Drink More Alcohol, It’s Safer?

Studies show mixing alcohol with an energy drink is more dangerous, twice as dangerous, than drinking normally. The way I read that, drink until you pass out because unconscious people can’t hurt themselves.

Funny, isn’t it? These findings were reported to the American Public Health Association in Washington D.C. Energy drink recipes like “Red Bull and Vodka” or mixing things with Sobe Adrenaline, Dark Dog and other well known energy drinks may allow drinkers to drink for longer periods of time with more enthusiasm causing damage to themselves or others.

“The researchers found that students who consumed alcohol mixed with energy drinks were twice as likely to be hurt or injured, twice as likely to require medical attention, and twice as likely to ride with an intoxicated driver, as were students who did not consume alcohol mixed with energy drinks. Students who drank alcohol mixed with energy drinks were more than twice as likely to take advantage of someone else sexually, and almost twice as likely to be taken advantage of sexually.” (brightsurf)

Drinking energy drinks with your alcohol in the form of some mixed cocktail showed drinkers had 36% more beverages than without the energy drink. Is this surprising? We’re offsetting the alcohol by mixing in a non-alcoholic drink and by simple mathematics… you’re drinking less alcohol.

The White Russian has been around for ages and nobody has ever complained about drinking too much, leading to more White Russian beverages. Why? Because our stomachs probably cannot take that much milk! Seriously, the energy drinks does give us more energy, by design, so we should be able to handle more drinking as it tends to be lighter feeling on the stomach (pretending it’s not burning down the walls of our stomach with all the acidity that is).

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) limits caffeine to 65 milligrams per serving of a food or beverage. Since energy drinks are currently not regulated by the FDA, they can contain as much as 300 milligrams of caffeine in a single serving.

There will always be ways to get around the FDA approved amounts of a substance and college kids will always find ways to exploit it to make their bodies do weird things, right? Who invented the idea of sniffing glue? Probably a student with too much time on their hands; today they just figure out how to caffinate themselves while partaking in depressants.

Perhaps it’s really a lesson in biology… what can we mix together to have a specific effect occur? It just so happens this experiment could mean a life lost.