Tea saved my life (long post)

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Mar 12th, '07, 14:57
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Tea saved my life (long post)

by Michael_C » Mar 12th, '07, 14:57

(I tried to post this in the "other" section under "teas" but saw that I could not start a new topic. apologies if this is in the wrong place)

A few years ago, I was a professional bar musician. I played four nights per week, on average, usually for two or three hours per night. I'd go to work typically at 9pm or so, and return around 2am. Almost without exception, nightclubs and bars provide tabs to their entertainment, and patrons buy drinks for performers following well played sets. I'd always have just one or two drinks before starting, and following I'd have a few more. Typically I'd end the night drunk, sometimes high. Along with alcohaul there is an undercurrent of narcotic use in current urban nightlife. Honestly, it's frighteningly accessible. Being single, it didn't hurt that there were so many pretty girls who liked to party, who sought out the guys who were more socially popular than most, and who themselves partied from time to time. It was regular to not get to sleep until four or so in the morning, entertaining guests all night, swapping trench stories with other musicians, promoters, bartenders or fans. I was drunk three or four nights out of the week, I was smoking a pack of cigarettes every day, and I can admit to having been - a couple of times - so looped on narcotics that there were times I wasn't sure who was sitting next to me.

Of course this was a cycle of feedback, complete with the morning cough and overdrawn bank account. Sure, you get most drinks for nothing, but it's good form to tip the bartender, and it's always nice to buy a drink for an attractive woman. Package goods as well are typically not included in a tab, and they are required for any afterparty worth its salt.

What all this meant was suicide by degrees, a slow burn which consumed thought, energy, and health. The universe was limited to that night's party, and friends were never seen in anything but artificial light. There was no regular sleep cycle. Hangovers could be debilitating. Superficiality became the norm in personal relationships. Most interaction became conditional: What can you do for me? How can you make me happy, even for a minute? All this while health was being slowly eroded with every day's receding tide, while headaches existed as a default conditon, and where money was spent in wide swathes to perpetute it all.

Still, there were lots of pretty smiling faces, there were lots of laughs and a few soul baring moments that couldn't ever exist in daylight.

Suicide by degrees.

I eventually met a woman who seemed to care for me. She was visiting from Japan, and since I speak enough Japanese to not need English, we spent a lot of time together. She went to my shows, met my friends, going to clubs and parties nowhere on any tourist map. I would sit up at night on my days off and play classical music for her, Mertz, Tarrega, Bach - and it became painfully evident to her that I was killing myself.

So she took me to Japan.

I stayed on the edge of a rice field in the outskirts of Nara for a month, no concerts, no bars or clubs nearer than a 30-minute train ride. No drugs, and drinking only with her, only once or twice a week. I was still smoking cigarettes, but understood it had to end soon. I'd play for four hours a day, I discovered the Pavanes by Purcell, and dusted off my old Ellington songbook. We drank tea every day. Unsweetened Japanese tea every day, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I drank tea and stared up a strange ceiling two thousand miles away, feeling calm and seeing notes in the shadows, fine thin lines of silver that quietly sang with the breeze and moonlight.

I saw in those green and amber bottles of tea something of a salvation. If I wanted to smoke, drink some tea. If I wanted to drink, make it tea. I promised her I would quit drugs - which I did then and there, on the spot, never turning back - and used tea to occupy myself when I wanted to get high.

I visited farms and talked to farmers. I met monks who grew tea high in the mountains and sold it for pennies. I spent a day trying to duplicate my favorite vending-machine blend, eventually scoring the company's actual blend in paper bags from an employee who was a friend of a friend. Green tea became a particular fascination, the method of brewing and drinking it, learning to use it for cooking and to fall into the gentle charm of understanding what made one farm's yield so special from any other, a farm that had been making the same tea for many hundreds of years under the same family name.

I came back to America and got a regular job, albeit in the music business. Five days a week, office hours, health plan, the whole picture. I quit smoking and drinking completely, falling deeper into tea as a culture and ritual, an 'ism', unenunciated and (to my knowledge) untranslatable. Tea became life - drinking tea, the fingers on my hand lost their sickly nicotene stain, drinking tea my headaches and cough went away, drinking tea I was sleeping well and saving money.

One night I found ready-made Adagio tea in a supermarket and bought a bottle of white because it reminded me of Japanese bottled tea. It was wonderful, clean and cool. I checked the website on the bottle hoping to find the loose leaves, and was pleasantly directed here. I have about eight kinds of Adagio in house now along with four Itoen, three or four with Indian writing which I can't read, and another three or four I bought from huge glass jars in Chinatown.

This last Christmas, the few friends I kept from my gigging days all gave me loose teas. Unanimously and unplanned. It was a profoundly moving thing to receive them, an acknowledgement that health and serenity are unspoken aspirations. 'Could this have a deeper meaning?' I thought, glimpsing for a breathless moment the impossible alignment of a tiny slice of this universe, noise becoming music, leaves on trees all dancing with a shockingly natural choreography - if only for a second. It was a tiny slice of syncronicity that I was lucky enough to notice as it happened. Everything lined up into little tins of fresh tea. All of the frightening chaos in this world evaporated, swirling into tiny teacup nimbus. I'd rather have received loose tea last year than anything else in the world.

So tea saved my life. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do any drugs. I drink tea. I recently signed a record deal, and have advanced to run the company I started at only six months ago. It's all in the tea, all in the leaves.

