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Former-AEON teacher helps others get treatment for energy drink addiction

TOKYO, Japan (GTA) -- Akemi Hayashi was once a top-rated teacher at AEON, even setting a company record with her sale of 45 self-study programs in a single campaign. Although now she hardly remembers the details, and claims most of her accomplishments at AEON were fueled by "massive levels" of caffeine and nicotinamide contained in energy, or "genki," drinks.

These days you can still find Akemi living on disability payment at her parents' home in Tokyo's Nakano Ward. The 34-year-old former AEON teacher says she's been clean for 3 years and now spends much of her time counseling other English teachers on the dangers of energy drink abuse.

"I go to different schools and explain my story and how I started out on Lipovitan. Then moved on up to Yunker Kotei XD910,h Hayashi explained. gI became more familiar with d-alpha-tocopherol acetates and later experimented with homemade torphine-based catopherolites you can mix with regular household mold killer. I guess I would average 5 or 6 bottles a day, but I'm not 100% sure."

According to Hayashi, AEON Corp. is aware of the problem. "Of course. Genki drinks are supplied by the school. For them, chemically enhanced Japanese "super-teachers" equals bigger profits. But nobody wants to hear about the overly-caffeinated girl up watching Sex In the City episodes or preparing the next day's Line Up lessons in her parentsf house until dawn, waiting for the buzz to wear off. No - that's something society would rather pretend didn't happen."

Hayashi claims at least 90% of the Japanese staff would 'fuel up' before evening lessons, while foreign teachers were out of the office.

"Of course, the foreign staff were usually out on their daily 3-hour Starbucks excursion and had no idea. They probably just thought we were insane. But, with the stimulants I had in my system, I'd do anything; let my classes run 30 minutes extra, alphabetically update the timecards, double-check whiteboard markers, catch a little lobby talk, and of course, prepare lesson materials."

"Yes, there are definitely things I did that I now regret. Especially all the self-study programs I sold. Of course, I understand companies need to make money. But most of these programs cost about 20,000 yen. I mean, I wouldn't sell them to a friend. Not sober, anyway. Poor, Mr. Yamada. His pronunciation was fine all along and I lied anyway!h

"The scary times were when I was mixing Lipovitan, Yunker with Red Bull. You literally become a different person. I remember getting really intense about meeting school quotas, the number of perspective students, or scrupulously maintaining the office break room magnets. Even accurately dividing up the chocolate becomes a deadly serious matter. There's 24 pieces, but we have 27 people. And some are part-time and some don't come to work everyday. Then, we get everything squared away and some son-of-a-bitch decides he 'doesn't care' for chocolate today, so we have to get the abacus back out and reconfigure the entire chocolate distribution."