise. I would be happy to learn about your experience either ways; which believe me - will be very positive. 

As a side note - if you were born in India 200 years ago, (precisely before the Britishers invaded Indians), this is exactly what you would have been served - minus the sugar; which would be have been replaced with the more grounded alternative - the unprocessed predecessor 'jaggery'.  

Lets getting to the science behind why do we get addicted: 

Other than water, the main ingredients of tea are: 

• Nicotine / Caffeine: addictive (as we all know) 
• Sugar: addictive for many (instant form of energy or kick)
• Milk from an animal - whether cow or human: ADDICTIVE

Yes thats right! MILK IS ADDICTIVE. It has Morphine, which of course is an opiate. What are these opiates doing there, hidden in milk proteins? It appears that the opiates from mother’s milk produce a calming effect on the infant and, in fact, may be responsible for a good measure of the mother-infant bond. Psychological bonds always have a physical underpinning. Like it or not, mother’s milk has a drug-like effect on the baby’s brain that ensures that the baby will bond with Mom and continue to nurse and get the nutrients all babies need. 

In a simple scenario - Lets imagine (in the ideal world where the calf is allowed his mother's milk) one day he just tells him mom - "Nah! Not in a mood to drink your stuff mom. I plan to graze on grass today." Okay, may be it didn't strike you as something odd. Lets take a human baby. 

Now what if the human baby said - "Nah! Not in a mood to drink your stuff mom. I plan to chew some pakoras (salted fritters) today." This is how you would respond to that - "Well my darling infant, first - in your initial months of birth, you still don't have teeth yet. And second - your intestines are not yet developed to handle any food, other than the milk Mother Nature has designed to have your human mom produce for you!" 

Its for this reason, all milk - and yes all milk coming from any mom, whether human or tiger or cow is designed to be addictive. When 10 year old human infants continue to have those morphins from another animal mom; day-in and day-out, increasing their consumption as they grow from kids into teens, to 20's, to 30's and then finally forever - they do get hooked to it for a lifetime. 

The trick is to break that cycle of addiction. 

With that done - your battle is half won. The warm water and sugar - once or even several times a day - continues to give you some of that same level of comfort you are used to. Finally at some point - your body learns not to depend on those empty calories alone and at this point you have already broken the schakels of addiction to quite an extent. Just keep going to a point where your body reduces or refuses to have that senseless sugary drink. 

     

Once done - sit in front of a mirror, give yourself a nice deep look, and pat your back! Praise yourself for having won the war that many will sadly continue to struggle with!! 

Oh and to avoid my hosts from the guilty of not serving me a drink, I usually keep sipping from a glass of water. Makes everyone happy! 

PS: After sharing my success story dozens of times with friends and family, Abhinav Ji finally decided to take up to the challenge for himself. At the point of writing this he is sober since over 16 days now. Mind it - I am not using the word sober, in any light humor here. For many of us tea coffee are no less terrible addictions than alcohol. His battle is a battle already half - won. When does yours start? 

Lets collectively stop this socially acceptable drink to continue to dehydrate and destroy our bodies.