Will energy drinks like Red Bull and Guru take you higher or just lower your bank balance?
by MIREILLE SILCOTT Remember Wake Ups? Two bucks. A dozen little pink pills in plastic bubble wrap in a cardboard cover with a rooster on it. High school. Exam time.
God, I was so '80s. Students today, they're much smarter. They don't pull all-nighters with plain old processed caffeine. Oh no. Processed caffeine is for looooseeeers. They drink delicious Guarana replenishers. They sip at expensive blue vessels of Siberian ginseng iced tea. They toss back mango energy juice kissed by extract of Scechzuan peony root. Their stuff is good for you, man. It says on the label: "Good for you." Their drugs are brain food--said to aid in everything from concentration to amounts of oxygen reaching the ol' noggin. Their "smart" drugs complement their coolio lifestyles. My drug was dumb: it just kept me up and made me shaky and left me with no fancy bottle with Chinesey fonts on it to decorate my room with afterwards. Now I smoke, I have a particularly pathetic addiction to caffeine, and with the exception of the numbers one through five, I can't even remember my multiplication tables. See what can happen?
North Cali nootropics
As you may have guessed, a good part of the genealogy of these intelli-drinks begins in Northern California. In the early 1990s, a particularly tough strain of psychedelic lifestyle-ism was running rampant in the Bay Area. The birth of the Internet coupled with the importation of British rave had created a new kind of California hippie--one who was down with the cyber-techy future of the www.world and Mother Earth. One who was no stranger to the delights of synthetic drugs, but kept a vegan diet. Who worked in Silicon Valley by day and danced at paganistic full-moon beach raves at night. Some called these nuevo counterculturalists "Zippies"--a term first coined by Fraser Clarke, the Scottish creator of the Encyclopedia Psychedelia. These novel hippies, and their bible magazine Mondo 2000, instigated the popularization of a new class of drugs. Complementary drugs which fit their tech-yet-organic lives. These substances were called "nootropics" (from the Greek "noos," meaning mind) because they were all deemed as being cognitive enhancers. Drugs to help you think, create, remember. Drugs to keep your mind clear and your body energized. Some called them wonder drugs. It wasn't long before these mainly-legal substances were called "smart drugs" too. And little companies were set up to distribute them commercially, leading to the creation of the 'smart bar'--bars which specialized in selling nootropic drinks bearing names like Fast Blast or Psuper Psonic Psyber Tonic at raves. The drinks were drunk by ravers for increased stamina and to counter some of the unpleasant effects of illegals like Ecstasy.
Ginkgo Biloba, GHB
The fact is, lots of nootropics have very little to do with one another, either in molecular structure or in effects. Some are organic, coming from the artillery of Chinese medicine, like the Ginkgo Biloba plant (said to aid cerebral circulation, mental alertness and overall brain functioning). Others are synthetic, like the nutrient Piracetam (said to enhance memory, attention and intelligence). Some are relatively lightweight, like the very popular Guarana (an unprocessed herb which works as a central nervous system and circulatory system stimulant). Or Choline (a vitamin that your body uses to manufacture acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter involved in memory recall). Others are controversial, like the nutrient GBL, which is metabolized into GHB (an illegal hypnotic) in the body when ingested orally. Or the speed-like Ma Huang herb, from which Ephedrine, the main precursor chemical of amphetamine is extracted. The one thing that many nootropics have in common is their legality. The majority of nootropics are what the pacesetting American FDA call either "nutrients" or "dietary supplements." As long as they are not marketed as a 'drug'--that their therapeutic effects are not mentioned on packaging or the like--they are not burdened by drug scheduling and can move around pretty freely. You can buy nootropic ingredients on Internet shops like smartbomb.com, in health food shops, some druggists and in fitness centres.
Bottled shams, Red Bull
"You've basically got two categories in the commercial drinks, the ones you can get on the street," says Justin Dallegret, the charismatic entrepreneur who first brought the smart bar concept to Montreal rave clubs like Saturn 6 and Crisco in 1991. "There are the ones, like the Arizona Iced Teas or the 100% Smart brand, that just use the ingredients like Guarana as a marketing tool. They don't include amounts of the stuff that can be effective in any way. They are bullshit. "Then there are others, like the British drink Purdey's, or Red Bull, which contain the standard amounts of these nutrients, and can be very effective in giving energy and other effects." Red Bull, the super-sweet energy drink first imported from Thailand by savvy Austrian businessman Dietrich Mateschitz in the early 1970s, has moved far out of cult status in the 1990s. In 1998 alone, the Germany-based Red Bull Corp. has sold almost 200 million cans of the stuff worldwide. Red Bull contains substantial amounts of caffeine (something many do not realize), but also an enzyme called glucuronolacton and the amino acid taurin. Taurin is the big one here--it seems to inhibit and modulate neurotransmitters like norephinephrine in the brain. What does that mean? The Red Bull ad campaign says the drink "gives you wings." Many drinkers say Red Bull's effects are more stimulating than coffee, and leave them with a clearer, energized head. Others say it gives them an upset tummy, a common smart/energy drink complaint. Red Bull, which Dallegret hawked at raves under the pitch of "replenishment" (even though Red Bull actually has a dehydrating effect--its use after long stretches of dancing is not really a great idea), always sold better than all the other drinks at the Justin's Smart Bar stands. By the mid-1990s, Dallegret began thinking of launching his own like-beverage. In 1998, he teamed up with Sona/Angels proprietor Francois Bazinet and Ray Joliecoeur, a defectee from Corby's marketing department. The result was a drink called Guru: an energy drink aimed to put a cog in Red Bull's fast-spinning wheel.
