Doesn't come with an App Store. Does come with a great buzz.

I write this blog because I like doing it. Sure, there’s some advertising on the side, but I try to keep it as targeted (hence going through Google AdWords) and unintrusive as possible. So it makes me excessively happy when someone asks me to review their stuff, and even happier when they send me some of it to review without me having to actually get up and leave my chair. iShot, you have done well.

iShot have two products fresh to the market. The first one, which I’m dealing with here, is the more traditional caffeinated energy shot. The second is to be reviewed in a following post, but it’s basically the same thing with more ginseng and no caffeine.

So enough talk, let’s get down to it.

The slightly ambiguous ‘as much caffeine as a cup of coffee’ was clarified as containing 120mg per shot, which puts it bang on as much as the Hitz shot, and up there with the strongest shots that I’ve reviewed.  It does the trick – though the ‘all day energy’ is a bit of a gimmick as it always is with caffeinated anything, you’ll get a good two or three hours of buzz out of it without any significant crash afterward. It’s not edgy, so if you’re looking for something to punch you in the nuts this isn’t it – but as a pick-me-up it’s perfectly suited, probably due to the ginseng in there too to ease you up and down.

Taste? Brilliant. I have not shut up about the way this thing tastes, to the degree that I can detect an audible gestalt sigh whenever someone in the office asks me about it. It’s pretty much Vimto, which if you’re unfortunate enough to not have tried is a drink flavoured with mixed berries with herby hints. It’s much better than it sounds, and iShot tastes almost exactly like Vimto concentrate. Don’t get me wrong, you’re still going to grimace – but only for a few seconds, as opposed to everything else except the Red Bull and Hitz shots, where you’re running around looking for anything that tastes stronger oh god make it stop OH GOD MY TONGUE.

You’re going to have trouble finding this at the moment, as only Menzies convenience stores are carrying it in the UK (it’s just launched). Keep an eye out, though, as it comes very strongly recommended.

However, if you can’t wait to try it, we have the solution. iShot have kindly agreed to supply prizes for a giveaway of a six-pack of each variety to five lucky caffeine junkies. Details will be published after I’ve put up the review for the decaff version, but the one thing that I can reveal now is that you will need a Twitter account. Follow @dontsleepdave in the meantime if you want the very latest updates, and I’ll notify on there as well when the giveaway goes live.

'Mixed Fruit flavour' is always a cop-out for 'flavoured by whatever we had to hand'.

The local pound shop. Home of mewling children running riot. Home of Chinese-made discount garden equipment that is almost certain to probably not be likely to break while you’re digging a hole, stabbing you right in your filthy imperialist balls with its glorious proletarian might. Home, too, of whatever the owner could get hold of in the way of energy drinks, because God knows the markup on those things is beyond belief.

So, today, we deal with the Hitz Energy Shot. I was going to review another of the same company’s product range that I picked up in the same pound shop, but the consequences of drinking it were so horribly hilarious that I just can’t find the words to describe it right now. The words ‘erect’, ‘fire’ and ‘nystagmus’ will be involved when I finally do get round to it.

So the Hitz Energy Shot. It’s a strong’un – 200mg per 100ml, which is about 70mg per 100ml up on the Red Bull energy shot. It’s not a trivial difference, and it’s definitely the strongest one that I’ve had yet – on paper, anyway.

Why do all these drinks have to look like urine?

Yep, it looks like piss.  It’s a lot more neon yellow than the picture suggests – there’s a response to UV in sunlight, which suggests to me there are some B-vitamins buzzing around in there somewhere.  Taste-wise, despite being called ‘Mixed Fruit’ (aka: “we don’t know”), it’s impressive. It’s the first that I can happily drink without needing something afterward to wash away the flavour. It’s like a mix of passionfruit, peach and industrial coolant.

As far as effects are concerned, this one comes with a caveat. It’s good – don’t get me wrong – but though it’ll wake you up with a jolt, its effects don’t last like some of the other shots out there.  About an hour later, I was getting sleepy again. This could have had something to do with the fact that the heatwave here in London has meant that I’ve slept for about three or four hours a night for the past week, though – further research is definitely required. It’s a tough life.

