A 13-year-old I know (whose identity I am thinly veiling to preserve his privacy) came back from school the other day and told me that there was a year 9 kid “dealing Prime” at the back of the class. Apparently, this boy was sourcing the Prime from a supplier in London for £2 a unit before selling it on to children who didn’t know any better for eight quid. “Prime” isn’t, as I first thought, a drug but a sports drink in bright plastic bottles promoted by the YouTube stars KSI and Logan Paul. Prime Hydration contains coconut water, B vitamins and sweeteners, plus branched-chain amino acids (which are used by bodybuilders to promote muscles) and it comes in lurid flavours including Tropical Punch and Blue Raspberry. Another version of the drink called Prime Energy also contains 200mg caffeine: more than twice as much as a can of Red Bull. A teacher at different school reports that older children have been taking empty bottles of Prime, filling them with water and selling them to naive year 7s, who are left in tears when they discover it isn’t the real thing. It seems there is no shortage of 11- to 15-year-old boys prepared to pay £8 for these glorified bottles of squash, which have become a status symbol of sorts. Actually, £8 isn’t even that expensive for Prime, which last year was selling for £19.99 and upwards a bottle at an off-licence in Wakefield known as Wakey Wines, which developed a cult following after customers started filming themselves buying expensive soft drinks there and putting it on TikTok.

Something strange is happening in the world of energy drinks. These concoctions – soft drinks that claim to boost potency and productivity – have been around in one form or another since the 1940s. But never before have they been such an intense and frequently purchased object of desire. In some convenience stores and supermarkets, whole chiller cabinets are now devoted to them. The names alone can make you feel hyped up: Monster, Relentless, Rockstar, Boost, Furocity, N-Gine, Tiger, Grenade. The sugary soft drinks market is finally declining in many countries as consumers become more aware of the effects of sugar on health; yet energy drinks sales are still rising rapidly year on year. Red Bull, the market leader, sold 11.582bn cans globally in 2022 compared with 4bn cans in 2011. According to the Grocer, Red Bull saw its total UK revenues rise by 19% in 2021 to £414.7m.

The hysteria around Prime Hydration is an example of how fervently certain energy drinks are now thirsted after. On 4 January 2022, the drink was launched during an Instagram broadcast featuring KSI and Paul, two social media stars who had previously made much of the “beef” between them. Viewers tuned in expecting to see the pair doing the latest in a series of highly publicised boxing matches, instead of which they announced that they were “no longer rivals” but had come together as co-creators of a soft drinks company. In just three months, by the end of March 2022, sales of Prime had reached over $10m worldwide. In December, there were said to be scenes of “carnage” in British branches of Aldi after the supermarket started selling Prime Hydration. In theory, customers were limited to a single bottle of each flavour but adults and children were seen pushing each other and sprinting through the stores to sweep up as many bottles as they could for £2 each.

Maybe Prime fans really believe that the drink will make them feel extra-hydrated in some deep but not entirely defined way. The label boasts that “with bold, thirst quenching flavours to help you refresh, replenish, and refuel, Prime is the perfect boost for every endeavor”. Who wouldn’t want that?

* * *

It’s a rare person in the modern world who doesn’t feel in need of a lift, whether to help us run faster, work harder, party longer, play a PS4 game for 10 hours straight or just to make it through the rigours of the day without collapsing. Ever since they were first marketed, energy drinks have preyed on the sense of near-permanent exhaustion or lowness or general loss of edge that so many carry with us, even as teenagers. “Red Bull gives you wings” was a genius slogan, both for what it promised and for the implicit acknowledgment that this was actually a load of cobblers (humans can’t grow wings). The fact that energy drinks are on a high is partly a sign that so many people are on a low: working longer and more stressful hours for smaller wages. These beverages are what you have to caffeinate yourself with when you have no access to a kettle – never mind an espresso machine – and you know you need to stay awake for another few hours of your shift.

