Vodka / Red Bull - A Mutualistic Tale

Vodka / Red Bull is a drink with huge potential for the tired, emotional modern worker. A typical Friday evening sees an epic struggle between two immortal foes - alcoholism and narcolepsy. Alcohol's biggest weakness, however is it's depressant ways - the first steps on the path to responsibility free drunkendom are happily taken, but wait, the lack of sleep from the week's drinking tries to trip you, down into a fitful slumber.

Steps have been taken in the past to combat this - for example, Irish, French, German, Salvadorian, even French Polynesian coffees - any country has it's own spirit which, when mixed with a decent dose of caffeine, steers even the hardened drinker on their way with an increased perk in their step. However, drinking an Irish coffee in a old-man-pub on a Friday evening will get you substantially more beaten up than drunk. The inconvenience of waiting for the drink to cool is also a major negative - unless you cool it with yet more shots of spirit and/or ice.

PO'P Note: Water boils at 100˚C, Alcohol at 80. I'm sure you understand the dangers of drinking a coffee with no alcohol in.

And then there was Red Bull. And it was good. Reasonably acceptable to drink, a 330ml can, containing around five cups of coffee's worth of caffeine. Drunks everywhere cheered loud and long, queried what they were cheering for and cheered again. Some drunks stared at the gaudy packaging - "taurine?" they said. "red BULL?" the said. So the rumour we've all heard swept the pubs and clubs of the land.

Peter O'Phile is happy to recant two urban legends with one swipe - Taurine is found in fish and all kinds of other junk too. Stuff which would be cheaper to harvest than an angry bull. Its effects, while many and great, are not useful to staying awake drinking, sorry. Peter O'Phile is confused by it's presence at all, except for some potential clever marketing on Red Bull's part.

With great power comes great responsibility, as everyone knows. There are several traps that can be fallen into when mixing VRBs outside the professional embrace of your local pub. Get the essential balance of V to RB wrong, and foul demons await you. There are four distinct categories an amateur VRB binge can fall into:

Fear And Loathing
Too much Red Bull leaves you jittery and unable to drink with such fluid ease as normal. People seem to be staring at you and your heart beat seems both audible to everyone in the room and twice as fast as reasonable in any setting. When you eventually try to sleep, prepare yourself instead for a session of lying in the dark pretending to sleep in case the monsters close in.

A Nightmare On Your Sheets
A little too much Red Bull - a subtle error, which only manifests itself in Slumberland. You will be intoxicated enough to sleep with ease, but your mind will not shut down properly as you have 8 pints of caffeine laden blood coursing through your veins. You will dream, seemingly all night. If you are anything like myself, these subconscious slip-ups will be far from pleasant, extremely graphic, violent and bloody, even, and you will wake up in a cold sweat many times during the night.

The Perfect Storm
Everything goes well. Perfectly in fact. You head out to sea, "because that's where the fish are" without regard to consequence. Drinking without the natural warning signs of weariness rules, you'll think. Indeed, you'll be right. The hangover tomorrow won't rule quite as much, but you know how to solve that, don't you?

Titanic
Insufficient Red Bull, and you're back to square one - tired, bored and lonely. Unfortunately, you spent twice as much cash getting into that state as if you'd stuck with lager. A step back to the dark days when a pint dragged on for hours and all you could hope for was Celine Dion's timely death.

Hopefully this guide will set you on your way to caffeine enhanced drinking and long future nights of wild-eyed excitement. Good luck.