I Stopped Drinking Mate for 6 Months

I had almost no mate in the past six months after drinking it pretty much daily for many years, especially since I started Matexperience. Life happened, and I had to focus my attention on other things to the point where I had no time to sit down and peacefully drink mate like I always used to, nor have I had opportunity to restock my yerba mate supplies due to moving. I decided to use that time of chaos and turbulence as an opportunity to step outside the usual habits and to actually evaluate what exact role does mate play in my life, will my life be any different without mate and whether all my claims and preaching about improving productivity, creativity and giving you mental superpowers still stand true or is it all just my own bias, placebo effect or result of some other unrelated forms of personal development.

What mate always meant to me

I had my mate every morning for many years. Since I started drinking mate daily, I noticed that I have more and more creative ideas; I was becoming more passionate towards new things and stuff that already was a part of my life; I felt more productive and was keen on improving my productivity even more; I finally was able to start introducing new positive habits into my life such as meditation and early rises; I felt more and more grounded and stable even through some of the toughest challenges that life threw at me. Starting Matexperience was a logical next step — I wanted to share my passion for yerba mate and express my newfound creativity and productivity, and I often preach about how mate is good for your body and mind, speaking from my own experience.

Many years have passed since then, and what once felt like novelty and significant improvement naturally became the new norm. And while I was still preaching about the wonderful effects of yerba mate, somewhere in the back of my mind I started to become curious how big of a role does mate really play in my life and if it’s still serving me as a trusty companion, or was it simply a self-fulfilling prophecy at the time, and now it became a part of my ego which prevents me to speak objectively about it. Recently, I was presented with an opportunity to answer these questions and see the truth for what it really is.

The big turmoil

For the past 9 months a lot of problems from different aspects of my life started to snowball and completely overwhelmed me. Without going into many details — I had to move countries, had various COVID-related health issues, got family- and work-related problems that completely occupied my time, mental energy and physical resources. I tried to keep up my daily habit of drinking mate for as long as I could, but more than 6 months ago I found myself barely drinking mate anymore and my supplies of yerba mate were running out. Logistically it was very irrational to stock up on some more yerba mate due to a large volume of stuff I would need to move in the near future across different countries, plus I was barely drinking mate anyway due to being extremely busy, so I decided to pause my drinking until this turmoil ends. I was feeling anxious — what will it mean for Matexperience? What if I will no longer crave mate anymore? I didn’t have much time for these feelings though, as they were soon trumped by all the other problems in my life. And so I pretty much was forced to forget about yerba mate for the next half a year, which brings us to now.

Back to mate: thoughts and observations

While life challenges have not yet completely gone away, I am now finding myself in a more stable place, and I’m sipping on some Taragüi Con Palo as I’m writing this story. As a matter of fact, life’s been stable for a couple of months now and few weeks ago I’ve got back to drinking mate daily and the relatively big break from it allowed me to gain a lot of insights on the role that mate has been playing in my life. Here are my observations during this period.

Creativity and productivity

Without mate my creativity went down, and I had much fewer ideas and breakthroughs in my work and life in general. I didn’t feel depressed or negative towards anything, rather quite complacent and indifferent towards my career, health and life in general. Productivity, focus and discipline with such attitude towards life became much harder to maintain. My schedule became less and less regimental, quality of sleep dropped. Even after life challenges stabilized, I still felt uninspired and apathetic, and still had issues with productivity. Since I got back to drinking mate daily I felt like I’m starting to getting my mojo back, getting passionate again towards mate and life in general and feel desire to take back charge in my life.

I still believe that mate is not a magic pill, a superpower or a solution to all of your life problems like some people make it out to be. If you want amazing life you still need to develop self-discipline, take care of your health and physical condition by working out and strive to live an active lifestyle, meditate, eat, drink and sleep well. But yerba mate is proven to be very healthy for you and I definitely became more confident that mate can be that first push that you need to get the snowball rolling, something that will give you that much-needed spark that will ignite your creativity bonfire and will be your trusty companion on your life journey that will help you to get going and stay motivated to continue improving your life.

