There's a lot of other crap in Red Bull (and drinks like it) that might account for how you feel after you drink one. Round-up of energy drinks here.

If there's really only 80mg in Red Bull (which seems to be the case, from other sources), then yeah, it's quite true.

Caffeine in coffee is...errmm...*different*...in ways I've never understood, but have to do with the fact that it's there, whereas the caffeine in Red Bull or Vivarin is extracted/purified.

Also: Red Bull is nasty, even with vodka ;-)

Well there's always BE, which is wrong in so many ways...but great at about 2:00am.

Superscript didn't show, that's Budweiser E I'm talking about.

B^e made it to market? Hmm. Time to re-check my local grocery supplier's shelves.

I kind of like B^e. It tastes kinda gross, but it's beer with an exponent in its name. Which satisfies the dork in me.

The reason that you bet cracked out on Red Bull probably has more to do with the enormous amount of sugar and the taurine than the caffeine in the 8oz can. It's like railing pixie stiks

I don't think the taurine does anything. It's just an amino acid. When I read this post yesterday I did some googling. Of the three potentially active ingredients, taurine is the least likely to do anything (it can't cross the blood/brain barrier very well, for one thing -- it may affect muscular function, but that's about it).

But Red Bull also features huge amounts of a metabolite called glucuronolactone, though. Nobody seems to know what that stuff might do.

Another factor: folks tend to drink red bull faster than they drink coffee.

The following article is a pretty good summary of Taurine. What I'm still not clear on is whether or not it even gets absorbed from dietary sources, or digested in the stomach to sulfonides and amines.

http://www.thorne.com/altmedrev/fulltext/taurine3-2.html