Four or five pints on, you're a bit on the woozy side. Whadya gonna do? Well, you have two choices. You could heed that beckoning bed and queue for anything up to, oh, 18 hours for a taxi. Or you could keep that party buzz going.

"C'mon," you seem to hear in the background, "the night is young."

"But not as young as me," you chirpily reply. "A few glasses of vodka and Red Bull and I'll be flying." After all, Red Bull gives you wings. . .

Red Bull, the energy drink that "vitalizes body and mind" and tastes not unlike cough syrup, is a marketing phenomenon on view at a bar near you. Generally the younger and louder a pub's clientele, the more Red Bull it is likely to sell.

Referred to as the "nectar of the nineties" or "stimulant for body and mind", the amber-coloured, carbonated drink is essentially a soft drink: carbonated water, sucrose, glucose and citric acid are all present and correct.

So too - and it is on these that the Red Bull company bases its claims - are caffeine, taurine and glucuronolactone. These last two occur naturally in the body. So, along with the caffeine pick-me-up sought by the all-nighters, a dose of Red Bull is apparently able to "revitalise the mind and body".

Whatever. As far as the good ladies and gentlemen who down 10 or more cans in one night are concerned, mixing it with a spirit - almost always vodka - allows one to get very drunk very fast and, best of all, stay wide awake throughout.

"Oh God, it really works," says Pamela Thornton, bar supervisor at Busker's latenight bar in Temple Bar, Dublin. "I would drink a can of it by itself sometimes when I'm working, just to keep myself going."

Having worked in hotels as well, she has noticed that since the drink grew in popularity people "can go on all night, much more than they used to."

Orla, aged about 25, who was ordering a couple of drinks in the Bailey bar in Dublin's South Anne Street on Thursday afternoon, said she drank "a lot of Red Bull and quite a bit of vodka and Red Bull.

"Vodka can taste very strong in other mixers, and the Red Bull weakens the taste and you can drink it very quickly."

Another Red Bull fan, a business rep in his late 20s who did not want to be named, extolled the virtues of the drink as an anti-hangover measure. "I always have a few at the end of a heavy night. I can lorry in Schnapps, Grolsch, Jack Daniels, cocktails, anything - as long as I have a few vodka and Red Bulls at the end, I have no hangover. I'm laughing."

Red Bull, and other stimulant drinks, certainly deliver a greater caffeine kick than, for example, Coca-Cola. There is about 75 mg of caffeine in 200 ml of Red Bull, compared with about 21 mg in the same measure of a cola drink and 80 mg in a cup of filter coffee. Accordingly, each can of Red Bull carries the warning: "Not suitable for diabetics, children and persons sensitive to caffeine."

It isn't cheap either. A 250 ml can costs between £1.19 and £1.80 in the shops and anything up to £3 in pubs and clubs. Mix that with a shot of vodka at about £2.20 and you are looking at a pretty expensive tipple.

Nevertheless, according to Kate Brow, spokeswoman for Red Bull in London, the Irish consumption level per head is one of the highest of the 44 countries in which it is sold. Since its introduction here in 1995, and an aggressive marketing campaign, sales have grown from a few thousand cans to an expected 24 million this year.

The market for sports drinks and energy drinks in general - others brands include Jolt Cola, Lipovitan, Purdys and Lucozade - has grown by 83 per cent since 1997, and sales are expected to exceed £100 million this year. They account for 15 per cent of all soft-drink sales in the State, with Red Bull accounting for 9 per cent.

However, most of the bar workers consulted by The Irish Times this week say the popularity of Red Bull is waning, while sales of the ready-mixed Smirnoff Ice drink - a blend of cloudy lemonade and 30 ml of Smirnoff vodka - are "sky-rocketing."

"The Red Bull thing has definitely died down," said Colm Devine, manager of the Bridge Bar in Dublin. "Smirnoff Ice is the big drink now. Or else people are drinking Smirnoff Ice with a shot (35.5 ml) of vodka."

WITH increased energy-drink consumption has come, naturally, increased energy on the late-night streetscape. Some bar workers have noticed more violence and aggression coinciding with changing drinking tastes. "Where people used to get drunk and stupid, now they're getting drunk, crazy and trouble," said one manager. "The drunkenness these days, there's a madness about it, definitely," commented another.

So much so that some pubs, such as The Stag's Head in Dublin, will not sell Red Bull or any other stimulant drink.

"I probably have lost sales," agreed Philip Shaffrey, owner of The Stag's Head. "But it's a traditional pub and I just won't sell it on principle."

The boom in the popularity of energy drinks has been put down to changing lifestyles by one market analysis company, Zenith International.

The question may be not so much whether the drinks "give you wings", as Red Bull's advertising mantra has it, but what they say about the lifestyles of those who drink them. Do they see themselves as stressed? Energetic? In need of stimulation? Or just beautiful?

As one girl who drinks it regularly opined, gazing at the slim, silver-and-blue can: "It's just such a gorgeous-looking product. I mean, you'd almost buy it in Habitat and use it as funky kind of decoration."