[S. O’Connor] Well, there are immediate
effects in the course of one drinking episode,
and there are very long term effects that
accumulate over a long time, primarily affect
on the brain. The brain is the place that
logs experience in your life, and the experience
of drinking is a combination of building up
a sense of euphoria, having a lot of fun,
feeling good about the world and after the
peek, starting to feel sleepy, starting to
feel sedated, starting to feel sluggish, so
it’s a combination of stimulant effects
and sedating effects. Alcohol has a combination
of those things.
[K. Yoder] As far as caffeine goes, most people
are familiar with what caffeine does. They’ll
drink a cup of coffee in the morning to jump
start themselves. Most people drink caffeine
for a sense of alertness or awareness, so
after consumption of caffeine, people tend
to feel more energetic or stimulated, and
that effect lasts for about an hour, an hour
and a half. It also has physiological effects;
caffeine, depending on the dose, may give
you a slight increase in heart rate. At really,
really high doses, it can affect blood pressure,
but mostly, people drink it for the sense
of better awareness and alertness.
[S. O’Connor] Caffeine is part of the stimulant
experience. It’s not so much euphoria as
just feeling alert and energetic, so together,
they take you up this mountain of experience
with a combination of alertness and feeling
good.
It’s respiratory depression; it means your
urge to breathe is really strong. If I put
my finger over your nose and mouth, about
thirty seconds from now, you would be clawing
at me to do anything to get air. Your body
really will do anything to get oxygen; it
needs it all the time, but if I suppress that
part of the brain function that controls that
drive, where you don’t think you need any
air even though you’re not getting any air,
you die. It’s called respiratory depression;
it’s how most people die of alcohol poisoning.
They use the alcohol to suppress that respiratory
drive.
[K. Yoder]Yeah, the energy drinks, it’s
not an athletic sense of energy; it’s more
mental energy to stay awake if you want. A
lot of students will try and pull all-nighters
to study for an exam the next day. They’ll
have a couple pots of coffee and you know
twelve mountain dews in front of them to try
and stay awake. Well, the problem with these
drinks is when you got the alcohol with the
caffeine that the caffeine, which they normally
take for awareness and alertness is covering
up the sleepy effects of alcohol. Also, I
think, with these drinks, I don’t know this
for certain, but it’s really possibly that
they could be binge drinking very easily with
this, binge drinking meaning taking in a lot
of alcohol at a very rapid rate. If these
drinks are very sweet, students aren’t going
to be put off by the taste of the alcohol
itself, and they might be chugging these beverages
pretty quickly, and that’s a lot of alcohol
to take in in a very short amount of time.
[S. O’Connor] Binge drinking limits itself.
People do pass out; they just can’t do anymore,
but if you add a lot of caffeine to that binging
episode, you just get so drunk without knowing
it, that you’re at risk for your life.
