Energy Drinks and Alcohol, A Dangerous Mix

For generations, people have relied on caffeinated drinks such as coffee, tea, and soda to wake them up and keep them up. For some people, the first thing that they reach for in the morning after their toothbrush is that cup of coffee to get their day started. With the emergence of energy drinks, many people are choosing them instead. Their advertisements and variety of drink choices have made them very popular, especially among youth. This popularity has spawned a new and dangerous practice of combining energy drinks with alcohol. Energy drink and alcohol combinations have actually become a part of the partying subculture and are especially prevalent on college campuses.

Alcohol acts as a depressant on the body and slows down heart rate. Caffeine acts as a stimulant and increases heart rate. By combining the two you are sending mixed messages to your nervous system which can cause cardiac problems such as heart palpitations. This can be very dangerous and may pose a serious harm to an individual’s health.

The issue of alcohol and energy drink mixes has come into the spotlight with the emergence of premade alcohol and energy drinks combinations such as Four Loko. Four Loko is a drink that recently became extremely popular among youth, especially college students. It has been linked to several arrests and alcohol-related incidents on college campuses across the country. One can of Four Loko is 23.5 fl oz. and at 12% alcohol by volume, contains the same amount of alcohol as six beers, as well as almost the same amount of caffeine as four cans of soda. Because all of this is contained in one can, a person may think that they are having one drink when, in fact, they are having 6-along with a large dose of caffeine. This has caused students all over the U.S. to over drink because they are not aware of how much they are actually drinking. Four Loko has actually been labeled by the college community as a “blackout in a can.”

In November of 2010, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) placed a ban on Four Loko and other drinks like it, deeming them unsafe and requiring them to be pulled off the shelves. Four Loko has since changed the recipe for their drinks, and they no longer contain caffeine and other stimulants.

The FDA ban on the sale of the original Four Loko was the first step in creating public awareness of the dangers of mixing energy drinks and alcohol. Despite the ruling that caffeine is an unsafe additive to alcoholic beverages, the message has not reached many people who continue to create their own energy drink cocktails. This poses a danger to the health of the individuals doing it, as well as to the people around them. While it will not be any time soon that energy drinks are pulled off the market, this problem can be addressed by people taking responsibility for their own actions and health by not combining alcohol and energy drinks.

More information is available through the non-profit Marin Institute’s website at http://www.marininstitute.org. They monitor and expose the alcohol industry’s harmful actions related to products, promotions and social influence, and support communities in their efforts to reject these damaging activities.

By Antony Thottukadavil