I had never thought about this specific topic until I heard one of my friends talking about it. I was intrigued right away and thought that it would be fun to blog about. I was expecting to find evidence that supports whether or not mixing drinks can get you drunk faster, or something along those lines. What I ended up finding was a lot more interesting.
According to Men’s Fitness, mixing alcohol and energy drinks, like Red Bull and vodka, can increase sex drive. College students who mixed energy drinks with alcohol were found to be more likely to have intoxicated or casual sex.
This is based on a study done by the University of Buffalo. The study assessed U.S. adolescents and young adults ages 13 to 25. The author of the study, Kathleen E. Miller, said that mixing alcohol and energy drinks leads to unintentional over drinking because caffeine makes it more difficult to be aware of your own level of intoxication.
Researchers do acknowledge that mixing these drinks do not make people have casual sex, but it does increase their chances of it.
Obviously a mixed drink, like a coke and rum, tastes much better than a shot of rum straight. This leads people to want to drink more and more of it, and leave them less inclined to keep track of how much rum they actually use in the mixture, and also how many coke and rums they have had.
The more a person drinks, the more inclined they will be to engage in sexual behavior, wanted or not.
According to the University of Illinois, sexual assault and alcohol consumption are related to each other. At least 50% of college students’ sexual assaults are associated with alcohol consumption, and 47% of sexual assaults reported by college men involved alcohol.
In 81% of the alcohol related sexual assaults, both people involved in the sexual assault had consumed alcohol. However, when alcohol is involved in a sexual assault, the victim is less likely to call the experience “rape.”
I think the most direct effect of mixing drink is the flavor of the drink. Beside that, back in my country, people like to mix alcohol with green tea because people think it taste better and the green tea can neutral the effect of alcohol, so they get less likely to get drunk. Here is a article about how green tea can have effect on alcohol, it may help you to develop your topic further.
Your blog definitely sparked my interest! I think mixed drinks can definitely have an effect on a person with not just their sexual behavior but with all kinds of things as well such as a personality change. A lot of what this study says makes sense–mixed drinks do taste better and people would rather have more of them than shots, leading to greater effects and more sexual desire. The only problem with this study is that mixed drinks are very hard to measure considering it is just thrown into a cup. I think it would be really interesting to do a study that compared the effects from mixed drinks vs. beer. Of course, there would be many third variables to take into consideration such as quantity, age, ratio of alcohol to soda, etc. Here’s an interesting article I found, that surprised me, about how mixing alcohol with diet soda can actually get you drunker than regular soda.
This is an interesting topic, and reminded me of when Four Loko was removed from stores last year. Four Loko was a caffeinated alcoholic beverage, and was linked to the deaths of several people. The FDA reviewed the drink, and then sent a warning letter to the company stating that, “FDA does not find support for the claim that the addition of caffeine to these alcoholic beverages is ‘generally recognized as safe,’ which is the legal standard”. The issue with this drink is that the caffeine was hiding some of the symptoms that people might use to determine how much alcohol they have consumed, therefore causing people to drink past their limit and end up in the hospital. Although mixing drinks may improve the taste, it can also cause serious health risks.
Good post. I knew about the dangers of mixed drinks but never really thought why that was. I certainly can see know the link between these drinks and sexual assault. In addition, buried in this article (http://www.caffeineinformer.com/alcoholic-energy-drinks-the-list) is that mixed drink consumers are also twice as likely to drink and drive or get in a vehicle with someone drunk, which is quite scary to me at least.
Another interesting thing to consider with this topic of mixed drinks would be “jungle juice”. Since it seems that the juice is popular amongst college parties, it would be interesting to see if people are more likely to drink more when they drink it. Since there is no way to really know how much alcohol is actually in there (unless you made it yourself, that is), it seems that people would be more likely to drink more. On another note, I did find your blog to be very interesting however I would have put in a study on the heart effects of Red Bull Vodkas. In the media the drink is portrayed as being lethal, so I would have been curious to see if Red Bull Vodkas have been hyped up, or if they are actually that dangerous.
Very interesting post. I think mix drinks have more of an effect on people because of the fact that you don’t know exactly how much alcohol you are putting in your drink. For example, when you take a shot, you know exactly how much straight alcohol you are putting into your body. When you pour a mix drink, you are just blindly putting it into your drink, and you have no idea how much alcohol you are actually consuming.