New York is Loco

No need for energy drinks in anxiety-inducing city By [Lorraine Duffy Merkl] I need a drink. I"m thinking steamy hot chocolate with mini marshmallows, as opposed to the controversial Four Loko. In the convenient 24-oz. can, it provides the alcoholic kick of four beers and the caffeine buzz of a strong cup o" Joe. (The drink"s four main ingredients are alcohol, caffeine, taurine and guarana, but also contains carbonated water and sugar, as well as natural and artificial flavoring.) Four states have banned it, and now the maker, Phusion Projects, has agreed to stop shipping Four Loko to New York. It has also announced recently that it will remove the caffeine, taurine and guarana from its products. That leaves carbonated, sugary, flavored alcohol. I feel so much more confident in the beverage now. Quite frankly, I don"t understand why anyone who lives here would even need a drink like that, since the energy absorbed from just being in New York City is the equivalent of an espresso with a shot of Jack. Make that a double of each, now that the holidays are upon us. The usual day-to-day jumpiness of this borough gets kicked up a notch the night before Thanksgiving near the Museum of Natural History, as the crowd gathers to watch the Snoopy et al. balloons get blown up. I took my children there once (yes, once) when they were one and three. If there had been such a thing as Flintstone"s Chewable Valium, I would have given it to them and taken two myself, that"s how nerve-wracked we were when we got back home. Then, of course, there"s the magnificent, yet dizzying, Macy"s Thanksgiving Day Parade that we have come to enjoy on television, far from the jitter-inducing masses. No high holds a candle, though, to the heart-racing buzz of Black Friday, when the stores open at 4 a.m. People are wiped out by breakfast time. In such a stupor does this experience leave shoppers, that last year my two sisters-in-law ended up having pizza at 8 a.m. Have you shopped Fifth Avenue yet? Good luck. Talk about loud and anxiety-provoking. The amount of shimmering and blinking decorations as well as the department store window displays will have you seeing double. The prices alone will have you lose your ability to speak. Then there"s the memory loss as you try to remember if you got everything for everybody. Don"t forget to take your coat off while indoors, or you might hit your head on Bloomingdale"s floor when you black out. (See, who needs to get these sensations from a can?) The juice from the population moving through Rockefeller Center alone could light The Tree. And dare I say, you don"t know what wasted feels like until you"ve spent an entire afternoon trying to buy a doll and a couple of outfits at the American Girl store. Word slurring and light-headedness come with the territory while you"re waiting for a table at Serendipity. Good thing you can reboot yourself with the sugar rush from their $1000 Golden Opulence Sundae. The invigorating frenzy continues with Christmas parties (home, office and/or school), fretting over Secret Santas, grab bags and silent auctions. Our high combustion way of life peaks on the day after Christmas, when we feed off the annoyance of returning things in the even-more packed stores. Although we want to crash, we try to stay jazzed until we can stand in the midst of Time Square to scream â??Happy New Year with hundreds of thousands of our closest fellow New Yorkers. Who needs Four Loko? NYC is loco already. To keep up, remember to stay hydrated. Nothing beats New York tap. _ Lorraine Duffy Merkl"s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.