Look! It’s another Monday! There’s no need to fear! Power this, power that, power everything is here! Everywhere you go, someone’s bragging about boosting your day! Including a simple box of vitamins that claims each scientifically designed capsule inside contains the right nutritional ingredients to push you through your day.
Cha ching! Yep, we love to get up.
We aren’t the first generation to latch onto a legal rush…coffee and tea stains date back thousands of decades. Then someone said, “Too much sugar in a cereal box makes parents mad, can’t we create a soft drink that has the impact of beer and wine and make it legal for kids who are barely nine?”
During my chapters as a kid the scent of coffee from a can lit the imagination. It was like walking through a meadow of bright red roses after a rain filled spring day. One problem, Mr. Coffee wasn’t accepted in all households…Dad said, “Instant just doesn’t taste right. I don’t drink rubberized cardboard.” That meant closet coffee drinking kids were forced to be caffeinated by means of percolation. So there it sat that infamous metal or glass pot on the back burner of the stove, in the early days it scared me because it looked like it was alive. It breathed long and deep then poof! The water would shoot. Then I convinced my sci-fi self that coffee was nothing more than alien food created by machines that resembled belching androids.
My Aunt Betsy used to scream, “Stop drinking coffee! It’ll put you in an early grave!” I just didn’t understand her reasoning. Even after the flavors been sucked from the junk left in the pot, we’d toss it into a bucket and take it out to the worms used for fishing. I swear I’m messed up not because of the gallons of coffee consumed at such an early age, I’m blaming it on the rainbow trout locked in lakes and rivers who spent their entire day searching for hooks to eat because life under the sea is so boring. Once bitten by the caffeine bug, it was time to flee the stream and take a journey upward to where the mosquitoes buzzingly play.
I’d say coffee drinkers were the first to go green…the parental figures got what they needed from those beans then gently gave it back to the worms and Mother Earth. Talk about recycling!
Today’s rush is a new high…power drinks and shooters have become so popular the idea of inventing a better computer or stronger economy place somewhere in the Hot Top 200. It’s become our priority to pinpoint the drink that physically lives up to what they claim.
There’s a new kind of gas at the convenience store…forget the car, put the nozzle in me!
In the past two years we’ve been introduced to brand new explosive drinks at the bar, Chocolate Martini’s are great but please pour in some Red Bull. Nearly every checkout counter at the store features energy flavored chewing gum and back on aisle eight the green tea diet plan isn’t necessarily geared toward losing weight. Even Butterfinger got into the rush….the candy bar maker recently tested our market with a peanut butter substance that had incredible kick.
There are bright red and blue pills that guarantee, some even look like mud from the bottom of the sea. If it works, it doesn’t matter…we chase it with flavored water, soda or sun fried southern sweet tea. There are tiny bottles that exclaim, “We give you five hours with no drop off at the end!” It opened the door for another company to say, “We give you six!” And just this past weekend I located the hot green bottle that read, “All day fix.”
The problem isn’t a shortage of choice…new flavors are created everyday…each promising to pump up your volume without ripping the street from beneath your feet. The fear so many share is the good stuff once found doesn’t usually stick around. So…what was their secret ingredient? At one time these legal doses of give me all you’ve got were once visited by the extremely deadly ephedrine.
Dr. Mack gave me the shake down, “I won’t be at your funeral! Call your mom right now and tell her that I don’t even want to hear the news. I want that day to be cold and lonely.” Ouch! Then again, he should know about chemicals…he spent the majority of his life saving children all over the world who were poisoned by human carelessness.
Some knock the head off a power drink to pick up their workday; others can’t stand the taste of coffee, while a few openly admit that it gives them focus during enormous bouts with multitasking. Shots are thrown past the vocal chords before workouts, large meetings after work, family gatherings that feature siblings who’ve never learned to keep still but this year you’re completely juiced and ready to take them on.
As fun as I want this story to be is as serious as it needs to become…show me the weekend highway accident report that identifies no alcohol consumed but the body was laced with power drink paste. After three cans of power…we’ve all learned that extreme tiredness pursues forcing one to believe that any style of bobble heading is just as dangerous as drinking while drunk. What’s the difference between passing out from drinking and passing out because you ran out of a power drink?
While purchasing a cold remedy that’ll truly work, the drill sergeant behind the drug store counter wants to see your ID which is then typed into a special computer to guarantee the state you aren’t making meth in a secret place.
Mention certain power drinks and eyes light up like the day you attended your first high school kegger. Gone are not those days because the price of power is no different than gasoline…it’s up, up and away! A single can of beer is still a buck twenty five. Two Buck Chuck is three bucks which is a penny more than a large Monster.
I am not shy to admit, I don’t consume alcohol but I am a power drink connoisseur. My eyes can sniff out a six pack six blocks from the store and I know by the style of the can whose pimping and whose ripping the down from your frown. Friday night I learned of an ancient Asian mix that sends masters of the martial arts deep into their nineties. If it works, can I keep it a secret? Even worse, will I learn to abuse it?
Looking into a bathroom mirror I ask, “Why am I allowing this to consume me?” Holy cow…it would’ve been much funnier to talk about the dogs taking over my bed. I’m being forced to sleep on the floor.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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