Will Four Loko fuck you up? [Updated]

Let’s get one thing clear: unlike these fine gentlemen, we at The Pitch are not loco for Four Loko. Following the hospitalizations of college students, the two-dollar, twelve-percent alcohol  drinks — they’re a noxious mix of Sparks and sippin’ syrup that are roughly equivalent to four beers in one can — have been outlawed in New York, Washington, Utah, Oklahoma, and Michigan, and the Feds are making the move to ban them entirely; but, they’re still sitting on the shelves in your local liquor store, just begging to be cracked open. Since the Wayward Blog looks out for you, fair drinker, we decide to give these suckers a whirl.

Grape: Barely drinkable. If you dig Robo-trippin’, this one’s for you.

Cranberry Lemonade: It sounds like the most appetizing flavor; but, unfortunately, pink does not mean tasty. It tastes like a hangover going down.

Orange: Apart from the sickly aftertaste of cheap energy drink? This one actually ain’t bad.

Lemon-Lime: Meh. It’s like Surge, but shittier.

*Note: interestingly, these are also rated in order that we tried them. (Wha?!) See our first testimonial for details.

Testimonial #1: “Four Loko is some pernicious shit. You have a sip, and you know it tastes bad, and you remember later on how bad it tasted. Then, you have another sip and it doesn’t seem so horrible, even though your brain is trying to remind you that the first wave of revulsion was a desperate signal to stop this. There’s so much booze in the stuff — and it hits you so quickly — that your internal computer is shorted out. None of these thoughts make it to the surface of your mind in one piece, and you just keep drinking the crap, which, half a can in has gone from stomach-churning to passable. When you do eventually sober up, the afterburn from the stimulants will leave you feeling jangled and weird, and not at all certain of what you should be doing at any given point or how to behave. The next day I had to ask the people around me to help piece together the night’s events and make sure I hadn’t done any lasting damage to myself, or others. Personally, I’m a drinker. I’m good at it. But the morning after a tequila binge never carried the same sense of shame I felt after drinking Four Loko. It was as if I had committed a crime against myself.”

Testimonial #2: “I really wanted to like Four Loko. And even though I’ve never liked energy drinks, I like alcohol, and thought that the booze might make it more palatable. Wrong. I couldn’t take more than a few sips of each flavor…okay, one sip of each. Grape tasted exactly like Robitussin but more medicinal, if that’s possible. That cranberry one (which was cotton-candy pink) was almost as disgusting. The orange wasn’t too bad. It tasted like carbonated Triaminic. Lemon lime (Nickelodeon slime-colored) was the best, though I’d rather drink really shitty vodka and chase it with a cup of coffee than drink Four Loko in any flavor. These were the most artificially flavored beverages I’ve ever put in my mouth. The colors were absolutely stunning, like Red No. 5 and Orange No. 2 were the main ingredients. When you mixed the flavors together, the mixture bubbled up, made a brighter color, and then quickly faded down, like some sort of chem lab potion.”Testimonal #3: “I think anyone who can actually drink four cans of Four Loko might deserve to die.” The feds might actually ban Four Loko today.