new drug side effects

I used a new drug today. Someone was handing out free cans of an "energy drink" (basically guarana/caffeine and sugar) so I used it this morning, instead of the performance-enhancing green tea, to rev myself up for the weekly swim.

The effect was impressive.

First the plus side. Normally, my swimming feels limited by my breathing. I never seem to get enough air. Today the blood must have been shooting through the lungs at high speed and picking up a double dose of oxygen, because I swam the whole mile at about 90% of my flat-out speed, without stopping. I even got cocky and decided to skip the occasional breath by swimming underwater. What a fortunate person I am to be able to do this at my age. This opens up a whole new level of fitness training for me, if I can avoid giving myself a heart attack with the jolt juice.

But of course everything balances up, and the downside included feeling nauseous for most of the swim. And there's another side effect. It makes you start up chirpy conversations with strangers, and that's always asking for trouble. In the sauna I had a long chat to a guy who speaks several languages including Mandarin, Latin and Greek. Recklessly, I let him find out where I work. Later it transpired he's not entirely on his trolley and has done some serious bin time. Several times he used "faggy" as a pejorative term, and I let it pass rather than say "If I was gay I might think you wanted to insult me". I think he's Australian so he probably doesn't know any better, a bit like Scots. At one point he said New South Caledonian doctors would be much more competent if they had trained "in that world-famous medical school in Edinburgh." I was about to explain that Edinburgh Uni is actually quite short-sighted, rejecting some of its best students. But I decided I had told him enough about myself already.

PS - this energy juice makes you type faster and better. I doubt if the actual content is improved though.