Like cocaine: how mixing energy drinks and alcohol can give teens chronic brain health issues
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Jägerbombs or vodka Red Bull are commonly enjoyed cocktails, but a new study warns that adolescents who drink such highly caffeinated alcoholic beverages trigger changes in their brains similar to those from taking cocaine. The consequences, according to study in mice from Purdue University published in the journal PLOS ONE, last into adulthood and include an altered ability to deal with rewarding substances.
The researchers gave adolescent mice caffeinated alcohol and these animals showed physical and neurochemical signs similar to mice given cocaine. “It seems the two substances together push them over a limit that causes changes in their behaviour and changes the neurochemistry in their brains,” says Richard van Rijn, an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Purdue. “We’re clearly seeing effects of the combined drinks that we would not see if drinking one or the other.”
With repeated exposure to the caffeinated alcohol, those mice became increasingly more active. The researchers also detected increased levels of the protein FosB, which is marker of long-term changes in neurochemistry, also elevated in those abusing drugs such as cocaine or morphine. “That’s one reason why it’s so difficult for drug users to quit, because of these lasting changes in the brain,” van Rijn says.
The researchers also found that mice exposed to caffeinated alcohol during adolescence were less sensitive to the pleasurable effects of cocaine. Confirming this theory, in further tests it was found that the caffeine/alcohol-exposed mice drank significantly more of a pleasurable substance – the artificial sweetener, saccharine – than mice exposed to water during adolescence.