Overall, strongly recommended. Great taste (for an energy shot), wakes you up like a freight train – just watch out for a potential dip soon afterward.

Why would you drink an energy shot, really? They taste like ass, they’re goopy and they come with something of a promise to make you feel uncomfortable.

1. Neat little bottles – You know you want to put a whole load of them on like, a bullet belt. No? Well I do, so get bent.
2. It is cold outside – You don’t want your hands to get cold carrying a refrigerated can that will take time to drink, as you have to wear fingerless gloves in these winter months so you can still use your capacitive touchscreen devices. You young’uns and your newfangled technology.
3. You are actually too goddamn lazy to drink a full can of Red Bull.

It’s fairly obvious that Red Bull feels (as far as a carbonated drink CAN feel) threatened by Relentless. Relentless made big cans, Red Bull made big cans. Relentless made shots, now Red Bull have made one. And, unlike the Relentless shot, it doesn’t taste *entirely* like the end of your digestive tract; it just tastes like a can of the regular stuff has been left out overnight to go flat and has gone a little bit “I am a tramp and I go around drinking the remaining swill of other people’s drinks at seedy bars”. You can neck it with no particular aftertaste and just get on with things. The worst part of the experience is probably looking down into the clear-bottomed bottle and willing yourself to pour the suspiciously coloured liquid down your gullet whilst thinking “urine sample, urine sample, urine sample.”  Unless you like that kind of thing.

Stop looking at me like that.

Anyway, this is the better out of the two (and only two) that I’ve tried, simply because it doesn’t taste like it costs less than Best In “Stimulation Drink”, which I’m not going to review other than to say “Only if you are poor, a student, self loathing, or otherwise REALLY desperate”. (Pansy.  I will, it’s not that bad as long as you pretend that the alternative is scabies or bubonic plague or something — Dave)

I think though that winning in the energy shot stakes is a bit like winning an argument on the internet. If you really need caffeine that quickly, there are better ways of doing it (see Jolt Gum) as it really didn’t hit me that hard, and it could have been a LOT cheaper.

I didn’t die on the way to work though. I never cease to count my blessings.

I can see the naming meeting now. 'MORE WORDS. MORE TWITCHY LINES. MORE ACTION, DAMN YOUR EYES.'

It seems that the energy shot market is booming.  Something that was fairly unknown in this country just a few months ago has blossomed into something you see in cardboard display boxes in dodgy newsagents nationwide.  Naturally, this is music to my ears, and when my flatmate found the latest in an established brand producing an energy shot he brought one home for me to shove down me and process for Science.

You can tell that this comes from an established brand simply by looking at the label design.  Namely, it doesn’t look like it contains excess coolant from a Chinese sprocket factory – some actual effort and money has gone into its design.  The name, however, is nothing less than hilarious.  I get that they wanted to put across that drinking it would result in waking up, but seriously – ‘Alert Plus’?  They might as well have called it ‘Rocket Nitro Supermax 5000′.

There’s 120mg of caffeine in this (equivalent to two large cups of coffee), and as such it’s slightly bigger than your usual energy shot, so it’s harder to just pour down your throat bypassing your tongue.  This would be a very bad thing if it tasted horrendous – and, of course, it does.  Seriously, I do not get why no effort has gone into making these things not taste like you’re gulping down homebrewed teabag wine mixed with methylated spirit.  But as Chopper says, “harden the fuck up, Dave”.

Does it work?  Yes, it does, very well – but with caveats.  About half an hour after drinking it, I was hit by a massive (but brief) bout of nausea.  I put this down to this having more caffeine than a usual shot, and as such a higher chance of irritating my stomach.  In any case, it didn’t last very long, and then we were away.

