"It's only tea"

There's a reader who's been feeling exempt for eleven chapters, because they don't drink coffee. They drink tea. Five or six mugs a day, from the first one in bed to the last one at nine, and it has never once occurred to them that any of this applies.

It applies. The NHS puts about seventy-five milligrams in a mug of tea, black or green, against a hundred for instant coffee. Six mugs is four hundred and fifty milligrams, which is more than four coffees and above the amount the European review put as the level of no concern for adults. A strong brew, a big mug, or a pot that's been standing will push a mug higher. Green tea isn't the gentle exception people take it for. The NHS figure is the same.

The tea drinker's habit has the same shape as the coffee drinker's, and it's harder to see, because tea comes with a reputation. It's what you make for someone who's had a shock. It's what you have to calm down. It's the drink of comfort and of putting the kettle on, and so the caffeine in it hides behind the kindness. A person who'd never have a coffee at nine at night will have a tea at nine without a thought, and lie awake at half past eleven, and never connect the two.

Everything in this book applies with one change. The doses are smaller and there are more of them. That means the shortfall in the morning is real but often milder, the afternoon slump is fed by the eleven o'clock and the three o'clock mugs, and the night is paid by the one after dinner and the one on the sofa. It also means the taper is easier, because tea steps down naturally. A weaker brew. A smaller mug. A decaf bag among the ordinary ones, then two, then all of them after two o'clock. Decaf tea is closer to tea than decaf coffee is to coffee, and most people can't tell in a mug with milk.

Count it, as chapter 11 asked. Include every mug. If you're a tea drinker who's tired in the mornings and slow at three, the count will probably surprise you, and the cut-off will probably fix more than you expect.

And keep the tea. The morning pot, made properly, drunk at the table, is not the habit. The sixth mug of the day at nine on the sofa is.