Just a few months ago, I had no idea what Four Loko was. All I really knew is that it was seemingly the choice drink of college kids, and apparently somewhere down the line, some college student died from alcohol poisoning from shotgunning, or funneling Four Loko. Needless to say, it developed a cult-following in a short amount of time.
Naturally, anything that’s this much of a craze has gotten to be illegal, or made illegal eventually, and from what I understand, this drink is already banned in a few states, and there’s conflicting news and stories about how Four Loko is going to be banned nationwide, the company that makes Four Loko, promising to remove caffeine from the formula in order to keep it legal, and other rather unconfirmed reports about its inevitable demise.
So, without genuine understanding, and having never actually tried this stuff before, I’m still a sucker for novelties, and mostly just curious, as well as just wanting to have a few cans as a keepsake. I stopped by three different liquor stores while running errands today, and the first one was completely dry of Four Loko; the shopkeeper telling me that the FDA banned it outright. The second store I went to had only Watermelon flavored ones, so I bought a couple cans, one to keep, the others to try/share, and had a spirited conversation with the girl behind the counter about the Four Loko craze, and how it had been selling fairly well as of recently, likely for the same reasons that I was buying mine. And then the last liquor store I swung by, happened to have a better variety, and I got two cans each of berry and orange, and the last can of fruit punch.
For all I know, this stuff might not go extinct, or it just might. Demand, and the subsequent profits that could be had from meeting it are a hard thing to ignore in this capitalist world, so it’s hard to believe that Four Loko will truly go extinct. But in the event that it does, I’m glad to say that I have my souvenirs of the ride, and I don’t know when, but I’ll look forward to when I can sample these drinks of supposed death.