Stimulation-wise, it does what it says on the tin – and quite well.  A medium to rough come-up, with a plateau higher than normal (which is to be expected – as I’ve said, more caffeine than other shots).  I was very slightly twitchy at the plateau, but otherwise just pleasantly energetic.  I didn’t notice the comedown at all (or it’s lasting a lot longer than expected) which was another pleasant discovery.

So, yeah.  This is my new favourite – it tastes slightly better than the Quick Energy Shot, lasts longer and is smoother.  The nausea was a little odd, and when I have another one in the future I’ll update this post as to whether it was a one-off.

Beautiful snowflakes. Snowflakes that will have you humping the wall for HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS.

MarshallStaxx here with my inaugural post for Don’t Sleep, Dave! in which I shall fearlessly explore some of the ‘heavier’ legal stimulants out there.

My first encounter with Mephedrone was when a friend stumbled in one evening, wasted, and exclaimed “We’ve been snorting plant-food all night, and it’s awesome!”. Naturally, my first reaction was to think “You retarded junkie, you’ll stick anything up your hooter for a high”, laugh in derision and head off to bed, half expecting to find him in the morning slumped lifeless over the coffee table with blood trickling from his ruptured nostrils and begonias sprouting from his ears, like some nightmare OD genesplice of Sid Vicious and Alan Titchmarsh.

He didn’t die. Turns out he had a pretty amazing time. According to him it was just like MDMA, but with no hangover. My interest was piqued.

I may be an irresponsible, impulsive fucktard but I wasn’t about to ingest something marketed as plant-food without some cursory internet research first. There’s some useful information at both Bluelight and Erowid that I would encourage you to explore before consuming. Because I love you all like my own.

Mephedrone (or Drone as the cool kids / gay junkies call it) is legal to sell, buy, possess and consume in this country as long as it’s not sold for human consumption; which is why some drug-crazed marketing genius came up with the idea to sell it as ‘plant fertilizer’. In fact it’s only been banned in Denmark so far, with Germany soon following suit.

Mephedrone is a crystalline flaky white powder and is available to buy direct from various websites full of badly formatted HTML and shitty animated GIFs, probably run by 40-something bedroom chemists running a lab in their OAP mother’s spareroom, or is sold prepackaged at headshops under various cringeworthy names such as Space-E or SnowBlow. I purchased 1g of Space-E and 1g of mephedrone directly online. The Space-E cost £25 and came in snazzy cosmic packaging whilst the mephedrone cost £16 and came in a plain plastic sachet. The ingredients list on the Space-E claimed the active ingredient was something called ‘Ketones’, which seems to be some bullshit made-up crap that doesn’t exist. So, £9 extra for some packaging with a picture of the Milky Way on it? Get it unbranded online.

The mephedrone arrived in a padded envelope, which my 83 year old grandmother opened by mistake thinking it was her latest Diamonique fix from QVC. I told her it was some muscle-building fitness supplement I’d ordered. Sucker.

I decided to try it at a party that night. Mephedrone can be taken orally (in a Rizla bomb, as the powder tastes fouler than dogshit licked off the bottom of my Converse) or snorted in lines straight up your nose. I guess you could IV it too if you’re a total dangercat with a death wish (if you try this and flatline, Don’t Sleep, Dave! will not be held accountable for your stupidity). I swallowed a 200mg bomb, which took around 60 mins to take effect. Taken orally, the effect creeps up slowly on you, a slight tingling sensation rising up from your loins to the top of your head. Not unlike being frisked by the ghost of your dead pervert uncle. Initial feelings are a slightly increased heart-rate and a heightened sense of awareness – music seems louder, lights seem brighter. Then the energy boost hits you – feet start tapping, head starts nodding, mouth starts talking A WHOLE BUNCH OF SHIT. This feels great in a party / club situation, because you feel conscious of the effect so don’t end up shouting infinite gallons of verbal shit into the ear of the nearest person like when under the influence of other, less legal, white powder stimulants. This level of dosage would work perfectly if you were to take it at home whilst performing a task such as writing blog entries for stimulant review websites, you are totally in control, not bouncing of the walls, with a massive increase in mental energy levels.

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the Drone began to take hold..."

