An energy drink is my choice if I want to wake-up early after a long day. Thing is I drink it before I go to sleep. Helps me wake-up (even if I'm already late) without feeling shitty for the day. I find that an energy drink for me is pretty much useless if I drink it when I'm already dead tired.
As for alarms, I've recently decided to turn all of them off (about 5 of them) since I pretty much wake up by myself (late or not) and even have time to rationalize if I should get out of bed while I'm just about half-awake/asleep so I figured what's the point of having an alarm.
That and cursing at my alarms trying to turn the damn things go off when I'm already awake, I don't need that self-made aggravation.