A recent undercover report in the Times on the working conditions in a warehouse for a major online clothes retailer described the “steady flow of canteen Red Bulls” to fuel 12-hour days of grinding monotony. A young person I know recently started his first full job as a social worker and he has found that energy drink use is near universal, among both his colleagues and his clients, as a coping mechanism for living with problems such as poor housing or domestic abuse. As a coffee drinker, I wince at the thought of starting the day with an energy drink but he replies that “to pretend that these people running their lives on sugar-free energy drinks is qualitatively different from running on coffee is just class prejudice” and so I shut up.

Elixirs and tonics of one kind or another have been around for centuries but the first true energy drink seems to have been something called Dr Enuf, the creation of a chemist from Chicago (unless you want to argue that Coca-Cola, invented in the 1880s, is an energy drink, given that in its first incarnation it contained cocaine as well as caffeine). The original version of Dr Enuf was a lemon-lime flavour beverage and, like most energy drinks today, its basic ingredients, apart from water, were sugar, caffeine and vitamins. One of the early advertisements for Dr Enuf is said to have boasted that it was “the answer to a housewife’s prayer, the bosom companion of a tired farmer or businessman and a shift into high gear for young Johnny or Mary”. Dr Enuf never achieved wide appeal, though it is still for sale in parts of the US.

It was in Japan, not the US, that energy drinks first became part of mainstream culture. The earliest Japanese energy drinks in the 1960s were sold as a legal upper for office workers, after a series of laws in the 1950s curbed the sale of stimulant drugs, including amphetamines, which had previously been the go-to way for boosting productivity at the office. The earliest Japanese energy drink was Lipovitan-D, first sold in 1962. Adverts claimed that it would help with “physical fatigue, lack of appetite, nutritional deficiency, fever and exhaustion”.

One of the key ingredients in Lipovitan-D was taurine, a booster that was originally manufactured from ox bile but which is now synthesised in a factory. Taurine (the word comes from the Latin taurus meaning bull or ox) is an amino acid which is naturally present in meat, poultry and fish, and it is part of the formula of almost all modern energy drinks, even though its effects as a supplement are far from clear. A review by two doctors in 2016 could find no double-blind clinical trials to measure whether taurine affects the energy of healthy human patients (though there are trials with rodents suggesting that taurine can improve cognitive performance in old age). Whether or not it does anything for you, taurine, with its vague aura of bullish potency, is important for the mystique of energy drinks. Red Bull was created in the 1980s after an Austrian businessman called Dietrich Mateschitz came across a Thai drink called Krating Daeng made from taurine and caffeine. He developed a fizzy version of this, in collaboration with its creator, Chaleo Yoovidhya, and in 1987 started marketing it as Red Bull, whose visual branding is all an allusion to the taurine. I know several grown men who wax lyrical about the beauty of the Red Bull packaging, with its intense sheen and its tiny cutout of a bull in the ring-pull.

As for the function, these drinks have always basically been legal uppers. Lipovitan-D comes in a small brown glass bottle, which makes it look like a tiny vial of medicine. So-called “genki drinks” such as Lipovitan-D were one of the crucial elements in the Japanese postwar economic miracle, enabling workers to stay on task for long hours. There was a second wave of genki drinks in the 1980s – led by the brand Regain – which saw a whole new set of highly caffeinated products enter the market. In contrast to the giant 500ml cans of Monster in British shops today, the classic Japanese genki drink comes in tiny 50ml or 100ml bottles, marketing themselves as a quick burst of productivity, primarily sold to salarymen.

The energy in Japanese energy drinks has always been laced with overtly macho overtones. During the 90s, the theme tune for Regain sang of the “businessman, businessman, Japanese businessman” who could “fight for 24 hours”. Another Regain advert showed a Japanese businessman defeating his western opponent in a game of tennis, using his briefcase instead of a racket. James Roberson is an anthropologist who has studied energy drinks as a facet of postwar Japanese ideas about masculinity. Roberson found that genki drinks were consistently marketed with the implied promise that they would bestow on men both an “inexhaustible fighting will” and a strongly muscular body. Lipovitan-D was first marketed with the slogan “Let’s Go With Fight!” and its adverts have regularly featured sportsmen or highly muscled actors engaged in some kind of daring and dangerous outdoor pursuits.

