Since it is highly unlikely that in this lifetime I will be running for office, I’ll admit yes, I did inhale that one time I smoked that marijuana cigarette. And I’ve snorted a line or two. Okay, maybe it was actually about twenty of them and DEFINITELY no more than 30. When it comes to products that are supposed to give you that extra edge for whatever you might need it, this human guinea pig prefers the results of ‘Sugar-Free Rockstar’ to the real thing (cocaine) any day.
I don’t like cocaine and maybe for this reason alone, I could never be a coke or crack whore. However, today I will be a Coke whore for a product distributed by the Coca Cola Company as I discuss my passion for Rockstar brand sugar-free energy drink.
After a few years in the bar and restaurant industry, I’ve seen coke (the real thing) sprinkled around and wondered what all of the fuss was about. Upon experimenting I learned that cocaine doesn’t make me want to party all night, it makes me want to go hide in a dark room. Under the influence of cocaine, I am not the life of the party. I have nothing witty to say, let alone much at all. Even worse, I just want everyone else at the party to just shut the hell up.
As a college student, I experimented with it to supposedly help me pull a couple of ‘all-nighters.’ Cocaine didn’t help me focus or make me smarter. It makes my brain feel as if it were melting into a gelatinous blob of snot, trying to escape my sinus cavity.
Besides the snot, I’ve been nose-bleed prone since second grade, when I first started shoplifting pixie sticks from the 7-11. My nose would start bleeding just as I was rolling up the $100 bill.
What I have heard is that a little bit of cocaine does not go a long way. To keep you going all night, you have to keep doing it. For me the effects are long lasting and not in a good way. A line or two, I’m carrying around a box of Puffs and can’t breathe out of my nose for a week. I’ve ever been able to do more than a line or two because after that point the cocaine won’t break through the heavy post nasal drip. Being born in the 1970’s, maybe cocaine messed up my sinuses in my previous life and maybe even killed me.
The reason cocaine doesn’t have the intended effect on me may be because I am chemically different than most people. The Ritalin prescription my parents procured for me in the 1980’s didn’t work how it was supposed to either. Ritalin is very similar in chemical structure to cocaine and methamphetamines. As far as what my parents wanted it to do, it didn’t do much to calm me down, or help me focus. I was no dummy and I knew this was a substance people abused. I tried. Boring. It is odd that why these other legal and illegal stimulants would not have the intended effect while regular legal stimulant caffeine gives me special powers.
I feel quite blessed with my particular chemical composition.
If I ever find myself in a rehab center, it’s not going to battle a cocaine addiction. Besides the tests I conducted on myself, during my bar and restaurant career years, I also noticed the unattractive wear and tear of party substances on co-workers and heavy-duty bar people.
None the illegal or prescription stimulants do it for me. Sugar-free Rockstar Energy drink is the real party animal. And I swear Rockstar’s distributor, the Coca Cola Company, is not paying me to say so. I prefer Sugar-Free Rockstar energy drink over cocaine because I never need to perform sexual favors for money to buy more Sugar Free Rockstar energy drink and because the only shady character I deal with to buy it is the clerk at the convenience store that sells it.
People see me drinking Sugar-free Rockstar energy drink occasionally and remark, ‘oh my god I can’t believe you are drinking that…it is soooo unhealthy.
The only kind of expert I am is in pseudo science, but off the top of my head, there are two things that I am almost positive are unhealthy about Sugar-free Rockstar. Carbonation is supposed to leach away at bone density. The artificial sweetener Sucralose, so far, they say, is safe. Or most of the top googleable sources say.
CONSUMER PROFILE
Why is something marketed as ‘sugarfree’ more attractive than something else marketed as ‘diet’? Rare occasions when I do drink a Coke it is in a glass bottle, imported from Mexico and made with sugarcane instead of corn syrup, it would never be a ‘diet’ Coke. This other Coke product uses aspartame, which most scientists agree is not healthy. According to market research, a potential drinker like me will associate ‘diet’ with ‘aspartame’ and ‘definitely unhealthy.
As part of my consumer profile, Coke probably knows all of the reasons that I would drink it and created it specifically for others and myself who fit into a similar advertising target profile. As a rule, I’m just not all that in to sugar in non-diet sodas or non-diet versions of energy drinks.
