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… 
That’s what she said!
You will note that we’ve been straying away from the hypercaffeine on game-night, and only Kuraruku really insists on hooking himself up to a car battery.
I think that it is an interesting dynamic now that we have someone who cannot handle caffeine at all.
Eh, what can I say I go into withdrawal if I don’t have at least 100mg a day of the stuff… The best though was those caffeine mints that I bought a while back and I order mana and health pots finally so we can try those as well ^.^
Strange caffeine………. >.>