At this point I started taking 50mg doses nasally every hour. Now this is probably the worst part of the whole shebang as Mephedrone does not taste good. Snorting it made my eyes water and my nose run for about 5 mins, and 30 seconds after inhaling a line the taste hits the back of you throat. Worse than a Bombay Bad Boy Pot Noodle (although I’ve yet to snort one of those). Have a beverage handy to wash away the taste.

The effects when snorting come on MUCH faster, within about 4 minutes. It’s about this point that I started feeling the empathic side of Mephedrone. I became intensely interested in everything someone had to say, I felt that everyone at the party loved me and wanted to be my new best friend (which was probably true, I’m a cool ass motherfucker). This feeling is pretty similar to MDMA but again, I felt totally in control of myself and didn’t become a babbling white-gloved glowstick-waving fuckflap. I also had a feeling of pretty intense horniness but that’s pretty normal after just 2 cans of Stella. Talking of which, Mephedrone mixes pretty well with alcohol, the booze doesn’t seem to detract from the energy of the experience, but obviously the more you get tanked the less in control you are which, mixed with the extra energy and horniness, could result in uber messiness. At this point my heart-rate has risen pretty high and I was constantly aware of it, so be careful if you have any kind of ticker-related health issues.

Around 400 / 500mg is enough of a dosage to last about 4 hours. After that the euphoria and empathy fade off, leaving a slightly unpleasant ‘mental buzz’ which can feel quite annoying and distracting. This lasts for about another 2 / 3 hours, making sleeping rather difficult. My advice is to take advantage of the heightened libido effect and just screw (or masturbate if you didn’t get lucky) until you sleep.

Aftereffects are non-existent. The next morning I felt no comedown, mentally or physically, just tiredness from partying all night and getting only 4 hours sleep. Compared to other less legal stimulants, this is a major plus point for Mephedrone as I was functioning at pretty much 100% just 12 hours after ingesting it.

As ever, your results may vary, so be careful and do your research. Whatever you do, don’t try and fertilize your bonsai tree with it, you’ll probably kill the little guy.

Quick? Yes. Healthy? Probably not. Energy? Hold on to your underwear.

I found this garish monstrosity on an adventure to find beer a few weeks ago. After being promised ‘Quick. HEALTHY. ENERGY.’, I couldn’t resist inviting it back to my flat with the intention of letting it slide itself inside me.

See, now I feel dirty.  Anyway.

One thing that I’ve learned from my experience with energy shots is that they taste really quite bad.  This is to be expected – generally, psychoactive chemicals don’t taste very good at all, so a strong flavouring gets added – but this stuff took me by surprise.  It’s very similar to drinking neat orange squash – very sickly, quite persistent but not entirely unpleasant, and for an energy shot that’s pretty high praise.

One thing that I’ve decided to do with these energy shots is to actually take a look at the liquids themselves.  This is no exception, so I poured it out into a shot glass emblazoned with the Jack Daniels logo – in the hopes that Almighty Jack, our Lord and Saviour of shitty clubnights, might look down from on high and bless this endeavour.  And by ‘bless this endeavour’, I do of course mean ‘stop me from getting a massive fucking heart attack’.

Fortunately, I’m still writing, so I must have done something right.

This stuff is the colour of unicorn piss.

It’s pale pink.  This is surprising considering how strong it tastes, but the surprise fades when you remind yourself that absolutely nothing natural is dissolved in it.  This is a glass of industry, a glass full of Robert Louis Stephenson’s vision of a mechanised Utopia.  Which is interesting, considering it’s essentially WD-40 for the brain.

And how.  Rocket-powered uplift, which plateaus for about three hours, followed by a gradual return to normal energy levels.  If you can brave the very brief OH GOD MY FACE IS MELTING as the stimulants kick in, you’ll be set to go without any significant discomfort.

I like this stuff.  Of all the energy shots that I’ve had, this is the best, even if its packaging does look like it was designed by a twelve year old with a copy of MS Paint and a pirated version of Illustrator circa 2001.