It’s not that I have a particular aversion to their taste, nor that I think they don’t work in giving you a jolt when they are consumed, but I actually pretty strongly believe that they are dangerous and I know that they can be habit-forming.

As to the first point, their danger, just Google “energy drinks outlawed” and tell that me the fact that there are 277,000 results doesn’t make you question your next purchase of one. Schools in Australia are banning them, German regulators are finding trace amounts of cocaine in them, and there may actually be a curse developing with one of the more highly publicized of the energy tonics — Five Hour Energy.

Ask Braylon Edwards and Osi Umenyiora how much fun they had during their first season as spokesmen for Five Hour Energy. If their performance was supposed to be an endorsement of the product, it fully endorsed my personal thoughts on it: Braylon was terrible and Umenyiora got hurt. Ouch.

In regards to the second point above, that they can be habit-forming, I don’t need to link out anywhere for this claim. It’s all based on first-hand experience. I know it because when I was living in Miami right out of college I gradually picked up a nasty little habit of drinking about two per day (RedBull, Monster, etc.) for what became a particularly jittery two month time span. When I realized that I was starting to depend on them for energy, as opposed to, you know, sleeping, I decided it was time to hop off the train.

It wasn’t the most pleasant couple of weeks while I was going through my shaky and headache-filled energy drink withdrawal, but I’m happy to say that I haven’t had one since and won’t again. Obviously some people can drink them without such extreme negative effects — at least I would think so, considering how many are sold — but not me man. Not by a long shot.

There is a new drink out for which a friend passed me along some information, and while I have not tried it yet I do have to say that I am at least intrigued. Upon first glance to me it appears to be the anti-energy drink, which is not nearly as unproductive as it might sound.

The drink is called Vacation in a Bottle and my friend described it as “leading the booming ‘anti-Red Bull’ movement.” Based on the personal biases I described above, I’m all about anything that positions itself as being anti-Red Bull.

Vacation in a Bottle, which goes by the shortened monicker ViB (and is pronounced “Vibe”), describes itself as a “relaxation beverage” and is starting to generate significant interest with athletes, as you’ll read about a little later. The key ingredient in ViB is L-Theanine, which is an amino acid found primarily in smaller doses in green tea, and has been gaining in popularity as the energy drink fad begins to come under more scrutiny.

From a recent article in the LA Times:

Certain formulations of SoBe Lifewater and Vitamin Water now contain L-theanine, as does a new beverage called ViB. And Gatorade recently introduced a drink with the amino acid as well. That product — Tiger — was named for and marketed by (who else?) golfer Tiger Woods, the king of concentration in the sports world.

“Focus and concentration is the next generation of the energy drink,” says Scott Smith, vice president of Taiyo International, a major producer of L-theanine in a patented tea extract called Suntheanine. “This will put you in an alert state — in a zone — but it’s not going to keep you up at night.”

L-theanine is not a new discovery. The substance comes from the Camellia sinensis plant species, otherwise known as tea.

Despite its caffeine content, tea is cherished for its soothing effects.

The article goes on to describe some of the benefits L-Theanine is being shown to have in initial studies. Basically, the difference is that instead of giving you a big burst of energy like a Red Bull or Monster, which is followed by the inevitable jitters and crash (at least in my experience), ViB focuses on your mental acuity hoping to, as it says in the excerpt above, relax you and put you “in a zone.”

Surely as products like ViB start to take a stronger hold on the market place, more and more studies will come out and we’ll have an even better idea about the effects and safety of the products. But so far so good.

Full disclosure: I was not paid to write this, and as I said above I have not tried ViB yet, even though I live in Dallas and the product was created here in Big D by Johnny de la Valdene (Jimmy Buffet’s godson, interestingly enough) and Travis Hollman (pictured, right). However, the friend who alerted me to the product is getting me some samples so I look forward to giving it a first taste and I can already tell you I believe in it more than the crappy energy drinks that are nefariously ubiquitous these days.

As you can tell from the picture to the right, Roy Williams (the one on Cincinnati now, not the Cowboys WR) appears to like it. At the very least, he was willing to smile while holding a bottle of it.

And the truth is, a lot of athletes are proving willing to smile in pictures while holding ViB, because many athletes are not just endorsing the product but putting their money where their mouth is and investing in it. Among the investors from the sports world are Williams, Mike Modano, and Jason Witten.

Certainly athlete endorsements are no guarantee that something will be good or effective, but knowing the athletes are actually putting their own money into it offers a little more proof that they truly believe in the product.

I’ll let you know what I think when I try it, but until then, I’d say that ViB definitely seems worth a shot. And if you’re gulping a Red Bull or Monster while you read this, you definitely have nothing to lose by putting down the can and grabbing the tropical-looking ViB bottle — except of course the shakes, jitters, and the potential to form an expensive and deleterious habit.

I don’t know about you, but trying ViB sounds a lot better to me than that.