Here’s what I’m missing: I miss the way caffeine and its rituals used to order my day, especially in the morning. Herbal teas—which are barely, if at all, psychoactive—lack coffee’s and tea’s power to organize the day into a rhythm of energetic peaks and valleys, as the mental tide of caffeine ebbs and flows. The morning surge is a blessing, obviously, but there is also something comforting in the ebb tide of afternoon, which a cup of tea can gently reverse.
