Energy Drink

Today I am having my last energy drink. It happens to be my favourite, and the same as the first I ever tried: Red Eye Classic.

They've been making this in Australia since 1995 or so. I had my first in 1999 when I was 13. I was in my first year of High School and visiting the city with friends. I remember it felt cool to be drinking something labelled as being for people aged 15 years and over. It is genuinely refreshing and tasty.

I remember that I would stock a range of flavours for friends when I hosted a house party. I'd also enjoy them for $2 each when I went to the CyberElectric Internet Café on Thursday nights to play the early betas of Counter-Strike over LAN.

It was a favourite with one of my housemates that I looked up to. It also fuelled my own all-nighters when I procrastinated on my university assignments. The caffeine helped me cure boredom, write code, and the insulin spikes from the sugar would have marginally helped me achieve my maximum height.

But so much of that is tied to an identity I no longer connect with. I couldn’t think of anything better to kick off this 'Lasts' section of my website than documenting my last energy drink.

One of the problems with getting older is that it gets harder for any single day to be memorable. Our brains seem so intent on outsourcing as much as it can to our subconscious autopilot to conserve energy. Our habits become more ingrained as we run the same circuits over and over.

It makes me think of this quote from Carl Jung:

"If you want to be reborn, you have to die first."

If you want to change, you need set aside what no longer fits your identity.

Alignment with identity is a powerful lever for personal change. Habits take time to develop, and even framing the work that way suggests you're fighting your nature. But if you adopt the identity first, there's no habit to force. You simply live in alignment, and willpower becomes almost irrelevant.

I won't be one of those evangelical ex-smoker types. It's fine if energy drinks are solving a problem for you. They’re a classic way to self-medicate if you have ADHD. But I've come to understand how damaging chronically spiked insulin is to metabolic function. I’m sure many modern health issues — including my own — are downstream of hyperinsulinemia. And it's not something I want to normalise for my kids.

So I'm very much enjoying this very last Red Eye.

But it will be my last.

Cheers.