Geekaffinated

If there’s something that is known with any degree of certainty, it’s that geeks need an energy boost sometimes. More than any other social demographic I know, geekery is doomed to a life of late night hours, very little sleep, and the need to keep going beyond the body’s natural tendency to want to pass out til the next day. Maybe it’s the hours of gaming, or the need to work on a computer and stare at a screen, or even building, tinkering, and testing into the wee hours of the morning. Regardless of the reasons why, geeks have developed a need to be the Energizer Bunny, and caffeine and energy drinks are there to fill the void.

I’ve seen quite a few geek friends of mine subscribe to various methods of caffeination. One, a friend who works for a developer team, can’t get started without her morning coffee. Another tends to wake up with a Red Bull at 5am in order to properly get up for an intense job on the trading floor. Yet others pick their poisons – Monster, Bawls, Coke, Mountain Dew, or others – and imbibe of them multiple times during the day and long into the night to keep themselves up and running properly.

So why the craze for caffeine that dominates the geek lifestyle? Well, more than anything, dealing with the geek arts requires an almost obsessive passion dedicated towards your chosen focus, whether that is wrecking faces in an FPS or leveling beyond your peers in the latest MMO. It’s something that means that hours in one sitting is normal, and that people need to be prepared for it. There’s a reason that energy drink and soda companies are quick to jump on the gamer endorsement bandwagon (WoW Mountain Dew anyone?), and it isn’t because it’s a new market – more like it’s a guaranteed market filled with folks that need a fix to keep themselves going through the night.

I wish I could say I’d gotten off the caffeine bandwagon – I used to be a coffee-a-day person myself, meaning that skipping the coffee meant a long day ahead. But I realized that having actual energy instead of artificially generated energy was the way to go. Ever since I switched to water and G2 rather than Mountain Dews and coffee, I’ve felt a bit better about starting my day and getting through it. Sure, I enjoy the occasionally Coke or caffeine boost, but like most recovering caffeine addicts, I don’t use as often as I did before. So while I understand why some geekfolk decide to get themselves a boost to get through that next round of players, you might want to try some alternative methods of getting some energy (like, perhaps, sleep). You’d be surprised at the results.