Dangers of Combining Alcohol and Energy Drinks
The high expectations of achievement during the college years often puts pressure on students to use caffeine, alcohol or other substances to extend wakeful hours or relieve stress during non-working hours. Energy drinks have become very popular on college campuses, with students drinking them not only to stay awake during study hours, but also to enhance partying.
A recent study examined whether the combination of energy drinks and alcohol led to an increased consumption of alcohol. Price, Hilchey, Darredeau, Fulton and Barrett researched in 2010 whether, like other stimulants, energy drinks caused an increase in alcohol intake.
The researchers recruited 72 college students aged 17 to 29 from a Canadian University. The participants were interviewed to determine lifetime and past-week alcohol and energy drink consumption.
A drinking session was determined to be an energy drink drinking session if the use of alcohol occurred within an hour of energy drink consumption. Non-energy drink drinking sessions were instances of alcohol use that occurred more than an hour before or after using energy drinks.
If participants had both energy drink drinking sessions and non-energy drink drinking sessions, the researchers used paired t-tests to compare the average alcohol consumption during each type of drinking session.
The results of the study show that 76 percent of the participants had used energy drinks and alcohol together. Over half of the participants had consumed one or both of the drinks during the past week, but only 19.4 percent reported a past-week energy drink drinking session. The 10 participants who had both types of drinking sessions during the past week drank significantly more alcohol during sessions with energy drinks than they did in drinking sessions without energy drinks.
The findings of the study may be limited by the sample size and the use of participants from one academic institution, indicating that the results may not be representative of the general population. In addition, the results were based on self-report, which may be affected by retrospective bias.
The findings of the study suggest that the practice of combining alcohol and energy drinks is relatively common on college campuses. Combining energy drinks and alcohol is potentially dangerous. Stimulants can mask the recognition of intoxication, while not reducing the actual effects of alcohol, making the person unaware of their reduced ability to function normally. It is possible that the negative consequences that are associated with alcohol are exacerbated by the addition of energy drinks to a drinking session.
