Maybe my brain just really digs on antioxidants.

December 11, 2006 6:22 PM

Is drinking green tea giving me a buzz?

For the last month I've been drinking several cups of green tea each day and I can't shake the feeling that I'm a bit wacky after I drink it.

I brew my tea in one of those mugs that has a filter in it, I use about a tablespoon of high falutin' gov't grade --kidding-- leaves. I let it set for about 4 mins and then take the filter out, drink and repeat (with the same leaves) four or five times in a day.

I've half-assedly googled "green tea high" and "green tea buzz" over the past few weeks and haven't found anything too spectacular, and certainly nothing that's adequately provided any sort of answer to why I feel particularly giddy/antsy/goofy/innovative since partaking of the leaf.

Anyone experience similar?

Oh and caffeine disclaimer: hard core coffee drinker here (though I'm not mixing the two in a day). This isn't a caffeine buzz, it's more an ... altered state that feels (ever so subtly) *heightened*.

posted by 10ch to food & drink (8 comments total)

Tea has theobromine in it. Like caffeine, it gives you a buzz, though a differett kind.
posted by Listener at 6:34 PM on December 11, 2006

Yes I get the same thing, it's much less jangly feeling than drinking a similar amount of coffee, more subtle but still very energetic.
posted by Divine_Wino at 6:54 PM on December 11, 2006

I seem to remember Inspector Wexford experiencing something like this when he visited China in Ruth Rendell's Speaker of Mandarin. He drank green tea constantly and got, as you say, heightened.
posted by lucyleaf at 7:39 PM on December 11, 2006

Green tea does that have that buzz feeling to it more than coffee or black tea.

Those two make you hyper. Green tea really does give you a buzz.
posted by gregb1007 at 8:08 PM on December 11, 2006

A friend of mine called me in a panic after drinking a particularly strong brew in a fancy Los Angeles tea joint. She was completely disoriented and was afraid she wouldn't be able to find her way home. We wrote it off as some sort of panic attack but when the same thing happened after another cuppa at the same place, we decided to blame the tea. She definitely did not feel elevated; more pulled apart. Thanks for the Inspector Wexford connection lucyleaf! I've been trying to find that reference for years. Too much of the wrong tea I guess.
posted by firstdrop at 8:25 PM on December 11, 2006

What about maté ? Does it give a similar effect, and does it keep you thin and healthy? I also dimly recall a news item a couple years back where a guy said drinking a lot of green tea with jasmine explained why he stabbed his wife.
posted by davy at 9:22 PM on December 11, 2006

I had a friend in college who drank the type of green tea that was sold in loose leaves, (I can't remember the brand name, but it was in the "ethcnic" section in Wegman's) who would *swear* up and down that she would get "stoned" off of it.
Just about everyone on my floor (myself included) tried this tea and it didn't do anything for us. (I know it's not exactly a scientific sort of thing.)

So yeah, it might be giving you a buzz in some form or another, but I don't think it's hurtful.
posted by sperose at 12:57 AM on December 12, 2006

There's an old Victorian horror story called "Green Tea" about this guy who drinks green tea all the time so he can stay up to work and he starts constantly seeing this little monkey staring at him in his peripheral vision. Reading that story made me decide to stick with coffee.
posted by Jess the Mess at 6:36 PM on December 12, 2006