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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."
No.
(Disclaimer): There are days when I consume a pot or so of coffee for myself, so I am not saying this out of any prejudice. However, the thing to remember is that there *are* pharmacologically active compounds in coffee, in particular caffeine. The effects of caffeine really depend upon the person and how well their liver enzymes are induced to take care of compounds like this, but 100 cups could be enough to give you anxiety, sweats, tremors dizzyness, GI cramping, dehydration (caffeine is a diuretic), and at higher (toxic) doses even heart arrhythmias, nausea and vomiting, symptoms of CNS toxicity involving ringing ears or damped sounds and flashing light and possibly convulsions. So, can it kill you? Possibly. So, my question to you is.......why would you want to drink 100 cups of coffee in a day? This isn't some dare or weird coffee enema garbage that someone is trying to foist on you is it?
Oh, yea. IAAS. (I am a scientist).
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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.
About ten grams of caffeine in a short period of time will kill you. There is about 100mg in your average cup of coffee (though it can vary wildly). So the math is right, but you'd have to suck down all one-hundred in a short period of time to get a fatal amount of it. Too much liquid, I think, you just can't process it that fast. All that would happen is you'd probably be urinating like a racehorse (caffeine is a diuretic), and and have a really bad headache to show for it at the end of the day.
;)
Over the course of 24 hours, a lot of the effect would probably be mitigated by the time span. I don't know how long it would take you to get the caffeine out of your system, maybe someone else does. Google says around 13% of the caffeine in your body is removed every hour, but I haven't a clue how correct it is. Sounds dubious.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Spread out over 24 hours? Hmm.. that's 4.167 cups/hour.
If you were wise and countered the stimulant effect with the soothing liquid-love that is Guinness every half hour you should be in fine shape. Can't say the same about your digestive system the next day (read: "100 coffee + 48 Guinness == SplatterBum(tm)") but you'll be around to enjoy it.
disclaimer i: I'm not an MD or biologist, however I drink with the ones from work quite often.
disclaimer ii: (for your family) if he follows these directions and dies, my name is Rob Malda.
Trolling is a art,
No, but it'll let you save all your friends from a fire.
Option-Shift-K.
..in the alt.suicide.holiday Methods FAQ and have fun.
I bet 500 Euro (your car is on the way) on you dying http://rcm-medicine.upr.clu.edu/publications/sidne y_kaye/toxicology-of-caffeine.htm
The result is total awareness, inner bliss, and superman-like physical abilities
GO FOR IT DUDE!
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
...you'll be wide awake for it.
Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
Back in my younger, experimentalist phase, I tried taking a lot of caffeine pills. I had 13, which is about 20 or 30 cups of coffee. It was an overdose.
For about an hour I had a huge, ever-increasing buzz. Then it became difficult to walk. Then I started to throw up. I was vomiting for about 10 hours straight.
Unless you want to go through the same hell that I did, lay off the massive coffee dose.
to accept the praise of personal wisdom is an affront to the very ideal i hold dear.
The LD50 for caffeine is estimated at 150 mg/kg body weight
or approximately 10 grams for the averaged size human. There is about 125 mg in 1 cup of coffee, which is about 12.5g/100 cups. So yes, there is little over a 50% chance it could kill you.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
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
What a joy is it to see the gene pool skim itself.
It's surprising one can even survive to 10 cups of coffee, when most coffee is contaminated with DHMO.
For those who are not aware of the dangers of this substance, dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO.
Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Exposition to it gaseous form may cause burns, permanent scars and even death.
Symptoms of DHMO ingestion include sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance.
For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.
Dihydrogen monoxide is also known as hydroxyl acid, and is the major component of acid rain. It has been found that malignant cancer cells only develop in its presence.
The American government has refused to ban the production, distribution, or use of this damaging chemical due to its "importance to the economic health of this nation.". It's commonly used as an industrial solvent and coolant, as a fire retardant, in the distribution of pesticides, in abortion clinics,and lots more.
