Word: alcoholic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Mixing alcohol, a depressant, with stimulants is nothing new. The Irish have their eponymous coffee, and any authentic Italian restaurant offers something called caffè corretto, a shot of espresso mixed with a shot of grappa or sambuca. (The wonderfully knowing name translates as "corrected coffee.") But alcoholic energy drinks are different because they are so obviously marketed to kids. Ads are found mainly online or in publications like Blender. The Sparks website looks like it was designed by a (very young, very Flash-savvy) student...
...marketing aside, alcoholic energy drinks raise a scientific question that many drinkers have long wondered about: can you counteract the effects of alcohol by drinking caffeine with it? Should...
Researchers have conducted several peer-reviewed studies into these questions since 2000. The conclusions? Caffeine won't keep you from getting drunk. In fact, drinking caffeine with alcohol could be more dangerous than drinking alcohol alone, from a psychological perspective. One of the fascinating things about how humans process alcohol is that we involve our brains as well as our bodies: we have at least some capacity to overcome alcohol's effects by sheer force of will. Mark Fillmore, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky, has found that study volunteers who are warned that a certain alcoholic drink will...
Fillmore's research implies that mixing stimulants in alcoholic beverages might send 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 drinks to do the compensating work for them performed significantly worse on the same kinds of psychomotor tests than a group told that the caffeine would have no effect. The latter group, it seemed, had enlisted their own compensating mechanisms...
...Alcohol functions in your body pretty much the same, whether you mix it with caffeine or not: you will be impaired. The problem is, you may not feel as impaired if caffeine is present. A 2006 study published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research found that people who drank energy drinks with alcohol felt better than those who drank only alcohol - the former group had significantly less dry mouth and headache. They also perceived their motor coordination to be better, even though it wasn...