I had the fortunate (or unfortunate) experience of having the most insane tea drunk experience in a long time. Though there are a few things that lead up to this.
First off, I get random tea items in my mailbox that I cannot promote here due to TOS. Secondly, with my current diet and medication, caffeine affects me more than usual, which is saying something as I am always quite susceptible. So I drink a max of 10 grams of awesome tea instead of 17-24 gram consumption I’ve done for years.
A Mushroom Matcha showed up on my doorstep and I saved it for a day when I have to get up at 6 am for a jammed packed work schedule and high stress day. A perfect day to have extra matcha to keep me awake and active.
This matcha is marketed to those who drink for health benefits. It has a cocktail of a concentrated blend of exotic traditional Chinese medicine mushrooms that increase energy, all in ceremonial matcha. The health benefits list mostly mentions energy, clarity, non jitters – the usual matcha benefit buzzwords.
I should have been warned as on the back of the box it stated that they made this matcha as a substitute for Adderall and energy drinks. Ehh, matcha is like 90mg of caffeine, so that is an interesting choice of buzzwords.
I made this matcha as usual and it smelled very umami. A creamy mushroom is a flavor profile that I taste sometimes in matcha, so this couldn’t be bad. It looked beautiful as well.
The flavor? HORRID. It tasted like drinking ground up mushroom dirt, bittersweet chocolate, silky grassy matcha, and then a chemical sweetness. They added calorie free sugar to this! This matcha might have been passable without sugar, but that combination of strong mushroom soil and chemical sugar was very wrong. I iced and watered it down and it tasted like drinking mushroom rinse. The lingering aftertaste is more dirt and sugar.
I should have stopped but I kept drinking. Right away, I started feeling very off. My skin started to crawl, like ants were running up and down my arms, up my back, behind my eyes, and all over my scalp. Somehow, I just kept drinking it until it was all gone. I’m not sure why, usually something this horrible I just sip and dump. It was likely the tea drunk destroying all rational thought. About 30 minutes later, my body screamed loud enough to say “This is disgusting and we want it out” and I tried my best to keep the tea down.
My body hit “flight” in the fight or flight response, and wanted to go run around the yard and dig holes to hide in. I checked the ingredients list. In addition to the mushroom cocktail, matcha, and fake sugar, they added additional caffeine! The same kind of caffeine that is in those 200mg gamer fuel type drinks. Though those drinks don’t get me this wrecked, it has to be the excessive caffeine, crazy mushrooms, and matcha L-theanine.
Usually, a tea drunk sensation makes me a bit manic – I’ll buy stupid stuff online, drive too fast, and get overly ambitious. This mushroom matcha also turned on the extroversion to 11, when I’m naturally a 3. I didn’t stop talking to people, or myself, loudly all day. But I also occasionally felt like I was dying by being buried alive, as I have the sensation of bugs crawling all over me, my stomach heaving, and a sugared potting soil taste that won’t come out of my mouth. But it was my own funeral dance party! I was also unable to operate a touch screen and cut my hand 4 times by accident.
10 hours later and my hands were still shaking and my body jittering. I reflected back on my poor choice to drink the entire serving of mushroom matcha. Or was it a great choice? I had a party while doing what I needed to do for the day at the expense of 4 bandaids. The mushroom matcha box is still sitting on my kitchen counter. I am not sure if I should mix it with cement and throw it into the ocean or drink it again.
