Even More Caffeine

When I went off to col­lege, most of my friends thought drink­ing cof­fee was super cool.  That wouldn’t have both­ered me, but some­one actu­ally tried to pres­sure me with the sen­tence, “Every­one drinks cof­fee!”  Peer pres­sure is a major turn-off for me, for some rea­son.  Plus, it tastes dis­gust­ing, so I passed.  My hus­band even had cof­fee maker that I mocked him for, until he quit try­ing to like cof­fee him­self.  Then I com­man­deered it to make Earl Grey and other forms of hot tea or herbal tisanes.

Game nights, which started around that same time, are the big con­sump­tion time of the week.  Even if it’s been beans and rice all week, we man­age to pig out most week­ends.  They have his­tor­i­cally been alco­hol free, though.  The youngest of the group just now turned 21, and my hus­band is def­i­nitely Law­ful in his align­ment.  Any­way, drink­ing doesn’t always make for the quick­est think­ing, and some of us are rather attached to our char­ac­ters.  My char­ac­ters would get naked a whole lot more if I drank on game nights.  Wooo!  Not that they don’t have plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties any­way, but it might get to a dis­tract­ing level.

Any­way, our bev­er­age choices for years con­sisted of copi­ous amounts of water, sweet tea, Dr. Pep­per, Coke, and what­ever anti-freeze col­ored drink we could con­sume to keep our­selves from crash­ing.  At some point, one of our more caf­feinated friends started bring­ing energy drinks.  This has met with some enter­tain­ing results and mem­o­rable quotes, such as, “But it’s Jared’s fault.  He fed me strange caf­feine!” and  “I’m so ener­getic now, I bet I could beat Michael Jack­son at basketball!!”

Uh, yeah dude.  Bet you could.  This was at least a year ago, by the way.  It would be even more hilar­i­ously inap­pro­pri­ate now.

Any­way, it took a while for the boys to find an energy drink that was easy to come by and I would tol­er­ate. I hate Red Bull and all the knock­offs.  There were grand exper­i­ments.  They tried agave fla­vored drinks since I do drink tequila on occa­sion.  Bleah.  Even­tu­ally, we dis­cov­ered two that worked for me.  The pas­sion fruit fla­vor of Sobe’s Adren­a­line Rush com­bined  well with the caf­feine bit­ter.  A close sec­ond was NOS, which is also pas­sion fruity.

In addi­tion to game night, I began to drink one of those choices or a 5 hour energy paired with a Coke to get me through dou­ble shifts of never sit­ting and always smil­ing when I worked at the Vil­lage Tav­ern.  Sarah pointed out in the com­ments yes­ter­day that B vit­a­mins can pro­duce good results, too, so I should men­tion how much I really enjoyed the 5 Hour Energy.  The niacin flush is part of it, but I’m sure I look like a beet.  I’m the only red­head I know who gets the Asian flush after drink­ing half a drink.  It’s a bit embar­rass­ing, but there it is. I’m very san­guine.  There is also a game around here wherein peo­ple get points for every time I blush.  I often win that game with­out even seri­ously com­pet­ing.  I say the most wildly inap­pro­pri­ate things at times!

Also to respond to yesterday’s com­ments, Shad­owhelm is exactly right, Mex­i­can Coke made with­out corn syrup is deli­cious, yummy, scrump­tious crack­rock!  I rarely can find it, but when I do, it’s deli­cious and won­der­ful and I bet it might even be nutri­tious!  I could hap­pily drink that every sin­gle day.  Not exactly a cheap solu­tion, but one that def­i­nitely holds a temp­ta­tion.  I will def­i­nitely seek it out the next time I’m in the Pig.

This is get­ting to be long.  I’ve got to spend some time with the kids, so I’ll pick up again later.  I’d never have guessed I had so much ram­bling in me on the sub­ject of caf­feine .  Maybe the oral fix­a­tion really is more pro­nounced than I real­ized. And trust me, I was aware of it before…