Gay for Glaceau

I'm completely in love with vitaminwater. It's stupid. Mostly, it's sugars and things that are kind of bad-to-okay for you. But there are some vitamins, and things like "lutein" and "theanine" and "calcium" and other made up ingredients. And they come in these really interesting colors that inexplicably make them more delicious. And what's more, sometimes our local supermarket has them on sale for a buck a piece. After a while it just becomes the economical thing to do.

So you'll understand why today, when I saw this puppy staring me right in the face, I had no choice but drop $2.24 and take the ride:
That's right. Sixteen fluid ounces of vitaminenergy. Vitaminwater's next evolutionary step and I never saw it coming. I wish someone had taken my picture the moment I happened upon this pint of pure joy in the local Walgreen's.

For the record, I really don't get down on energy drinks. First, I'm not that big on caffeine because it tends to tweak me out pretty hard, and I become almost instantaneously addicted to it. So if I don't have caffeine the next day, I have a little less energy (all things being equal, of course). This compounds itself the more days I go consecutively with caffeine. On top of that, I think Red Bull not only looks like cat urine, but it tastes a bit like it too. And sugar-free Red Bull? Really? Is that the flavor you people were looking for? Having said that, I do occasionally partake of the energy drink because they're very effective at, say, helping you push through that last few hours before sunrise.

The Walgreen's had three flavors. I will capitalize them for emphasis: Dragonfruit (red), Fruit Punch (purple, for some reason, and not red) and Tropical Citrus (yellow, appropriately). Naturally, I got the Dragonfruit. The first thing I looked at was the ingredients. Ingredient 1? Carbonated water. This upset me. I always feel like carbonation is a cheap way to cover up nasty tasting substances. Bad times. As I rifled through the rest of the ingredients, I noticed that it had the requisite crapola like caffeine, taurine (which I think is mostly just speed), guarana, and some other stuff. But it did, way down at the bottom, have some vitamins listed. Good times. The Glaceau people say this is the difference:

unlike other energy drinks that look like they glow in the dark (loaded with weird chemicals and preservatives), vitaminenergy has no artificial colors, sweeteners, or flavors. we also use natural caffeine, like you'd find in coffee or tea...

And the breakdown:

• b + c vitamins for metabolic energy
• natural caffeine for immediate energy
• ribose for sustained energy

And the website features flash-animated floating vitaminenergy cans with little bands of energy orbiting around them from all sides, so I'm set.

The verdict? I thought it tasted pretty good. Not as good as the Dragonfruit vitaminwater, but good. Also, I don't know what a dragonfruit is or what it's supposed to taste like so perhaps this energy version is closer to the real thing. Anyway I drank it at work in the first 30 minutes I was there. About 20 minutes later I felt my pupils constrict and I nearly caught fire (the caffeine). A little while after that I leveled out and everything was cream cheese. I coasted through the day without experience any sort of crash. To be fair, I slept about 10 hours last night, but even sometimes when I sleep that much I feel a touch sluggish because of my sloth. The downside is the gf threw me out of bed tonight for tossing and turning too much which leads me to believe that maybe this stuff works too fucking good. Or maybe I'm just a gigantic pussy when it comes to caffeine tolerance. Either way, I was more than satisfied. It's a little pricey, but you get more of it for your money than, say, Red Bull. The fact that I didn't crash or wind up with a caffeine-chemical hangover was big. And I feel like the vitaminwater name provides a sane alternative to more wild-eyed beverages like "Monster" and "Hype" and "FirePower Extreme" (find a full list of the madness here) all of which make it seem like your muscles might burst through your clothes in a fit of pure energy and you'll accidentally dislodge a mailbox from it's moorings while simply trying to mail a letter.

The tremendous upside is that we will almost assuredly see a spike in vitaminenergy related alcoholic beverages. If you add vodka to one of these it could easily make a "VitaminSparxx." Or we could drop shots of vodka into half-pints of the stuff to create a "VitaminBomb." The possibilities are endless....