The Power of Pharmaceuticals

Energy drinks in the US are made by drink companies like Coca Cola and the like, and are pretty well crammed with vitamins and minerals (read: caffeine) to reach their desired level of potency. But never have I thought to drink one to pep me up when coping with a miserable hangover like the one I had yesterday morning after Ethan's going away party.

I didn't either, I drank a Japanese Genki drink, which, rather than being made by Asahi or Pokka or some other massive drink conglomerate, are manufactured by one of a few major pharmaceutical companies.

I didn't think it would do much, but, well, I went from zombie mode to fully functional normal mode to almost hyper damn near slice mode after consuming one of the second tier drinks. It was amazing, and lasted nearly 4 or 5 hours before I was back to being dead tired and desperately needing sleep.

Genki drinks here come in levels, though it's not really spoken about. There are price ranges for these things, and unlike wines, the price really is indicative of its potency. Instead of the standard 150 yen drinks, I bought one of the ~300 yen drinks, and there's a huge different in efficacy there. The stuff is an elixir really, usually less than 2 ounces per drink, often near around 1, non-carbonated and tasting as foul as anything you could possibly imagine. Typically, these drinks contain upwards of 30mg of liquid nicotine, which, as I have mentioned before, is the equivalent of 2 or so packs of cigarettes at once. They have drinks that cost 1000 yen or more, and I can only imagine what would happen if someone were to ingest one of them.