My belly feeling like a washing machine – I can handle. Feeling like someone’s taking a sledgehammer to my head – I can just about handle. But the Red Bull jitters, I simply cannot.
Don’t get me wrong, I love pound a pint night at the Woody as much as the next Cathays resident, but one too many Tuesday morning has gone by where I’ve been confined to my bed with the J word following a night at Vodka Island.
I don’t even like Vodka Red Bull and yet as the cheapest drink on offer, any half decent student is going to opt for it. With 479 appreciation societies on Facebook and over 3 billion cans of Red Bull sold around the world in 2006 it can’t be denied that we’re embroiled in a love affair with the stuff.
Everyone knows the dangers of student offer nights, in particular those involving Vodka Red Bull, but ultimately whose fault is it if we end up saving a few quid but seriously damaging our health by bingeing?
Binge drinking is classified as anything over 8 or more units in any drinking session for men and 6 or more units for women. That’s as little as two pints and a measure of spirit for men, or three small glasses of wine for women. 2 days of binge drinking is thought to cause irreversible damage to the olfactory bulb and long-term loss of smell.
The big companies seem to be manipulating students into buying certain drinks, For example, at Oceana on a Wednesday, the cheapest drink is Vodka Red Bull, with any other mixer costing far more. Norway, France, Uruguay and Iceland have all banned the energy drink because of concerns over high levels of caffeine. A 250 ml can of Red Bull has about the same amount of caffeine as one would find in a 250 ml cup of coffee – about double what you would consume if you had a 330 ml can of Coke. Surely it’s irresponsible on behalf of the big three clubs who do offers on Vodka Red Bull to make them so cheap?
Don Serratt, founder of British drug treatment centre Life Works, said mixing extreme quantities of the stimulant caffeine with the depressant alcohol was ‘like mixing cocaine with heroin.’
He was responding to a study which found young adults were twice as likely to be hurt and require medical attention and twice as likely to travel with a drunk driver if they had the cocktail, than those who did not mix their drinks.
They found, compared to those who did not mix caffeine and alcohol they had almost double the risk of being taken advantage of sexually. Initially Red Bull claimed that the drink improved sexual stamina but was forced to remove this unfounded claim in 2001.
Study leader Dr Mary Claire O’Brien, from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Centre in New Carolina, said: ” we were surprised that the risk of serious and potentially deadly consequences is so much higher for those who mixed energy drinks with alcohol, even when we adjusted for the amount of alcohol.”
Mixing caffeine with alcohol was like “getting into a car and stepping on the gas pedal and the brake at the same time”, said Dr O’Brien.
Increasing drink offers during exam times is also something that worries fourth year Cardiff medic and BMA Medical Students Committee Deputy Chairperson, Daniel Samuels :
“I think it is extremely irresponsible for students unions in particular to be promoting drinks offers, especially those that reward students for proving they have just sat an exam to receive a promotional offer price on alcohol.
Stress is never easily relieved, but drinking only exacerbates the problem and can lead to long term health problems.”
Tiger Tiger’s planned event this week, ‘Give the Exams the V sign’, smacks of exploitation of stress. I’m not saying we need the clubs to make sure we get early nights and read us bedtime stories, but promoting irresponsible drinking at times of stress is surely unacceptable. Tiger Tiger claimed it was company policy not to comment on such matters, but did want to emphasise that the club closes at 2am, not 3am. Won’t this just encourage us to cram in a few more before closing time?
Yet another Carnage event has been arranged for the end of May, a time when many of us are still chained to the desk. Obviously there is no law does not forcing us to go, but is it right to arrange an event with an unofficial binge-based ethos right in the middle of exams? If not from the drinking point of view, the racket caused on Carnage nights are enough to drive any student trying to get an early night up the wall.
Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said any drink promotions were highly irresponsible: “Although alcohol is legal, it is still a drug. It should not be used as a loss-leader like soap powder.” He said the university culture of bingeing could lead to violence, date rape, unwanted pregnancies and serious injuries. Of course we are aware of all of this, but one student who overlooked the dangers was Gavin Britton of Exeter University.
In 2006, an inquest heard how the student drank himself to death after an initiation into the golf society. Gavin Britton, 18, was violently sick after downing a cocktail of shots, cider and wine in November 2006. Students who failed to down their drinks in 30 seconds were being asked to finish a ‘penalty shot’ it emerged.
Gavin’s father warned, “I thought I knew the son I lost, but he obviously was totally different to what I knew. No parent is going to know totally and fully what their offspring are up to at university. I do not suppose he was any different from thousands of others. He was going along with university life.” This is precisely the problem: it’s natural for students to binge. But as proven by Gavin’s death, it’s a problem which needs addressing, fast.
