Mixing energy drinks and alcohol ‘like cocaine’

Consuming energy drinks mixed with alcohol could have the same effect on adolescents as taking cocaine, according to a new study from a US university.

Consuming energy drinks mixed with alcohol could have the same effect on the adolescent brain as cocaine, according to researchers

Researchers at Purdue University, Indiana, looked into the effects of highly caffeinated energy drinks and highly caffeinated alcohol in adolescent mice.

The energy drinks can contain about 10 times the caffeine as regular soda and are often marketed to young people – but little is known about their health effects, especially when mixed with alcohol.

The team, led by Richard van Rijn, an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology, found that the mice given high-caffeine energy drinks were not any more likely than the control group to drink more alcohol as adults.

However when the mice drank caffeine mixed with alcohol, they behaved in a similar way and showed and neurochemical signs similar to mice given cocaine.

Mice were used in lieu of human adolescents as changes in mouse brains due to drugs have shown to correlate closely to humans in many drug studies.

According to the researchers, the mice repeatedly given caffeinated alcohol became increasingly more active, like mice on cocaine. They also found increased levels of a protein known to be a marker of long-term changes in neurochemistry. Levels of the protein are often higher in those abusing drugs such as cocaine and morphine.

“It seems the two substances together push them over a limit that causes changes in their behaviour and changes the neurochemistry in their brains,” van Rijn said.

“We’re clearly seeing effects of the combined drinks that we would not see if drinking one or the other.”

It was also found that the mice who had drunk more caffeinated alcohol in adolescence were less sensitive to the “pleasurable” effects of cocaine.

“Mice that had been exposed to alcohol and caffeine were somewhat numb to the rewarding effects of cocaine as adults,” van Rijn said. “Mice that were exposed to highly caffeinated alcoholic drinks later found cocaine wasn’t as pleasurable. They may then use more cocaine to get the same effect.”

To test the theory that the caffeinated alcohol had caused some kind of change in the mice’s brains, they were then exposed to saccharine – an artificial sweetener also found to be a pleasurable substance. The mice indeed drank significantly more saccharine than the control group.

“Their brains have been changed in such a way that they are more likely to abuse natural or pleasurable substances as adults,” van Rijn concluded.

The findings have been published by van Rijn and graduate student Meridith Robins in the journal Alcohol.

Back in 2013, Australian academic Peter Miller claimed that industry research into the consumption of alcohol and energy drinks may be downplaying harms and “raises questions of propriety”.