Put down the Red Bull and vodka, guys, because the combination just makes you want to drink more. Something in the milk ain’t clean with these energy drinks.
Time cites a study published in the Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research journal which followed 75 participants, 18-30 years old, who were given two drink options, plain alcohol and soda or alcohol and an energy drink. The energy drink of choice was Red Bull, which one group received while another drank vodka-soda’s, and everyone filled out a questionnaire afterward.
Ultimately, participants who drank vodka-Red Bull’s wanted to keep drinking while the vodka-soda drinkers did not. Those who were guzzling the energy drink had a harder time cutting themselves off, though both drinking groups imbibed the same amount of drinks.
As a hippie dippie California girl who enjoys the company’s sports marketing — a man jumped out of a plane into space! That is cool. — I don’t trust concoctions like Red Bull. I don’t want the wings and I certainly don’t want whatever scientists might find as they continue to research the super-caffeinated beverage. And there is this story from last month, via the Daily News, where dehydrated 16-year-old Lanna Hamann died after drinking a Red Bull while on vacation.
Overall, the energy drink market is booming, exploding from $3.8 billion in 1999 to $27.5 billion in 2013. Still, if this is what my insides look like on plain soda, mixing Red Bull’s high caffeine content with alcohol just doesn’t seem like good common sense.
Image via Red Bull.