Word: alcohol
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Marketing concerns aside, alcoholic energy drinks raise scientific questions: Does caffeine counteract the effects of alcohol? Or does it make drinking even more dangerous? Researchers have consistently found that caffeine won't keep you from getting drunk. In fact, from a psychological perspective, drinking caffeine with your alcohol is much riskier than drinking alcohol alone. One of the fascinating things about how humans process alcohol is that we have at least some capacity to overcome its effects by sheer force of will. Mark Fillmore, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky, has found that study volunteers who are warned that...
...stipulating that Irish coffee is brilliant: no sensible person can argue with caffeine and whiskey topped with cream and served in a warm mug. Irish coffee has been sold in bars since the 1950s, if not earlier, so it's surprising that it took so long for the alcohol industry to come up with a canned version of caffeinated booze called alcoholic energy drinks...
...never heard of such things, your kid probably has. Sold in tall, narrow cans, they carry teen-friendly names such as Sparks, four maXed and Joose. As with other "flavored malt beverages" (the conspicuously boring industry name for fizzy drinks like Mike's Hard Lemonade), alcoholic energy drinks taste like cheap soda--cloyingly sweet and bubbly, with only the mildest hint of booze, all the better for callow teen palates. But alcoholic energy drinks are much more dangerous than regular alcopops like Mike's. First of all, they contain an assortment of stimulants--mainly caffeine but also ingredients like guarana...
...single-serving combination of a depressant (alcohol) and various stimulants carries a certain nightclub logic; Anheuser-Busch used to advertise its caffeinated beer, Bud Extra, with lines such as YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU'RE 30 and WE SUGGEST 18-HOUR MASCARA. But public-health and law-enforcement officials--who have mounted an aggressive campaign against alcoholic energy drinks--worry that drinkers will assume they'll be wired enough to drive home after a long night of consuming these beverages. (More on the science later, but caffeine makes you feel only "wide-awake drunk," as researchers have...
Fillmore's research implies that mixing stimulants in alcoholic beverages sends a dangerous message: Don't worry, the stimulants will protect you. In a 2002 Journal of Studies on Alcohol paper, Fillmore and his colleagues demonstrated this point: people who expected caffeine in their booze to do the compensating work for them scored significantly worse on psychomotor tests than did a group told that caffeine would have no effect. The latter group controlled themselves more...