What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[Rev. Rye]

I'm a longtime fan of Saved by the Bell and, if you remember it at all, you remember this:

You probably laughed at how over the top it was, and probably the absurd double standard that caffeine is okay in drink form, but in pill form, it's really fucking dangerous. Well, it turns out the episode originally made sense because the pills were originally supposed to be speed, but, for reasons that I'm sure made sense at the time, NBC refused to allow Jessie to be addicted to speed for an episode, but was okay with it being caffeine pills.

Caffeine is speed. It’s one of the low-polymer amphetamines. I’m sure they changed her addiction for legal reasons, but caffeine in pill form IS much more dangerous than coffee - it’s almost impossible to drink enough coffee to seriously injury yourself (the alkaloids in coffee will make you vomit before you get to that level), but it’s doable with caffeine tablets.

Boru

You do have a point about the greater potential to overdose on caffeine pills, but it turns out that caffeine isn’t actually speed. Caffeine is a member of the methylxanthine class and amphetamine a phenethylamine. They are different classes with different molecular structures, though they are at least both stimulants.