Aggressive masculinity is also a key element in the way that most western energy drinks have been marketed. “You can feel the teenage boy angst dripping off it,” says Huib van Bockel, the founder of up and coming energy drink Tenzing, referring to Monster, which is currently the second most-sold energy drink in the UK after Red Bull. Monster Energy – whose slogan is “unleash the beast” – has long made a point of sponsoring a lineup of male athletes doing extreme sports, such as motocross riders, skateboarders, surfers and Formula One racers. I pick up a can of Monster Assault for £2.39 at WH Smith at the train station (I could have got it for half the price at Asda). The whole can is plastered with military camouflage and it reads, “At Monster, we don’t get too hung up on politics. We don’t care if you’re right wing, left wing or a chicken wing. We dig camo and think it’s the perfect cover for our sneak attack on the ordinary.” But when I crack open this hyper-masculine can, what’s inside tastes less like military rations than the candy shop dreams of a sweet-toothed little boy. It’s cola flavour but tastes more like melted-down cola bottles than a Coke. I can’t finish it, both because of the sickliness and because I can feel myself getting jittery halfway through the can. It contains ginseng and taurine as well as 160mg caffeine (compared with around 50mg caffeine in a classic Italian espresso, although it’s less caffeine than in a Starbucks venti americano, which contains 300mg).

The unrealistic strongman images pushed by many energy drinks prey on young men’s vulnerabilities – and end up making them unhealthier, all while promising them enhanced vitality. A study by the University of Akron, published in the journal Health Psychology, found that men who bought most thoroughly into the manly ideals promoted by energy drinks were more likely to drink more of them and therefore more likely to suffer from disrupted sleep patterns, thus ending up less energised. People who consistently consume a lot of energy drinks suffer from higher levels of anxiety and stress than those who don’t, according to a review of the literature on energy drinks and mental health from 2016. Kathleen Miller is an addictions researcher affiliated with the University at Buffalo, New York, who has done extensive research on the harmful effects of energy drinks among young adults. In 2008, Miller published a paper showing that, among a group of 602 college students, high energy drink consumption correlated with a range of other risky behaviours including having sex without a condom, getting into fights, riding in a car without a seatbelt and alcohol problems. Miller is not suggesting that the caffeine in energy drinks is causing these other behaviours. As she told the New York Times in 2013: “Maybe kids who get into fights just happen to drink Monster and Red Bull.” But her research suggests that some of these “toxic jock” behaviours are reinforced by “what the ads are telling people”. Some of the energy drinks marketed in the US – such as Bong Water and Cocaine – make a clear association between energy drinks and illicit substances. One of the main ways in which energy drinks are used by college students is as a mixer for alcohol. Research shows that consuming vodka and Red Bull as opposed to vodka alone made people believe that they were less drunk than they were, even though by objective measures – such as reaction times – they were every bit as intoxicated. The first time I heard of anyone drinking Red Bull and vodka, in the late 90s, I thought: that will never take off, it doesn’t taste good. Which shows how little I know.

Unlike other beverages, energy drinks are consumed in spite of their taste rather than because of it. Their flavours range from medicinal to candy sweet. Perhaps the strangest I tried was Monster Original, which had an intense, almost smoky smell and a herbal aftertaste, like cough mixture or dandelion and burdock. I imagine its “kill or cure” vibe could have a certain appeal if you were hungover, but taken perfectly sober with my breakfast toast one morning, it was unsettling. Another odd one is Furocity Sour Cherry, marketed by heavyweight champion boxer Tyson Fury, whose can claims “it’s about hitting your day harder” but whose contents taste like extremely sweet marzipan mixed with cherryade. The prevailing taste of most energy drinks is simply a harsh acid and sweetness with very little aroma. I appreciated the honesty of the Hungarian brand Hell which – true to its name – is an abrasive and metallic-tasting drink. Cheap, though. I picked up a 50p can from Poundland. Hell describes itself as “tutti-frutti” on the label but I got zero-frutti. After this, I felt a grudging appreciation for original Red Bull, which tastes of very little but is not actively offensive, with some of the acidity rounded off (compared with Boost, a 50p imitator which I found so sharp, I could manage only a couple of mouthfuls). No one could accuse Red Bull of being delicious but it is smoothly neutral: like lemonade without the lemons. It reminds me of an airport lounge.