The only necessities now are loose teas, a scale, a teapot, a timer, my instrument, time and someone to share it all with. I think here it's appropriate to remember the words of Kakuzo Okakura, who nimbly articulated that culture which I had joined and revered without knowing it even existed - teaism.

***

"The heaven of modern humanity is indeed shattered in the Cyclopean struggle for wealth and power. The world is groping in the shadow of egotism and vulgarity… We need a Nikua (Nu Wa) again to repair the grand devastation; we await the great Avatar. Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the sighing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescense, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things."

The Book of Tea (1906), p. 8-9

***

Here's to those dreams, and much more beautiful foolishness.

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Mar 12th, '07, 15:53
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by Space Samurai » Mar 12th, '07, 15:53

That was an amazing story, thank you, sincerely, for sharing it.

Mar 12th, '07, 19:28
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by Jacqcat » Mar 12th, '07, 19:28

Really enjoyed reading your story... and the quote is wonderful.

I'm all new to the tea world right now :-) Finding I snack less and feel less tired. I also don't crave fizzy drinks, even though I used to drink litres a day. My skin is improving, my mind is clearer... it's been a great experience so far. At the moment drinking Sencha and a few different herbals.

It's inspirational to read stories like yours :-)
--------------------
Hi! I'm new :-)

Mar 12th, '07, 22:41
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by Cher » Mar 12th, '07, 22:41

I am sincerely moved by your story; it struck a chord with me personally. I haven't been treating my own body very well, and I made a decision a few weeks ago while at a teaching conference in San Francisco.

I was in the basement of of shop in the middle of Chinatown, and was truly moved by the beauty and simplicity of the teaware. As I noticed the uniqueness of each piece, I made a decision. I was going to find myself again in the ritual of tea. I can't explain where this idea came from; I've been drinking Lipton and the occasional bag of chamomile off and on all my life.

Tea has never been anything special to me. Certainly not spiritual. But something inspired me. I carefully selected a Kotobuki Japanese teapot with four small cups. The design is intricate, with multiple textures and colors. I chose it, knowing that I would be cradling and looking into one of the cups every night.

Each night since then, I have made many cups of tea, mostly from Adagio. I've read about tea, explored tea, and a whole new world has opened up to me. And at the end of a long day, when I come home, moved by a strong desire to open a bottle of red wine, instead I infuse a few jasmine pearls and watch them unfurl. Tea has saved me too.

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Apr 17th, '07, 04:05
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by Blue ipomea » Apr 17th, '07, 04:05

It was a wonderful story ^^

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Apr 17th, '07, 12:04
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by Chip » Apr 17th, '07, 12:04

Dude, you should write...in your spare time!!!

Keep up the tea life vs. the night life. Very moving and fascinating.
blah blah blah SENCHA blah blah blah!!!

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Apr 17th, '07, 12:56
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by tomasini » Apr 17th, '07, 12:56

Beautiful story =]
And Okakura did an amazing job writing The Book of Tea.
Anyone who hasn't read it really should...it's possibly my favorite book ever.

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Apr 18th, '07, 12:30
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by peachaddict » Apr 18th, '07, 12:30

Wonderful story. Glad you got on a good path. Keep on going :)
"Oh, those are my subconscious thoughts. I shouldn't listen too hard if I were you. I'm not all that proud of some of them." - Doctor Who

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Apr 20th, '07, 15:25
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by xine » Apr 20th, '07, 15:25

This is a great story; thank you for sharing it with us!

Jul 5th, '07, 08:57
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tea saved your life

by teanow » Jul 5th, '07, 08:57

Wonderful, moving story.

I give tea credit for keeping me from getting sick. Have been a serious tea drinker for four years; and am the only one at my work (work as a RN in an extremely busy medical center) where we are exposed to lots of sick patients.

However, I have had some oral surgeries. And I use loose white tea in a tea sack on the surgery area....better than ice or meds.

Also give myself rooibos tea facials....love it. After simmering strong rooibos tea; plase a tea-soaked wash cloth of my face.
Have also used the rooibos tea for a hair rinse.

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Jul 7th, '07, 14:50
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by Wesli » Jul 7th, '07, 14:50

Thats awesome man. I myself quit drinking, quit smoking(multiple things ;), lost about 50 lbs of fat, and now have found my love of tea. I began drinking green tea because of its health benefits, believing it would complement my diet regime. Now I drink primarily for taste and passion.
Congratulations on your journeys, yet, what happened to the Japanese girl? Could it have been that she helped you more than the green tea?

:arrow: Rage

Jul 8th, '07, 12:17
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by Michael_C » Jul 8th, '07, 12:17

She and I are getting married later this year. We're not sure where we will live; not to offend anybody here but with the current political situation in the US we're not sure this is the best place to be.

Congratulations on losing weight and quitting smoking and drinking. That's a true trifecta.

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Jul 10th, '07, 17:43
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by tomasini » Jul 10th, '07, 17:43

I love story with a happy ending....always brings a tear :cry:

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Jul 10th, '07, 21:17
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by Eastree » Jul 10th, '07, 21:17

Michael_C wrote:She and I are getting married later this year. We're not sure where we will live; not to offend anybody here but with the current political situation in the US we're not sure this is the best place to be.

Congratulations on losing weight and quitting smoking and drinking. That's a true trifecta.
The story is inspiring.


As far as where to live, somewhere a long time ago I read a quote something like, "If you marry a girl from another country, move to her country, for the sake of peace." ... or something like that.

Bah ... as long as you're around people you care about, and you have a comfortable enough living, home is anywhere you are.

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