I sat at my desk at 4:30 a.m. marveling at my newly acquired Spidey senses and making a mental Etch-A-Sketch of the crevices on my wall behind the computer screen.

And it was at that point when I began to regret my earlier decision to partake in the energy drink craze.

So, after a late shift at work, I decided I would need one of the sugary drinks-of-death to get me through the already mounting heap of homework I had accumulated from the first day of classes.

After thoroughly inspecting the energy drink section of the local Kangaroo, I decided on two Rockstar energy drinks.

Having never combated the potency within the 16-ounce Rockstar can, I ran with the old adage, “two heads are better than one.”

Well, two energy drinks are not better than one, and the reverberations from the excess energy left my body through the uncontrollable shaking of my hands.

As my heart raced, pumping the toxic amounts of caffeine and sugar through my veins, I contemplated what I was actually doing to my body by drinking this dizzying, stratospheric amount of sugar and caffeine.

Here is what I found.

According to a study from healthfinder.gov, massive amounts of sugar over time can overwhelm the pancreas. If your pancreas is ‘over worked’ for too long, because of too much sugar, then diabetes can occur.

While too much sugar in the body can lead to diabetes, the caffeine in energy drinks can cause problems all its own.

Caffeine can make you jittery and over time can lead to insomnia, according to the same study from healthfinder.gov.

Sugar and caffeine coupled with the ephedrine in energy drinks can cause heart problems. Ephedrine is a drug that increases blood pressure and heart rate, and in severe cases can even lead to a stroke or seizure.

Even though these increasingly popular energy drinks are brimming with unhealthy ingredients, sales in the U.S. are soaring just like their caffeine and sugar levels.

Energy drink consumption in the U.S. has risen 45 percent since 2002 to $5.4 billion in 2006, according to a market research analysis by Report Buyer.

More and more Americans are consuming energy drinks every year with apparent disregard for the negative effects it’s having on their bodies.

So before you reach for a pricey energy drink to help get through a long night of pouring over textbooks and class notes, think how much money you could save by just munching on raw sugar.

It will cut down on extraneous ingredients, and the outcome will probably have similar results.