Man, I can't believe I let a whole decade of ambivalence separate me from what is now proving to be both my savior and my downfall, the nitrous fuel for the racecar that is myself... red bull. They're small, they're expensive, but if I drink more than two of them in the same afternoon, I'll be up for the next 24 hours.

A careful examination of the labels will show you that Red Bull and most of its contemporaries, such as Monster and Rock Star, operate on the same ingredients: Taurine, b complex vitamins, caffeine. But unlike, say, Rock Star, Red Bull packs a little miracle worker called Glucuronolactone, this is the stuff that should be in the tap water instead of flouride, if ya ask me. It's supposed to give you a feeling of well-being. Brother, you had me at hello.Taurine is also a potent little chemical that stops cats from going blind, But the article on it at Wikipedia is really boring, revealing nothing as far as its actual "buzz" content. Anyway, Glucoronolactone is more fun to say, if you can say it that is, and you will be able to easily after a couple of reds, let me tells ya.

Not to start harping on the hypocrisies of drug laws, but damn! I bet you if there was a plant that if you chewed its leaves it gave you a lift like red bull does, they'd make that sucker illegal faster than you can say "socially manipulated mass hysteria."

Mostly b-12 vitamins, I'm betting, which along with the caffeine, is what gives this bull its horns, but all in all it's a little miracle worker. Though for my money you really need to drink two of them in rapid succession if you want to feel properly "stampeded

According to my own shady sources, the bull began as a raver's rehydration drink, sold in clubs in only the hippest countries in the 1990s. I first heard about it from my very hip clubgoing jetsetter Ibiza-visiting friends who would come back from long jaunts on the "Dorfmeister Circuit" and tell me, their jaws clenched shut, pupils dilated, and skin bright red, about this amazing non-alcoholic drink they found in some club named Drill or Spaz or Draino. It was called Red Bull, it was legal and you drank it and it made you hallucinate. Of course we all wanted to find it, but it just wasn't around. People would fly to London and bring back cases of it. Luckily the cans are small enough that a case can fit in your carry-on bag. I tried one once or twice but never really got anything out of it.

Then this past summer I started drinking Rockstars, because of the name mainly, as I wanted to recapture some of my old rockstar glory, from when I was in the Mexican Mud Band. At first all I captured was panic attacks, sweating, and nausea. But that's all part of life as a rockstar, as I dimly remembered. Eventually I got my touring legs back, and was soon hooked, shaking and stammering and throwing tantrums if my deli was out of it, which was often. I prefered the diet rockstar, and soon I drank every deli in the east village out of stock of their tall white, gold lettered cans of diet rockstar. So... grudgingly I tried Monster (too gator-adey) and that Caution 99 cent one from the Arizona Iced tea people (too juicy), and wound up right where I started, with diet red bull, the ultimate party accessory for the sober New Yorker.

The trick with staying up all night on these suckers is to drink them early on in the day, and then regularly between meals. I find even drinking one in the late afternoon can keep me up pretty late. But guzzling two back to back around midnight will probably keep you up and alert until the following evening, assuming of course you don't eat any big carb-staurated pasta dishes, or turkey or anything.

Now, of course, Red Bull is a common sight all over the place, at least here in the big apple. You can see the Williamsburg hipsters all getting on the train drinking them with their evening paper. Assuming these youths are the future of America, will our nation become red bull-aholic? Never sleeping, only smirking, as surly and quick-tempered as an outback tour guide after a wild night of Fosters guzzling? I sure hope so. Maybe someday the bull will find its way onto the back shelf of the druggists, along with the sudafed. For now though, I'm glad to be awake and thirsty in the Age of the Chemical Brain booster. Ole!