Botanical Guru business Montreal is serving as a test market for Guru. Guru's slogan is "invigorates body & mind," the target consumer is 1830, and the sleek red and silver can was designed by Dallegret and Benno Russel, the duo who also designed trendy clubs Sona and Jai Bar. Guru's main active ingredients are Guarana, Siberian Ginseng (said to aid in circulation and oxygen to the brain), Echinacea (known to have immunostimulant and anti-viral properties) and Ginkgo Biloba. It has no sugar or caffeine. And although both ginseng and echinacea are known to only be effective with regular intake, and some find the botanical taste of Guru to be slightly too botanical, the drink is doing swift business. Dallegret brought a bunch of Gurus to one of those Plateau-arty-type house parties this past Saturday. The fridge was rammed with beer, but with minutes, all the 20-somethings in the house had a little silver and red can in hand. "I feel like I'm on COKE!" exclaimed one satisfied drinker, while another suggested that after a few of these, he might "crash with his head in the barbecue." Rumours are already circulating across the Main about people who kicked down their doors or went into rages after drinking Guru--all baloney, but a decent marker that the stuff works. "We want to bring it across Canada soon, and later into the U.S. and Europe," says Ray Joliecoeur. "We think we will be successful. We are living in a time when people want more from their beverages. We called the drink Guru, because it's something that can LEAD people. To health. To energy. People want something to get them through the day and something to complement their lifestyles. That's what Guru is: lifestyle in can." Oh god. Lifestyle in a can. Is that all any of this is? Fancy packaging and nauseating slogans and style culture? A way to make us pay more (Guru's bottom-line price is $1.99) for something Taster's Choice can do just as well? Wake Ups revamped for the millennium? Or are we looking at the commercialized tip of a drug grey-area with potentially mind blowing effects? In all honesty, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Which is not to say that the new energy drinks are not useful, therapeutic, usually safe and a great addition to the soft drinks market. And in a world where serotonin-fuckers like Prozac are prescribed for bad hair days and men are dying from pharmaceutical miracle pills marketed to make their dicks grow hard, these beverages should really be the last of anyone's worries.
|
I think I got through every exam week of my senior high career by using Wake Ups. As far as I was concerned, Wake Ups were the fountain of all-nighter intellect: Wake Ups! 100 per cent, undiluted processed caffeine. Better than coffee! Of course they were! They were pills, they tasted bad going down, and I bought them at the drug store. They must've had something on coffee--like, coffee tasted too good to work as well.
You have seen these drinks, these "smart" soft drinks, these newfangled energy drinks, at the depanneur: Red Bull, Guru, 100% Smart, Roots and Froots, Arizona Ginseng Iced Tea, Purdey's, Smart FX. Not to be confused with what the bevvie industry calls "isotonic beverages" (like Gatorade), they are the liquid sum of several major 1990s trends: alt-meds such as homeopathy and oxygen bars; the rekindled belief that natural or organic foodstuffs can have therapeutic value; and the drugoid psychedelia of rave. Anesthetically, these drinks are at the opposite end of the spectrum from the other soft drinks marvel of the late 1990s--the homely "sugar juice" market revamped by Sunny Delight, the bright-orange "breakfast drink" which is now one of the top-five best-selling beverages in the United States.
So what is a nootopic, a 'smart' substance? Well, tough to say. Roping together a bunch of unrelated plants n' chemicals, naming them "cognitive enhancers" and calling that a class is not exactly clear scientific methodology. One could argue that Crystal Meth is a cognitive enhancer. Or broccoli.
The majority of the smart drinks or energy drinks available down at your dep today are pretty harmless. Most are fruit punches with the primary active ingredient of a caffeine-like CNS stimulant in them--nothing more than mildly influenced by the real smart drug scene. Many are completely ineffective bottled shams.