Matt Keally's Blog

It’s now been at least a month since I’ve started on energy drinks and coffee. I’ve now been able to make some more observations.

In general, I’ll drink either coffee or an energy drink sometime in the morning. This will be sometime between 9:30 and 11:30. I’ll start feeling the effects almost instantaneously and they will last around three or four hours at the most, with a peak around 30 minutes to one hour after consumption.

When I drink something before class, I am much more attentive and seem to understand what is going on a lot better. This especially applies to my wireless class where someone is explaining nasty concepts out of a research paper. I also feel more compelled to participate in class discussions rather than stare blankly at the projection screen.

Some energy drinks have higher caffeine content and give me more of a rush. Depending on how I was feeling initially, it can be too much and I feel like I’m bouncing off the walls. I’ll try working on a paper or reading something for school and I find it hard to concentrate. I’d just rather go outside and run (but being able to do that is another issue entirely). This hasn’t happened with coffee, despite its alleged higher caffeine content.

Conversely, some energy drinks lend to more of a crash, but again this is more mood-dependent. The more tired I was initially, the more of a crash I will have after I drink something. Occasionally I’ll finish with my run/elliptical at around 2:30 PM and feel completely wiped, much more than I would have had I not drank anything to begin with. Then, the next few hours are a real struggle. I also haven’t noticed a significant crash with coffee either.

I do notice that if I drink anything much later than around 11:30 that I’ll have trouble getting to sleep that night. It takes me quite awhile to get to sleep on a normal night, so I try not to drink anything after late morning.

I also notice that I’m starting to get addicted — if I don’t drink anything in the mornings I feel more tired than I would before I started this.

I haven’t had too many variations of coffee — just the stuff served in the cafeteria as well as at the Daily Grind coffee shop on campus. The taste is more or less the same, and it’s pretty good once I put in a packet of sugar. As for the energy drinks, I’ve had a handful of those, all sugar free versions since sucking down 200+ corn-syrupy empty calories on top of the caffeine just kills my stomach. I find the Rockstar zero carb to have the best taste (and biggest kick), followed by the Rockstar sugar free and Monster’s diet version. I’ve had a few others, like Lost, which tastes and has a similar kick to the Monster and sugar free Rockstar. Mountain Dew Amp sugar free wasn’t all that great, mainly because I hate watermelon and anything watermelon flavored. At the bottom was No Fear, which was absolutely impalatable (again due to a really strong watermelon flavor) and I threw it out after about a quarter of it.

Due to the addictiveness (and cost) of this, it probably really isn’t all that great to continue this. I’m probably not any better off than I was before in terms of energy, especially if I make an effort to get 8-9 hours of sleep every night.