Over the years, I have noticed I have a boba milk tea addiction that I need to stop. My addiction started way back from middle school, when my friends and I would go get boba sometimes after school, at places like “Teaspoon” and “Cool Tea Bar”, but that sometimes turned into an everyday that’s continued through now.
My boba addiction got worse when quarantine started. I started to get boba almost everyday because no other drink satisfies my taste buds . I’ve spent hundreds, probably thousands of dollars on boba. So when we had the opportunity to challenge ourselves for a week I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was not going to drink boba milk tea for a week, but that didn’t include smoothies or drinks that aren’t related to milk tea and tapioca pearls.
Even though I was used to drinking boba everyday, I was pretty confident that I could go a week without boba because I could drink water or something else to substitute. At first I thought no boba for a week would be easy and it would help me break my bad habits of getting boba.
During the first 2 days, my confidence in myself was pretty high, I thought this challenge was going to be easy, boba was just a sugary drink that I could easily replace with juice or any other sweet drinks. The first day, I drank Starbucks but it didn’t taste the same, I was so used to chewing on something while drinking so t it didn’t fill the satisfaction of drinking something sweet.
In the middle of the first 2 days, I realized my sugar intake was not good for me, so I tried to also drink water as a way to really be healthier. I feel like it worked. Drinking water helped me be more hydrated and stray away from sugary drinks. I also noticed some effects of drinking so much water was increased energy, more focus in class and I had less stomach aches during the day as well as less headaches.
The downside though was I started to become upset because my craving for boba became stronger as I kept on drinking more water. However, I realized that I could stop these thoughts by distracting myself by playing video games and doing some cleaning around the house.
During day 3 and 4 though, distracting myself no longer helped, I still kept on craving boba, I’ve been drinking water because I was dedicated to being healthier but I needed something sweet to drink, a drink like boba. But I knew I couldn’t end this challenge so soon. So I gave in and made a smoothie to fill in that void of sugary goodness. I never counted sugary drinks as part of the challenge because I drink boba mainly for the tapioca pearls and not the milk tea.
On the fifth day, times were getting rough without boba; my own mother was a bit concerned about why she hadn’t seen a boba drink in my hands for a few days. I was so close to giving up but I didn’t. But it was devastating not having boba. The longest I’ve ever gone without boba was probably 3 or 4 days max. I had vivid dreams about boba and everynight i dream about getting boba just to realize I’m not allowed to have boba the next day which causes a mental breakdown. I had the shakes I started to rock on the floor crying, that’s how badly I needed the boba. This feeling lasted for the last 2 days but at least the days went by fast but the last day felt like forever. I wanted boba milk tea, I needed boba milk tea.
This challenge made me realize that breaking habits is really hard and I’d probably never stop drinking boba milk tea. After drinking boba milk tea almost everyday since quarantine made it really hard to stop. I’ve never gotten sick of boba and I probably won’t anytime soon. At the end of the challenge I was able to save around 70 dollars. I thought this would help my unhealthy drinking habit but unfortunately it made it stronger. I’ll stick to drinking unhealthy drinks.
