Lately everyone has been on this “Four Loko” craze! Seems like the drink has become an overnight sensation and people are getting “wasted” after drinking just a few. Personally I have never tried the product, but I have been tempted. This morning I received a message explaining a story about a 20 year old boy who was rushed to the hospital after drinking just 2 cans. The doctors claim that those 2 cans were the equivalent of drinking 16 cups of coffee and drinking 8 beers in an hour! I am not sure how true that story is, so i decided to invesitgate.

UrbanDictionary.com describes Four Lokos as “Legalized cocaine in a can. If you consume Four Lokos you can expect to encounter the same results typically associated with snorting a small mountain of cocaine.”. They were not the only ones who had something negative to say.

Check out this report from CBSNews:

Down a single Four Loko – one of several popular energy-plus-alcohol beverages – and you’re getting a ton of caffeine plus the equivalent of almost three beers.

Some Four Loko fans say they like the “caffeinated malt beverage” because it gives them a paradoxical alert-but-relaxed feeling. But experts say it can be risky to combine alcohol and caffeine, whether you’re mixing Red Bull with booze or buying a ready-made two-in-one cocktail like Four Loko or Joose.

But the party may be over for the makers of Four Loko. Attorneys general in Connecticut, New York, California, and other states are investigating the potential health risks of the drink, along with the marketing practices used to sell it, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The fact that mixing alcohol with caffeine can be dangerous is not news to medical researchers.

And student health services are well aware of the potential dangers. Columbia University’s student health service website, goaskalice.com says caffeine’s stimulating effect can make people less aware of the effects of alcohol. That can cause them to take risks that that they otherwise might not take.

In addition, both caffeine and alcohol are diuretics, so mixing them can cause dehydration. A dehydrated body is slow to process alcohol, and that can interfere with “coordination, balance and ability to regulate body temperature,” according to the site.

And now community organizers and politicians as well as medical experts are speaking out about Four Loko. The Delaware County Daily Times last week reported that Rev. William Rocky Brown III, a candidate for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, said that the new drink “is having our young people black out.”

Some sites are saying the drink is banned in the US but I saw it for sale in 711 last week. I’m not knocking anyone’s lifestyle. It is up to you what you do with this information, just be careful.