Caffeine tolerance

To be honest, I was never super sensitive to caffeine, nor was I ever a caffeine junkie that desperately needs that burst of energy to start resembling a normally functioning human being — for most of my adult life, I enjoyed one or two large cups of coffee in the morning with no issues. Sure, it woke me up and cleared my mind, but I rarely felt jitters or crashed after a few hours. Introducing yerba mate into my daily life didn’t really change much — I continued to enjoy coffee and tea along with mate, and only felt overwhelming effects when I was drinking coffee or energizing mate later in the evening.

During those 6 months without mate I still continued to drink an occasional morning coffee with no noticeable changes to my caffeine tolerance. Now after a few weeks of getting back to a daily gourd of mate, I can safely say that in my experience there are no withdrawal symptoms or any other negative effects from quitting mate abruptly and starting daily consumption again. Actually, since I needed to refill my empty stash with yerba mate, I decided not only to buy yerbas that I haven’t tried yet (like I usually do), but also with yerbas that I already had before to see if their effect has subjectively changed. I am happy to report that yerbas that I consider to be neutral or relaxing still have the same effect. I always felt that caffeine in mate hits differently to, say, a coffee or an energy drink, due to other compounds found exclusively in yerba mate and unique way of consumption that resembles more of a prolonged IV-drip rather than a quick chug, so it is nice to see that even after going cold turkey mate still behaves mildly and does not cause any concerns regarding caffeine tolerance.

Palate and taste

One of the biggest concerns that I had after abandoning yerba mate for such a long period of time was that I would simply fall out of love with the flavor of mate. I was afraid that it would become disgusting again, just like that time that I had my first sip of mate — overly bitter, smoky and ashy. As I mentioned earlier, I decided to refill my yerba mate stash with yerbas that I tried in the past to see if their flavors have changed to me. I purposefully did not read my reviews to refresh my memory of those yerba mates, and jotted down my thoughts on them while drinking. Thankfully, my palate did not regress — I didn’t find mate to be bitter and disgusting, and I still was able to pick up those flavor notes that I originally experienced, which made me more confident in the quality and honesty of my yerba mate reviews.

My conclusions

This little experiment made me appreciate yerba mate much more than before, and now instead of feeling dread about not being able to dedicate my time to drinking mate and writing for Matexperience, I feel on the contrary — quite glad that these things happened, and that I had an opportunity to step away from yerba mate for a while to gain new perspective, reaffirm and strengthen my feelings towards this drink, hobby and lifestyle. I would have definitely not initiated such a long hiatus on my own, so in a weird and philosophical way I feel like it was almost something that I needed in order to move forward with replenished passion and excitement. Just like Marcus Aurelius was exemplifying stoicism by occasionally sleeping on a floor to remind himself how good it feels to sleep in the comfy emperor bed, getting away from mate allowed me to remind myself how much I love it and why I decided to share this love with other people through Matexperience. It’s been a just few weeks though, so I still feel like I haven’t reached a full capacity, so it will be very insightful to see how things change in the next weeks and months, but in the meantime I am excited to write and publish more insights and reviews.

I hope my story was interesting and gave you some food for thoughts in the same way as it was for me. Maybe it even helped you to dispel some of the fears that you might’ve had about effects that long term consumption of mate has on your body and mind. It’s hard for me to recommend long-time materos to stop drinking mate and see what happens, but if you find yourself in a situation where life is becoming overwhelming, problems keep overflowing, and you suddenly do not have time, energy and enthusiasm to continue to do things that you love, such as drinking mate — don’t beat yourself up, keep calm, be mindful and use this time and experience to gain new perspective, to step away from your paradigm and to get new insights on the actual role that the thing you love really plays in your life. Chances are, you will love it ever more after.

***

How long have you been drinking mate on a daily basis? Have you stopped drinking it for a prolonged period of time? Did you notice any changes in your mental and physical state? What does mate mean to you? Share it in the comments below!