Red Bull was not allowed to be sold in France for 12 years (a ban that ended in 2008) because French authorities were concerned about the taurine as well as the high quantities of caffeine. In 2018, the UK government proposed a ban on energy drinks to young people after a review of the evidence found that in children, high consumption was linked to headaches, problems with sleeping and concentrating, and, in rare cases, heart failure. The government’s own research found that a quarter of British children who drank energy drinks would consume three or more in a sitting. But more than three years on, apparently after industry pushback, the ban has been quietly shelved, although supermarkets including Tesco and Asda introduced their own voluntary bans on the sale of energy drinks to under-16s. In 2021, in the British Medical Journal, a 21-year-old student called for energy drinks to carry warning labels after his own habit (four a day for two years) led him to develop tremors and heart palpitations.

“Who today would launch Red Bull? No one,” says Huib van Bockel, the Dutch entrepreneur who left his job as head of marketing for Red Bull UK and Europe to launch his own brand. Tenzing, an energy drink made from all-natural ingredients, with a soothing mountain on the can, has risen astonishingly fast since it was launched in 2016 to become the fourth highest-selling energy drink in the UK. I am sitting with Van Bockel in a sleek restaurant near King’s Cross, sipping decaf flat whites and fresh juice, and he – a running and hiking enthusiast with a mop of curly hair – is explaining why he feels the current model of energy drinks is broken because no matter how much they tweak them, “the big brands are stuck with the same recipes”. The older energy drinks were originally all very high in sugar. Most have now diversified into versions with artificial sweeteners instead. The problem is that (according to the World Health Organization) these are implicated in many of the same health issues as sugar (such as type 2 diabetes), as well as long-term weight gain. Another issue is that an energy drink without any sugar delivers less energy than an energy drink with sugar (given that, in nutritional terms, calories and “energy” are the same thing). “Aspartame will not give you any energy, so it’s not functional,” Van Bockel says.

Every new brand needs an origin story and Van Bockel’s is that he was hiking in the mountains of Nepal when he discovered how popular strong tea flavoured with salt or lemon was among the Nepalese. In theory, Tenzing – which takes its name from the Nepali-Indian Sherpa Tenzing Norgay – is inspired by this Nepalese tea, although the can I tasted – raspberry and yuzu flavour – was more like a pleasant and slightly weak sparkling raspberry juice. The caffeine comes from green tea and green coffee, and it is much less sweet than the other energy drinks I tasted, at only 4.5% sugar (11% is an industry standard, slightly more than full-sugar sodas such as Coke). I am not a natural energy drink consumer but if I wanted something to help me stay awake on a long drive, I’d buy this. Van Bockel tells me that when he was developing the formula, the blender he worked with couldn’t understand why he wanted to take out half the sugar and not replace it with anything: “No one had ever asked for that before.” Another point of difference is that Tenzing’s customer base is roughly 50-50 male to female and the soothing mountain branding is a world away from what Van Bockel calls “the adrenaline side” of other energy drinks. “We don’t have a lot of 15-year-olds,” he says. He wants to change the whole category: to usher in an era of energy drinks that are less artificial in their ingredients and less toxic in their impact on both health and the planet (Tenzing claims to be the world’s first carbon-negative soft drink).

“What is energy?” I ask Van Bockel. For a moment, he looks slightly panic-stricken before gathering himself and saying it’s a good question and that there are two elements: first, the physical energy for “running and climbing”; second, the mental energy for “concentration and focus” at work. But I wonder whether this really gets to the heart of why so many people are attracted to energy drinks. The word energy comes from the Greek and at its root it simply means “in work”. The giant caffeine and sweetness hit of the original energy drinks may not be healthy – either emotionally or physically – but it is an undeniable jolt to the system. Instead of asking why energy drinks are so popular, maybe we should be asking why so many millions of people feel broken enough to need them.