Caffeine: A retailer’s best friend

I have said many times awhile back that Starbucks was a great business plan. Once it became “cool” to drink coffee Starbucks and other coffee shops started springing up all over the place. And why not? After all, once people started to drink coffee drinks it would no longer be a luxury…it would become a NECESSITY!

Coming from someone who “quit the coffee” a few times and am still off of it today, I know that caffeine is a drug. Every time I quit drinking it I had to go through a week or two (or three the first time) with severe withdrawal symptoms. Migraine-level headaches that hurt worse just walking into a bright room; cold-sweats; nausea; and the urge where “I gotta have just a 1/2 of a cup….COME ON MAN…I need it, you don’t understand”!.

But Starbucks never hit the whole market. Even when a handful of my friends were knocking back 3 or 4 lattes a day I had another handful of friends that couldn’t stand the taste of coffee.

Enter the energy drinks. Red Bull started becoming popular among the “geek” crowd, and when all of their competition realized that energy drinks were the “non-coffee-drinkers coffee”, new energy drinks popped up almost daily it seemed.

Since I quit the coffee, AND am working crazy hours, I fell prey to thinking I would just have an energy drink or two here and there to get me through the long work hours. One Amp here, one Monster there…what’s the harm?!? The harm is that I started feeling like I was drinking coffee again. By that I mean I would feel awake while I was drinking it and an hour later would feel like it was time to roll out my little rug for nap-time. I need something with sustained energy all day. No spikes, no drops. So my wife gives me a Vitamin Energy last night after a long day of moving to get me through the last 45 min drive back home. I loved it because it was by the makers of Vitamin Water so it had to be good. I decided to look it up today and couldn’t believe that the can had more caffeine in it than a double-shot at Starbucks. Ugggg.

And now for the “Duh” moment: I am telling my wife that I like the Vitamin Water (before I knew about the caffeine), and telling her that I need to find some more of that and her reply was “Why don’t you just take B6”. Genius! All of the good stuff that these energy drinks are trying to sell you on, you can just take as a vitamin. So when my energy is down I don’t have to look for some energy drink or coffee to boost me back up, I can just pick up some vitamins and have the sustained energy I’m looking for. And the bonus is that a 30 day supply cost about as much as a day’s worth of energy drinks.