There's a very specific reason why I wrote "caffeine dependence" rather
than "caffeine addiction."  It's quite possible to become physically
dependent on a substance (meaning one experiences withdrawal symptoms when
consumption is abruptly discontinued) without being addicted to it (meaning
one has a compulsion to consume it).  For example, someone who had been
taking very high doses of morphine to control severe pain that was limited
in duration would experience classic opiate withdrawal symptoms if he
stopped taking it all at once when the pain went away.  He wouldn't
experience such symptoms if the dose were gradually ramped down.  But at no
point would he develop a craving for or a compulsion to take morphine.  
Someone who was actually addicted, OTOH, *would* experience such cravings
and compulsions even if the dose was ramped down slowly enough to prevent
any physical symptoms.  He'd have a (very) strong subjective sense of
"missing" the higher doses.

Many people hold belief systems in which certain foods are "good" and other
foods are "evil."  If you look hard enough (which doesn't really require
looking all that hard), you'll find that for almost any given food, there
will be some belief systems in which it's "good" and some in which it's
"evil."  Meanwhile, nutritional science marches on and pays little if no
attention to such matters, which really resemble religious doctrine far
more than science.

Nutritional science is pretty quantitative: how much of what stuff how
often has how much of an effect.  That means that if you try to adjust your
eating habits based on nutritional science, you will have to put up with
the presence of 1) math 2) uncertainty 3) ambiguity (in that several
radically different decisions may all be "pretty equally good as far as we
know" rather than "one of them is The Right Decision and all the rest of
them are Wrong Decisions").  Those things make many, but not all, people
uncomfortable.  And it does require quite a bit of effort in the form of
thinking and in familiarizing oneself with research.

Dietary doctrine/theology, OTOH offers the absence of math, the
*appearance* of absolute certainty, and simple black-and-white rules to
follow.  You don't have to actually *comprehend* the way the human body
works or how foods are constituted; you can just treat them as mysteries
and simply *recite* the mantras of whoever you find most convincing based
on subjective criteria like charisma.  Dietary theology also offers the
feeling of *purity*, which can easily turn into feelings of superiority;
see Tom Billings' excellent essay "Functional and Dysfunctional Lunch-
Attitudes" at <http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/lunch-att/lunch-
attitudes-1a.shtml> (believe it or not, many dietary religions actually
claim that if you follow them, your sh.t literally won't stink!  That's a
big sign that such approaches appeal either to narcissism or to
dissatisfaction with being "made of flesh").

With a scientific approach, you might ask questions like "how many calories
am I getting from energy drinks?  How much caffeine am I getting from them?  
How much caffeine do I *want* to consume?  Has the amount of caffeine I'm
now consuming been shown to have adverse (or beneficial) effects in people
like me?  If so, how much actual difference has it been shown to make?  How
many calories am I currently consuming per day?  What effect will that have
on my body weight and composition at my current level of exercise?  If the
effects aren't what I want (e.g. making me fatter when I don't want to be),
how much of a difference would reducing or cutting out the calories from
the energy drinks make?  If it would make a substantial difference, would I
rather cut out the drinks, or cut down on some other source of calories in
my diet?"

You can see here that nutritional science can inform the *means* you use to
make certain changes, but the *ends* (what changes *should* you make)
require a lot of information about your personal preferences and
circumstances.  The science can't dictate what your goals ought to be
(other than saying that some goals might be unachievable; for example, if
your goal is "never having to eat" science will tell you that attempts to
achieve that goal will lead to disappointment at best).

One of the most important points Billings makes is that your dietary
choices should not be dictated by intense emotions, particularly negative
ones such as fear and hate, attached to food or foods.  As he says, a
mentally healthy person's lunch plate plays a quite limited role in his
life; it certainly doesn't take center stage.  The problem with dietary
religion/doctrine is that it usually attaches cosmic levels of importance
to your lunch plate.

Getting a little more concrete, science tells that energy drinks, like
sweetened sodas, tend to be high in calorie density and to be non-
satiating.  The result is that if you don't pay careful attention to how
much of them you're consuming, you can actually be eating a great deal (in
terms of calories) without *feeling* that you're eating much at all.  For
example, two 12-oz cans of a typical energy drink would have around 300
calories.  That's only slightly less than the number of calories in a
rather large portion (cup and a half) of mashed potatoes made with whole
milk and butter.  If you ate the latter, you'd feel like you ate quite a
bit.  But you could probably drink the two energy drinks and not feel
anything except the effects of the caffeine.

So does that make energy drinks "good" or "evil"?  It doesn't.  It means
that you can't consume them mindlessly without regard to how much you're
consuming.  That's something that's true of *anything* you can consume.  
Even plain water.  You have to ask "are those properties of energy drinks
going to be harmful or beneficial to me in my situation?"  If, for example,
your weight is stable, but 10 pounds more than you'd like it to be, then if
you eliminated the drinks and didn't otherwise change your energy intake
(since the drinks are non-satiating, dropping them probably wouldn't result
in a compensating increase), then you'd lose that 10 pounds in a period of
approximately 4 months.  But if you really, really, enjoyed those drinks,
you could achieve the same result by looking for some other source of 300
calories a day that you enjoyed less, and then eliminating it (as long as
that other source wasn't necessary to provide you with something
essential).

Well, good luck to you.