College Promotes Drug Addiction

Spend enough time on any college campus, and you will see that most students ingest some sort of caffeinated beverage daily, whether it's soda, an energy drink or coffee. According to Newsweek, we don't drink our daily lattes for the taste: We drink them because we are addicted to caffeine.

This revelation explains so much our culture, such as why people willingly drink Red Bull. For the three people out there who have never tried the beverage, Red Bull tastes like liquefied Smarties in club soda; in other words, it is disgusting.

All this time, I just thought my classmates had lost their minds and taste buds, but it turns out they are just addicted to the caffeine. As ridiculous as caffeine addiction sounds, quitting the habit may lead to side effects other than difficulty waking up.

"More than 50 percent of caffeine drinkers experience withdrawal symptoms when they stop," Newsweek reports.

Laugh now, but apparently caffeine withdrawal is a legit disorder, according to a study conducted by John Hopkins Medicine. The most common withdrawal symptom the study's participants experienced was headache; the second most common was "significant distress or functional impairment."

And while caffeine will keep you awake for your next class, it may also keep you awake when you are actually trying to sleep.

I know, I know: That's what sleeping pills are for, right?

Yeah, if you want eat a buttered cigarette in your sleep.

New Scientist reports that using the drug zolpidem, which is found in popular sleep aids Ambien, Stilnoct and Stilnox, may increase the likelihood of sleep-eating, a rare condition which is exactly what it sounds like. CBS lists the signs of sleep-eating as -- no lie -- missing food, crumbs in bed and unexplained weight gain.

These could also be signs that your girlfriend is pregnant, especially if her "unexplained weight gain" is in her midsection.

Like pregnant women, sleep-eaters crave the most disgusting food combinations they can find, such as raw bacon, salt sandwiches and the aforementioned buttered cigarette. A friend of mine used to skip the cigarette and just eat butter in his sleep.

Given my food cravings, I don't think I would use condiments at all if I was a sleep-eater. Ice cream, snack cakes and Cheetos are all plausible, but salt? Butter? Barf. The upside is that the sleep-eaters seem to realize their inability to operate the stove, which they would probably leave on during their feeding frenzy.

Other odd side effects that are possible with Ambien are hallucinations and amnesia, reports New Scientist.

As a former insomniac, the pros of the sleeping pills outweigh the cons: We need sleep like a caffeine addict needs a cup of coffee, and a lack of either can lead to "significant distress or functional impairment." Plus there are other brands of sleep aids out there, although their possible side effects may be as strange.

If you have difficulty falling asleep at night, there may be a cheaper solution than those pricey sleep aids: Try cutting back on your caffeine intake, and if all else fails, read a textbook.