Margaret O’Leary Cotton Duster Sweater // Classic Grey T-Shirt

For the last 8 years or so, I’ve been coffee’s #1 fan.

I first started drinking coffee {mostly caramel lattes, let’s be real..} in college when I got in the habit of pulling all nighters and writing too many 20 page papers  – #EnglishMajorStruggles. I lasted the first few years getting a caffeine kick from Diet Coke and black tea, but when you know you need to stay up ’till 3 AM to finish a paper, you need something a little more powerful to get you through.

By the time I graduated, I was BFFs with my Starbucks baristas and I was fully on the caffeinated train, starting every day with a grande latte or coffee so I didn’t feel like a zombie during that terrible transition from student life to full time work life. And from one coffee I eventually moved onto two cups of coffee {and on really bad days I sometimes went crazy with three cups of coffee}, which started to make me feel pretty awful. Fast forward to this year, and I was still on the multiple cups of coffee a day train just a few months ago. I woke up in the morning craving my non-fat caramel latte, even though the effect of coffee had long been lost on me. I would drink a cup of coffee at my desk and barely feel energized, and I didn’t even feel jittery anymore and had replaced any attempt at breakfast with an extra large cup of coffee instead. I felt sluggish, no matter how much coffee I put in my body, and getting a cup every morning was more of a ritual these days than truly having any sort of effect on me.

There were parts of the ritual I loved, taking 5 minutes away from my desk to talk to our office barista {really, Ogilvy has an office barista, how awesome is that?!}, taking that first sweet sip and carrying it like it was an extension of myself from meeting to meeting. But all the sugar and extra caffeine made me feel terrible, and while I’ve never been addicted to anything before, I really felt like I couldn’t kick the habit.

Around my birthday in February I got pretty sick, and attempted to do a better job of keeping myself hydrated than usual. I begrudgingly gave up my morning latte, instead double fisting water and black tea that I would drink a few times a day. And by the time I got better, I realized that I actually didn’t need coffee – and that I felt so much better without it when I swapped out my morning latte for black tea, milk and a little bit of sugar. So now I’m on a tea kick, and I’ve truly never felt better in the mornings. I feel more energized and less sluggish when I wake up, and I’ve traded in my coffee ritual for a much cheaper {aka free at my agency!} tea one. Whenever I feel like I want to indulge at a coffee shop, I’ve been getting tea lattes instead – and a London Fog tea {black tea + steamed milk + a few shots of vanilla} is my new favorite go-to! It’s way better than my usual latte, and I feel so much better 🙂

Are you a self-proclaimed coffee addict too? Or have you recently kicked the habit? I’d love to know what your coffee alternative go-to is!