Today’s high school student faces more pressure than ever before. Balancing a school life along with sports, clubs, and home activities can cause enormous amounts of stress if you don’t balance your time correctly. You eventually end up missing precious hours of sleep all together. The question becomes, if students aren’t sleeping, how are they staying awake?



Two essays, a test, and a project are due tomorrow. You realize that procrastinating wasn’t the best thing to due, since your course load is intense. What can you do about it now? The only alternative to taking an F is to drink caffeine and pull an all-nighter.

Unlike your parents, whose only choices of caffeinated beverages were coffee and caffeinated soda, today’s corporate beverage industry gives students a more of a variety, to say the least. Instead of drinking a full pot of coffee, why not buy a double shot of espresso from Starbucks? In the mood for something sweet? Cold Stone Creamy offers a Mountain Dew smoothie. However, the most popular option among students today are energy drinks.

Approximately 65% percent of energy drinkers are under the age of 35 years old making this $3.4 billion-a-year industry more popular than ever with students who pull all-nighters. Monster, Rockstar, and Red Bull are just a few of the 500 products on the market used to give students that late-night boost. These drinks claim to boost both alertness and stamina, but the kick felt by the consumer comes from caffeine

The average 8 fl. oz. energy drink has about 80 mg of caffeine, about the same amount as a weak cup of 16 fl. oz. coffee containing around 150 mg of caffeine. Recent drinks have contained as much as 300 mg of caffeine, creating a stir about the affects they have on your health.

Ross Cooney, an eighteen-year-old athlete, died after playing a basketball game shortly after consuming four cans of the Red Bull. After the incident, France and Denmark banned the popular drink. Britain investigated the drink, but only issued a warning against its use by pregnant women. In addition to these complications, recent discoveries have linked energy drinks such as Rockstar, Hype, Monster, Cocaine, and Hulk to an increase in diabetes due to their excessive amounts of sugar.

"Young people are taking caffeine to stay awake, then are ending up in the emergency department,'' said Dr. Danielle McCarthy of Northwestern University. “Caffeine is a drug and should be treated with caution, as any drug is.''