I created a community against DHMO in Orkut. You're all invited to join it.
You can also check the official Dihydrogen Monoxide FAQ
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Its not coffee itself that kills, but the plastic cup that reacts with the coffee, and generates an acid called tri-hidro-cafeine, that is lethal.
Here is the complete story.Of course it can kill you. But it requires freezing it into an icicle first.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Yes, it probably could kill you.
My recommendation:
Get a vasectomy. Anyone who would consider drinking 100 cups of coffee in 24 hours doesn't belong in the gene pool.
A cup of coffee has about 150 mg of caffeine in it.
Hence, 100 cups of coffee is about 10-15 grams of pure caffeine.
The lethal dose varies.. different people react diffferently. That's why there are LD50's.. which is the value which statistically kills half the subjects. (or, you could view that as a 50%/50% chance)
The LD50 for caffeine in rats (orally) is 192 mg/(kg body mass)..
A typical male human weighs about 80 kg.. 15 grams of caffeine divided by that is 187 mg/kg.
So, yes that amount of caffine can definitely kill someone. I wouldn't take my chances.
That means the lowest lethal dose reported in the literature was 192 mg of caffine per 1 kilogram of weight of the victim. I'll let someone else look up plausible values of caffine content in coffee.
It is certainly possible to kill yourself with caffine, you just need enough of it.
I found a link for content of the beans, the values are around 1.3 %. So 100 grams of beans contains 1.3 grams of caffine, or 1300 mg.
Eating 100 g of beans is well over the limit, assuming any of my math is right :)
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
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Check out this debunking page.
An excerpt (for the lazy):"Lawrence E. Armstrong, a professor of exercise and environmental physiology at the University of Connecticut, found that caffeine is not the dehydrating demon some people believe. In fact, he concluded that caffeine is no more a diuretic than water."
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!
Yeah but so does coffe, has electrolytes I mean. Although everything is relative. I at one point in time when on a biology research trip to Andros Island in the Bahammas was drinking 4 gallons of water a day. At less than 3 gallons I would dehydrate to the point I didnt pee for 2 days. At 4 gallons I would go twice a day. I didnt even sweat noticbly, but half the time I was in the water diving, but even on land between the breeze and the long sleeved cotton shirts absorbing then evaporating sweat. We had to monitor and log our water consumption.
NO, 100 cups of coffee according to the show Futurama (episode: three hundred big boys) will actually set you in a super hightened and mobile state where you move at super human speed and awareness. Thus you can save people.
:(
"I think we were just saved by an orange Blur!!!"
I wish they would bring that show back.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
The LD50 (leathal dose, 50% occurance) of caffeine administered oraly in humans is 192 mg/kg. Meaning that a 70kg (150lbs) person who ingests 13.44g of pure caffeine has a 50% chance of survival. Since the standard cup of drip coffee has 150 mg of caffeine (a shot of espresso has substantially LESS) a 70kg individual would have to ingest 89.6 cups in once sitting to reach the 50% survival dose.
89.6 cups is a lot of volume so it is unlikely that one could drink that much at once. The question posed was whether 100 cups in 24 hours would be fatal. Since the metabolic half life of caffeine is 4 hours, this problem becomes a little more complicated. Assuming the 100 cups were spaced evenly throughout the 24 hour period (one each 14.4 minutes), we can calculate the total caffeine in the bloodstream at any time durring the 24 hour period.
At one cup every 15 minutes, the level of caffeine reaches an equilibrium with the rate of degredation arround cup #70 with a blood level of 2.4g -- much less than the LD50 of 13.4g. Even if you were drinking a cup every 5 minutes, the blood level would stabalize around 7.2g -- in the danger zone but still likely survivable especially with medical attention.
Caffeine is a dierettic (makes you pee) and so your biggest risk would likely be dehydration. But that's another story entierly.
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Just in case:
Drugs affect different people in different ways. Don't try doing your own experiments.
Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.