Mixing alcohol and caffeine is becoming a trend among bar-goers, but there are some serious effects to be considered.
Brenda Higgins, director of the Student Health Center, said mixing the two addictive substances can lead to a number of unwanted side effects, including bad hangovers, easy excitability, heavier alcohol intoxication and seizures, among other possible problems.
"[Caffeine and alcohol] are kind of opposite effects ... ," Higgins said. "In one hand you are telling your heart rate to increase and in the other you are slowing it down. ... You actually have your body kind of trying to accommodate these two different things at the same time."
Senior Joe Mooney, a Dukum Inn bartender, said he sells most hard alcohol mixed with Red Bull in drinks, like Jager Bombs and Starburst to college students. A Jager Bomb is a shot of Jagermeister dropped into a glass of Red Bull, and a Starburst is three different kinds of vodka in a shot glass and dropped into a glass of Red Bull.
"We sell a lot of Jager Bombs because we have it on tap, pre-mixed," Mooney said. "So it is really easy, and it is a cheap shot."
Junior Ross Ackermann said he is concerned about the effects caffeine and alcohol can have on one's body but he understands why the drinks appeal to a younger crowd.
"A lot of it has to do with the fact that it's a fun shot," he said. "There is a lot of action involved, and I guess that makes it somewhat more appealing."
Mooney said mixing high-content caffeine drinks with alcohol is a fad.
"It's got a really good marketing scheme, so everybody is interested in it ... ," Mooney said. "It's just a big thing right now. Different things come in at different times."
Mixing highly caffeinated drinks like Red Bull with hard alcohol can have numerous health effects. Higgins said people who have had seizures in the past or have epilepsy should be particularly careful.
"Caffeine can lower the seizure threshold, meaning that it takes less to cause them to have a seizure," Higgins said. "Alcohol can cause seizure activity. So if we are lowering the seizure threshold, giving you something that can cause seizures, you might increase your chance of seizing if you had both together."
Higgins said that in the past, drinkers believed in the wives' tale that caffeine helps people to sober up, but now they use caffeine to wake them up while drinking.
"If you add the caffeine to that mix, you are going to stay awake," Higgins said. "Which may mean that you can continue to drink, and you might drink more because you aren't asleep, you aren't passing out, so you might have a higher chance of alcohol intoxication because of that."
Caffeine works in a way to block the normal binding of a chemical called adenosine to adenosine receptors, causing the person to stay awake instead of feeling the normal drowsiness from the binding receptors, according to http://home.howstuffworks.com. Higgins said caffeine has a half-life of six hours, which means it takes six hours for half of the amount of caffeine in your body to wear off. After 12 hours, the caffeine is completely gone.
"The caffeine gives you so much energy, and you are so kind of exaggeratedly in excitability," Higgins said. "Especially then if you add alcohol too, which is a depressant. When it wears off, you feel really, really, really low."
Higgins also said the mix of high contents of caffeine and alcohol might also cause one to feel really low in the morning. She said both are diuretics, which means they promote dehydration.
"Both cause you to excrete a lot of fluid, so we tend to have hangovers because of the dehydration in the brain," Higgins said. "... If you are adding caffeine to it, you are adding another diuretic. You are increasing your chance of having a worse hangover."
Because caffeine helps keep drinkers awake, Higgins said they might be more excitable and will likely act in violent and irrational ways. She said because drinkers feel more alert, they might be more likely to believe they can drive and create dangerous road conditions.
Mooney said he hasn't seen any problems with drunk driving connected to caffeine and alcohol.
"I think somebody knows when they are drunk," Mooney said. "I don't think somebody decides, 'I am going to drink a Red Bull, so I am going to be able to drive.' I don't think that is a conscious decision ever."
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