Mixing alcohol with energy drinks is a popular but dangerous habit
Reported November 05, 2007
Mixing alcohol with energy drinks is a popular but dangerous habit among college students, according to new research that found those who combine the two tend to drink more, take more risks and are more likely to get hurt while drinking.
The research, by investigators at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, found students who mix energy drinks with alcohol were twice as likely to be injured during a bout of drinking, to need medical attention or to ride with a driver who was drunk.
They were also twice as likely to take advantage of someone sexually and nearly twice as likely to be taken advantage of sexually by someone else.
The researchers believe the problem is the high caffeine levels in the energy drinks mask the effects of excess alcohol – the stumbling, slurred speech or sleepiness that signal intoxication.
“What I would describe it as is a person for whom the symptoms of drunkenness are reduced, but the drunkenness is not,” lead author Dr. Mary Claire O’Brien said in an interview.
“So you’re drunk. But you just don’t know that you’re drunk.”
O’Brien presented the findings of the study Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Washington, D.C.
Mixing energy drinks with alcohol is a popular phenomenon, with websites devoted to rating the effectiveness of various combos, said O’Brien, a professor of emergency medicine and public health sciences.
The beverage industry has twigged to the potential, producing pre-mixed versions of popular energy drinks which sell in some locations for less than the non-spiked original, according to a report on energy drink cocktails published in August by the Marin Institute, a California-based alcohol industry watchdog.
O’Brien’s study – one of the first to look at the implications of this trend – is based on an Internet survey of 4,271 students from 10 U.S. universities. Randomly selected students were invited by e-mail to take part in the survey and were paid a token sum for answering roughly 300 questions on health risk behaviours that focused heavily on alcohol use.
Twenty-four per cent of participants reported imbibing energy drinks laced with alcohol in the previous 30 days. Consumption of the combo was more common among students who were male, white, athletes, fraternity member or pledges, and students who were older.
The caffeine in the energy drinks – some contain three times as much as a regular-sized cup of coffee – seems to work as an override. It appears to trick the brains of people who are drinking into thinking they are much less impaired than they actually are.
“Caffeine, it’s a stimulant. Alcohol is a depressant. So the best thing that can happen if we drink too much alcohol is we go to sleep,” said Michele Simon, research and policy director for the Marin Institute and an author of that organization’s report.
“But with the caffeine keeping you awake, yes, it is overriding the signals that tell you either go to sleep or that you really are inebriated.”
Excess drinking already lowers inhibitions and impairs judgment. But because people who mix alcohol and energy drinks are less aware of how drunk they actually are, they are even more susceptible to making bad choices.
“The ability to gauge your intoxication is an important part of your ability to assess risk. And you could argue that your ability to gauge intoxication, not just in yourself but in others, is an important part of risk assessment,” O’Brien said.
In her study, students who drank alcohol with energy drinks consumed more drinks per drinking session, and reported more bouts of drinking to excess a week, than students who didn’t use energy drinks as mixer for alcohol.
Dr. Karen Leslie, a pediatrician with the substance abuse program of the division of adolescent medicine at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, said the combination exacerbates the already dangerous pattern of binge drinking favoured by teenagers – drinking quickly and to excess.
“So it’s entirely not surprising that if young people are taking in more alcohol because they’re not noticing the effects of it earlier on because of the caffeine, these are not surprising things at all,” Leslie said.
But the higher risks weren’t simply the result of drinking more. Even when comparisons were made between students who drank the same number of drinks per drinking session, the rates of injuries were higher among those who drank energy drink cocktails.
Simon said she’d suspected this combination was a dangerous one, but was nonetheless surprised by the scope of the findings of O’Brien’s study. She believes there’s more to be learned about the impact of this potent combo, especially given that distillers are getting on board, infusing spirits such as vodka with caffeine.
“The truth is, this is tip of the iceberg in terms of the potential,” Simon said. “There’s just so much we don’t know.”
The study was funded by the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and a grant from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.