Goofing up: Nicotine vs Nicotinamide

Those people who know me better, knows that occasionally, I goof up on the not-so-important, and not-so-critical stuff.

One of the goof-ups that I have made for the past 10 years was to confuse nicotinamide with nicotine. In my younger days, when I was studying in Ngee Ann Polytechnic, I used to stay up late, and hence, I would have virtually no energy, and lacking sleep when I woke up in the morning. One of the tricks I had used then was to consume high-energy drinks, such as Redbull, or eat high-energy bars, such as Uncle Toby's. I have read the ingredients on most of the food that I took, so when I read nicotinamide, I thought it meant a derivative of nicotine. So, in my late teens and twennies, I confused nicotinamide with nicotine, hence, cultivating the impression that Redbull contains nicotine, which is addictive. And why it's addictive is because it "causes a discharge of epinephrine from the adrenal cortex" which "stimulates the central nervous system, and other endocrine glands" causing "a sudden release of glucose".

So, yesterday, while at Newton Circus, I was saying Redbull contains nicotine, and Shimeng was so confronting / assertive (perhaps he's a doctor?), claiming that nicotine is a controlled drug, and wanted to be sure of it, so he borrowed a can of Redbull from a stall, and pointed it out to me that it was nicotinamide.

In any case, here's a description of what nicotinamide is, a form of niacin, eg, vitamin B.