I haven’t the slightest idea what makes Sugar-free Rockstar and Carb-Free Rockstar different except that I am more likely to buy something sugar free than something labled ‘diet’ or ‘carb-free’. The only things I can be sure of is that I’m not on the Atkins’ Diet, and not counting carbs, points, or even calories. Carb-Free Rockstar doesn’t have any sugar and I don’t think that Sugar-Free Rockstar could have any carbs.
Okay, well consciously, I’m not counting calories, but my subconscious and everybody else knows that drinking lots of sugar in the form of soda or booze is one big recipe for fat.
Coke helps me to rationalize my product selection with the key words: Siberian ginseng root extract, milk thistle extract, and B vitamins. For me, Sugar-Free Rock Star Energy drink has so far not caused any of the ill effects I have experienced with cocaine.
MULTIPLE PHARMOCOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF ROCKSTAR
The rationalizations that Sugar-Free Rockstar is the lesser evil given all other products bottled by Coca Cola and similar evil entities, cocaine, and prescription stimulants are actually not the determining factors in my product selection. The truth is that if everyone experienced Sugar-Free Rockstar the way that I do, it would probably be illegal.
Considering cocaine and Ritalin don’t provide the expected or desired results for me, according the medical community, my ability to experience caffeine so intensely would probably be surprising.
I experience intense, long lasting, euphoric highs from enough caffeine. I don’t so much get the crash. On an extreme caffeine bender, on the way down when I am sleep deprived, the caffeine actually results in a psychedelic effect.
The most dangerous enjoyable effect is the occasional thrill I get out of a Sugar-Free Rockstar and Grapefruit or Mandarin Absolut. I drink this when I want to get crazy stupid on the dance floor. This is the speedball, dangerous combination of uppers and downers.
REGULAR OLD COFFEE AND TEA VS ROCK STAR
Before I found Sugar-Free Rockstar, I found that gallons of iced tea (unsweetened/straight up) would get me to the same place. I’ve tried coffee but it keeps me up for days, sweating. It gives me acid reflex, butt breath, stinky pee and coffee b.o.
Iced or hot, tea is actually my standard caffeine vehicle. Hard at work, or partying hard, it is not very practical to need to go the bathroom every 20 minutes.
‘WHOSE YOUR DADDY?’ VS ROCKSTAR
I’m embarrassed to be seen drinking products as pretentiously named as ‘Rockstar.’ Do I identify with the branding of this product? Do I believe that drinking this product helps me to be perceived as a rockstar? For me, it’s the fact that I’m strung out on caffeine and the light citrus flavor is the least offensive available amoung energy drink products. I don’t want something that tastes like carbonated Kool-Aid with three times the recommended amount of sugar. I hope people don’t see me drinking Sugar-Free Rockstar and fear that I will break into spontaneous air-guitar. I would like this product even more if it were called ‘Supernerd.’
‘Cocaine’ brand energy drink has been taken off the market, ‘Blow’ didn’t work out either. There are worst named products on the market. I’d rather be seen drinking either of the previous two than be seen drinking ‘Pimpjuice’ or ‘Whose your Daddy?’ energy drinks.
The other day, I was in need of a lift and the closest available product was ‘Whose Your Daddy?’ Sugar-Free Cranberry Pineapple. I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed it since I am so loyal to Rockstar’s sugar-free product. I was embarrassed to buy ‘Whose Your Daddy?,’ and embarrassed to be seen drinking it.
If it were packaged differently, I might be inclined to alternate between this product and Sugar-Free Rockstar and lots and lots of tea. I can’t wait for ‘Supernerd’ to be FDA approved.
HEALTH ADVISORIES
Sugar Free Rockstar is probably not something that you should drink every day. It doesn’t say so on the can but you probably should not drink more than a can a day. It is possible to get hooked on this product, withdrawl effects are the same as with any form of caffeine and include headache and heightened irritabilty.
I gotta go get some RIGHT NOW!
RESOURCES
University of Utah, Article: ‘Ritalin and Cocaine: the Connection and the Controversy,’ 2008(http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/addiction/issues/ritalin.cfm)
Gillan, Eric, ‘The Cult of Diet Coke,’ The Black Table, 3/17/04(http://www.blacktable.com/gillin040317.htm)
(http://www.possessedbycaffeine.com/2008/03/rockstar-sugar-free-energy-drink.html)
