Horror for the Holidays:
The New Year’s Eve Drink of Death
By L.B. Axe
Copyright 2007
Did you hear about the teenager whose head exploded at midnight?
Britney and all the young-rich-and-beautiful set are having energy drinks at clubs and parties now. So, teens everywhere are doing the same. Red Bull is the most popular one. It originated in Thailand to help truck drivers stay awake as they drove mountainous jungle trails at night.
Copycat drinks were exported by European businessmen. Some of the drinks were known to have high levels of questionable ingredients from these uncharted rainforests. Some have ingredients that have never been labeled or even known to Western scientists.
The caffeine level and taurine found in Red Bull has gotten it banned in Iceland, Denmark, France and other countries. Originally, taurine came from animal tissue, primarily bull bile. Now it’s synthetically made and even more potent. Officials in the countries where Red Bull is banned believe it causes brain tumors. Imagine what some of the lesser-known, but popular underground drinks must contain. Some say they contain stolen recipes of Vietnam War-era drugs made by the American government. T
his one high school guy was picked up by his friends after he had been at work all day. Lots of students take advantage of time off from school to make extra cash. But it was New Year’s Eve and they were headed to the coolest party in town.
The teenager was already pooped and there was not time to get some food on his stomach. So he opened his backpack and pulled out a couple of black cans. He killed them both in one continuous rhythm of gulping.
“Whoooo, that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” he shouted as they all laughed.
The black-can drinks helped, for the moment at least, stop the nagging headaches he’d had for weeks now. He chalked the pain up to lack of sleep and semester tests. Another energy drink and he kept going.
What the medical team would later say is that it was a miracle he had been able to function with that much pressure on his brain. His skull too had weakened. There were places where it was almost paper-thin.
Tumor? Hardly. Try tumors. Too many to even count.
They say it was the excitement of midnight and kissing the girl of his dreams. Maybe someone bumped his delicate head in the dark. No one actually heard an explosion. There were so many noisemakers. The girl thought someone had thrown something at her face. But when the lights came on, she was clutching her standing boyfriend around his waist, and looking over his shoulders. There was nothing to block her view of the couple behind him. You see, the boy she held had no head.
The blood rushing to all those brain tumors, the thin skull, one energy drink too many – the investigating police said his head had popped open like a box of cherry bombs had gone off inside a ripe melon.
Another Urban Legend? Perhaps. Perhaps not.