Just HOW Dangerous is Dangerous When it Comes to Energy Drinks, Part Deux.

About two weeks ago, I decided that it would be an amazingly brilliant idea to try different energy drinks. I never hear the same thing said about an energy drink twice; it’s always a different response, and very few of them encompass the drink as a whole. So I decided to test stuff out on my own.

See? I didn’t die.

Still, once I found myself working my way down (or up) this list, I was getting a lot more negative side affects than positive. So use caution when drinking these guys, and for God’s sake, don’t drink them all in a two-week span like I did.

5. Mad Croc: I wasn’t crazy about this stuff, I’ll be honest. It tasted a lot like Red Bull and bubblegum ice cream combined (gross combo, I know). . If you’re looking for something to just keep you up, this is probably your product. I had a mild case of the shakes for about fifteen minutes, but no other noticeable side affects really showed up.

4. 5 Hour Energy: The reason that this is so high on my little countdown is that it really does live up to its name. The reason it’s so low is that I wish it lasted longer. I had just about five and a half hours of energy out of this, and though it didn’t make me super-twitchy like the others have, I was awake and alert. It’s the only one on this second countdown that I will actually probably buy again.

3. No. 5 (Powershot): Now, they didn’t have the regular drink in stores, so I had to settle for this two-ounce little bottle. Mistake number one on my part. I didn’t realize that quite so much would be put into a little bottle, despite the little “Caution: Powerful!” on the front. About a half hour after downing this, I had a bad stomach ache. About an hour later, I was bouncing my leg like there was a spring in my heel. I was up for a good seven hours on this stuff, and one of the nice things I noticed was that there was no crash – much like the 5 Hour Power stuff. Still, the side affects were a little scary.

2. Redline: This would have beaten number one if it weren’t for one little problem. I had to order this and the number one on-line because I couldn’t find them in stores. I had about half the bottle when my stomach decided that it had no interest in continuing the experiment, and back up came about $2 worth of Redline. And though I know I won’t be drinking this stuff ever again, I was too stubborn to give up (at the time I rationalized it with “commitment”). So half an hour later, I downed the rest of the bottle. With only drinking half of the product, an hour later I had the shakes, and for the first time noticed a side effect that none of the others had given me; my heart rate was an easy 170 BPM. And then the crash, which, I think was more from being sick than anything else. Never again, though. Neverrrr.

1. Cocaine: Just like how I’m pretty sure the real stuff is, this was not easy to get. When it finally arrived in the mail, my heart rate went up just thinking about the horrible things it was going to do to my body. And down the hatch it went. The taste was nothing to write home about – unless you enjoy writing home about how your throat burns – but it definitely lived up to its name when it started working. I felt like I had just had a can of Powerthirst. I couldn’t stop shaking for a good hour, and I was so hyper that I couldn’t actually focus on doing one thing. Eventually, I just ending up working out from three in the morning until about four thirty in the morning. And I still wasn’t tired. Surprisingly, though, there was no crash to speak of when I finally noticed my energy levels declining nine or ten hours later. Still, this stuff should probably be as illegal as the white powder it’s named after.

All in all, I wouldn’t really recommend doing this to anybody, much less another girl. I’m pretty sure an in-shape guy would have been able to handle this experience a little better than I did, but I still don’t think I did a half-bad job. Overall side affects? Well, I now have horrible caffeine headaches when I haven’t had my dose for a while, and I’m really heavily contemplating buying a whole case of Cocaine. (God, I hope no one only reads that one sentence.)

But when I need energy from now on, I think I’ll either stick to either the guys I told you last week or a just have a good ol’ apple.

[Photo by TIO, of Flickr.]