The New York Times reports that energy drinks, in spite of their macho names like “Red Bull,” “Monster” and “Full Throttle,” have approximately the same effect as less aggressively named beverages like “skinny caramel macchiatos” and “Mello Yello.” Which is to say, they get you kinda high on sugar and caffeine and that’s it.
This may come as a blow to those who have to get up early, want to stay up late, or need to think of themselves as “straight edge” while still getting a tremendous rush. Sure, they could switch to Starbucks or Coke, but who wants to support huge corporate brands when they could support slightly less huge brands owned by huge corporate brands?
That’s why I’m gifting the world with my five ways to save Energy Drinks.
1. Just add energy
You know that feeling you get when you lick a 9-volt battery? What if every time you took a swig of your energy drink you also got a buzzing lip? Nothing like a mild and potentially harmless electrical shock to make you feel like dancing and/or studying the night away! With a little understanding from the FDA, we might even be able to provide cattle-prod-level stimulation to those who are willing to sign wavers.
2. Raise the stakes
Here’s the deal. Instead of your traditional energy drink that comes in one can, these new energy drinks will come in two cans: One includes a deadly poison, the other contains the antidote. Simply drink down the first can and hand the second to a friend, bartender or licensed Energy Drink Warden with instructions not to give you the second until you have successfully danced for three hours straight or gotten showered and dressed for work.
3. Train your brain
Makers of energy drinks claim — or rather imply in a carefully worded and legally acceptable manner — that their concoctions can improve brain function. While hard science refutes that, there are certainly ways to improve the brain while drinking energy drinks. For instance, require consumers to complete a moderately difficult Sudoku before they can buy one, or make it so you can only open it if you remember the capital of Bulgaria. Now the drink really does make you smarter!
4. Manage expectations
Given that we’ve already accepted “energy” as a synonym for “the jitters,” maybe the solution is just to switch out vague unsupported claims that sound good with vague, completely true claims that sound good. For instance, try the slogan “Red Bull Facilitates Your Krebs Cycle,” or “Amp: Contains What Will Eventually Become ATP.” If you’ve ever given Kool-Aid to a college freshman and told him it was spiked with Everclear, you know that beverages often do what the drinker thinks it will do, and also that college freshmen are an endless source of amusement. Make the drink sound exciting, and the drinker will become excited.
5. Legalize it
In the end, perhaps the best way to make energy drinks more effective is to make people less effective. After all, it may be difficult to come up with legal substances that improve mental performance, it’s pretty easy to figure out ways to degrade mental performance in society at large. For instance, we could make highly processed, calorie-rich foods cheap and widely available so that people can eat themselves into a coma whenever they want. Legalize and market substances that interfere with clear thought, like alcohol and marijuana. We could even devise entertainment that requires almost no intellectual investment on the part of the watcher, and then create a culture where discussion of said entertainment replaces most actual conversational engagement. In such an environment, it would be easy for someone to down a few ounces of sugar and caffeine and convince themselves that they’re operating on a higher level, rather than merely attempting to imitate basic human competence.
Okay, that last one sounds a little crazy. What can I say, I just pounded a couple cans of Rockstar and I’m kinda buzzing.
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Born helpless, naked and unable to care for himself, Lore Sjoberg overcame these handicaps to learn that the capital of Bulgaria is Sofia.
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