Slashdot Mirror
Death by Coffee?
Clif Griffin writes "Slashdots question of the year, are you ready for this? No? Too bad, you'll hear me anyways. Will drinking 100 cups of coffee (the good kind, not that crappy decaf mocalatte crap) in 24 hours kill a person? Sure, there is one way we can find out but we can't let myself die under mysterious circumstances."
Well, if drinking a hundred cups of coffee in twenty-four hours doesn't kill you, it'll certainly give you a wicked case of the runs.
Kind of like on the "Bambi" episode of The Young Ones back in the 80s, when Rick tries to kill himself by overdosing on a bottle of pills he's just found in the medicine cabinet.
"Vyv, Vyv, uh, can you, like, really kill yourself with laxative pills?" Neil asks his other housemate, Vyvyan, who replies, "I don't know, Neil, but I'm going to stay and find out."
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
When I quit, I reduce my intake by halves -- in other works, today a pot, tomorrow half a pot, and so on, until it's just a sip, and then nothing.
That makes it fairly painless to shake the monkey (no headaches).
And then it's extra fun to drink that next pot a few weeks later... ;)
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
I once read a story by a Conan Doyle (do not know if it was Arthur or a relative) in which reference was made to a French torture that consisted in forcing the victim to drink (gulp actually, they used a funnel) great quantities of water until they confessed or died. Anybody can confirm this?
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
Indeed.
A British girl Leah Betts died from Hyponatremia a few years ago. The official story, and the way it was hysterically presented in the press, was that she died from taking a single Ecstasy pill, whereas actually she basically drank so much water her brain swelled up and killed her.
Even sadder, most people still believe she was killed by Ecstacy...
Never let the facts get in the way of a good anti-drug hysteria whuppin' up. Remember the people on acid supposedly jumping out of windows in the '60s?
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
I used to work mostly in the field but was in the office on a chilly day working on some new equipment. I had learned that my coworkers, who loved coffee, hadn't had chocolate covered coffee beans. I brought in 1/4 pound. They each tried one bean.
This left me absent-mindedly munching them and pouring repeated cups of coffee. I ended up eating the whole box and drinking over a pot of coffee.
By quitting time I was quite sick and facing a commute across the SF-Oakland bay bridge. I found a box and lined it with a bag in case I threw up and endured the commute - not fun when you are extremely hyper and sick.
I got home and just wanted to curl up in bed but every time I tried I was way too jumpy and had to get up again. My heart was pounding so hard and fast that it scared me.
My recommendation: don't do it - it is really, really unpleasant.
Further reading: the caffeine material safety data sheet
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
This is a great site http://www.gutenberg.net/ for finding classic literature.
The Leather Funnel
My friend, Lionel Dacre, lived in the Avenue de Wagram, Paris.
His house was that small one, with the iron railings and grass
plot in front of it, on the left-hand side as you pass down from
the Arc de Triomphe. I fancy that it had been there long before
the avenue was constructed, for the grey tiles were stained with
lichens, and the walls were mildewed and discoloured with age. It
looked a small house from the street, five windows in front, if
I remember right, but it deepened into a single long chamber at
the back. It was here that Dacre had that singular library of
occult literature, and the fantastic curiosities which served as a
hobby for himself, and an amusement for his friends. A wealthy man
of refined and eccentric tastes, he had spent much of his life and
fortune in gathering together what was said to be a unique private
collection of Talmudic, cabalistic, and magical works, many of them
of great rarity and value. His tastes leaned toward the marvellous
and the monstrous, and I have heard that his experiments in the
direction of the unknown have passed all the bounds of civilization
and of decorum. To his English friends he never alluded to such
matters, and took the tone of the student and virtuoso; but a
Frenchman whose tastes were of the same nature has assured me that
the worst excesses of the black mass have been perpetrated in that
large and lofty hall, which is lined with the shelves of his books,
and the cases of his museum.
Dacre's appearance was enough to show that his deep interest in
these psychic matters was intellectual rather than spiritual.
There was no trace of asceticism upon his heavy face, but there was
much mental force in his huge, dome-like skull, which curved upward
from amongst his thinning locks, like a snowpeak above its fringe
of fir trees. His knowledge was greater than his wisdom, and his
powers were far superior to his character. The small bright eyes,
buried deeply in his fleshy face, twinkled with intelligence and an
unabated curiosity of life, but they were the eyes of a sensualist
and an egotist. Enough of the man, for he is dead now, poor devil,
dead at the very time that he had made sure that he had at last
discovered the elixir of life. It is not with his complex
character that I have to deal, but with the very strange and
inexplicable incident which had its rise in my visit to him in the
early spring of the year '82.
I had known Dacre in England, for my researches in the Assyrian
Room of the British Museum had been conducted at the time when he
was endeavouring to establish a mystic and esoteric meaning in the
Babylonian tablets, and this community of interests had brought us
together. Chance remarks had led to daily conversation, and that
to something verging upon friendship. I had promised him that on
my next visit to Paris I would call upon him. At the time when I
was able to fulfil my compact I was living in a cottage at
Fontainebleau, and as the evening trains were inconvenient, he
asked me to spend the night in his house.
"I have only that one spare couch," said he, pointing to a
broad sofa in his large salon; "I hope that you will manage to be
comfortable there."
It was a singular bedroom, with its high walls of brown
volumes, but there could be no more agreeable furniture to a
bookworm like myself, and there is no scent so pleasant to my
nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient
book. I assured him that I could desire no more charming chamber,
and no more congenial surroundings.
"If the fittings are neither convenient nor conventional, they
are at least costly," said he, looking round at his shelves. "I
have expended nearly a quarter of a million of money upon these
objects which surround you. Books, weapons, gems
Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.
When I was working 80 - 100 hour weeks for months on end (averaging 4 hours of sleep a night), caffeine was a requirement to function. I got to the point I was drinking 4 pots a day - 40 cups. After a couple of *years* of this, my body was so dependent on caffeine that when I went on vacation and cut my coffee dosage to 2 cups a day, I literally couldn't even take a dump.
But it wasn't anywhere close to killing me, as far as I can tell, unless you count exploding in a nasty, stinking mess had I gone cold turkey from coffee.
And no, this is not an April Fools joke!