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Having a pet reptile wasn’t a good fit for me. I was trying to be edgy but was a little appalled by the lizard, which mostly stayed on his heated rock and glared in my general direction.

I ran a finger through the sludge in the cup, scooped it up and popped it in my mouth. I’d have never done that with the terrarium, but the undissolved matcha powder didn’t taste bad. It just had a weird consistency.

This I blamed on how I’d stirred the green tea powder. Sasha at Appalachian Tea had used a special bamboo whisk. In the shop, she’d whipped the green powder and hot water into an almost creamy froth.

I’d used a plastic fork I’d saved from Captain D’s.

Results clearly varied.

I had previously owned a wire whisk but had foolishly shoved it into an overcrowded kitchen drawer full of wooden spoons, sharp, steel apple corers, and aluminum ice scream scoops. In that tangle of tools and amidst the daily opening and closing of the drawer, the whisk had warped well past being useful for anything other than frightening children.

Last month, I tossed it out when I began thinning some of the junk I’d accumulated in my kitchen. The whisk went in the trash, along with plastic containers that no longer had lids, plastic lids that no longer had containers and a couple of coffee mugs that read “Grandma.�

I’m not sure why I thought I needed a coffee mug that said, “Grandma.� I’m not entirely sure why I had four.

I’d tried the matcha at Appalachian Tea a few days earlier in the week. It was part of a flight of different teas and not-exactly teas Sasha Strader had brought out for me at her tea shop on ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä’s west side.

We’d started off with yellow tea, which was kind of creamy and reminiscent of popcorn.

I loved it. I’m a popcorn fan.

Then, we’d gotten into the matcha.

I can’t recall whether I’d ever had matcha before. Given my willingness to taste just about anything, I’d probably had a cup somewhere. I just didn’t remember it. Whenever I’d last tried the stuff, it hadn’t made a strong enough impression for me to recall.

Sasha told me matcha was a little different than what I was used to.

“It has about half the caffeine of a regular cup of coffee,� she said. “But it has something else called theanine.�

Theanine did several things, Sasha said. One of them was that it could slow the release of caffeine over a longer period of time.

“It reduces the crash,� she said.

That sounded good to me. Some days, I struggle between the wide-eyed jitters of having too much caffeine and the hard stop that comes at the end when I feel like I could crawl under my car and sleep.

I drink a lot of coffee and when I can’t stand another cup, but still need to keep going, I’ll buy a sugar-free energy drink.

There’s more than caffeine in those things and if I drink too much or get the wrong type, I’ll feel like a Viking berserker and want to go sack all of Ohio, which is a problem when you have a desk job.

Matcha sounded promising.

The powdered green tea originated in China around the 10th century A.D., but then really took off when it arrived in Japan about 150 to 200 years later.

The Japanese embraced it. The tea became part of intricate ceremonies and was associated with Zen monks, who are supposed to be alert and paying attention, while exuding a peaceful calm.

I wanted that. I also wanted something that didn’t taste like a high school science experiment.

Sasha suggested that I give guayusa a try. It was the “local� caffeinated beverage.

Found in South America, guayusa is the only native plant containing caffeine. Coffee, the most popular plant containing caffeine, is grown in South American countries like Columbia and Brazil, but actually originated in Yemen, which is part of East Asia.

There’s a legend about an Ethiopian goat herder traveling through Yemen discovering coffee in the 9th Century. Apparently, his goats got into a patch of coffee plants, chewed up a bunch and suddenly became very productive and maybe a little (more) irritable.

Nobody is sure whther the story is true, but it’s been passed around for centuries.

Sasha said guayusa had about as much caffeine as black tea, plus theobromine, a mood-altering compound that’s also found in chocolate. The compound is sometimes said to elicit a feeling similar to being in love.

“It tastes a little like weak coffee,� Sasha said.

Which can also be like being in love.

Technically, Guayusa isn’t tea. It’s a relative of the holly plant and contains no tea leaves, but it’s prepared the same way by steeping in hot water.

Sasha gave me a tutorial on hot water. Not all teas need to be brewed in scalding hot water. In fact, that was a problem with ordering some types of tea, particularly green tea, at some coffee places, particularly chain coffee establishments with drive-thru service and a mermaid in their logo.

“The chain places do a lot of espresso drinks, which is made with very hot water,� she said. “They use the same water for all their teas.�

White and green teas don’t need to be so hot.

“If the water is too hot, it makes green tea bitter,� Sasha said. “I don’t know how many times I’ve had people come in to the store and tell me they don’t like this tea or that tea because it’s bitter.�

“It’s not bitter,� she said. “It’s just over brewed.�

The small cup of matcha Sasha had made me was hot enough to notice, but not hot enough to scald me or stop me from slurping it down in about three gulps.

Between the matcha, the guayusa, the yellow tea, the cocoa brew and the hot-pepper-oil-spiked coffee Sasha’s husband Russ brought me, I was so pumped up on caffeine I could nearly levitate.

I felt so alert and focused, I thought my next step was to try switching to these teas for a few days to see whether I’d notice a difference. I started off the day with two slightly lumpy cups of matcha and then switched to guayusa.

Mid-morning at the office, I had one cup, then another and then four. I switched to black tea and had another couple of cups. I could feel a slight lift, but it still felt like I was pushing through muddy ground.

Drinking tea instead of coffee sent me to the office coffee stand over and over, as well as the restroom.

A mug of something was in my hand almost at all times, which worried me a little. How much caffeine is safe, I wondered.