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3 Cups of Coffee Increases Hallucinations
PearsSoap writes "The Telegraph and other sources are pointing out a study on 200 students which has found that a high caffeine intake can cause visual and auditory hallucinations, and can make people think that others are 'out to get them.' The abstract (and full version if you have access) is available.
'The volunteers were questioned about their caffeine intake from products including coffee, tea, energy drinks, chocolate bars and caffeine tablets.'"
The study consisted of watching every episode of South Park featuring Tweak.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Sooooo...The results of this study show that excessive intake of caffeine makes you high-strung? Fascinating.
This guy's the limit!
I remember reading somewhere that 60 cups of coffee would supposedly yield the same level of hallucinations as 1 dose of LSD....I don't know about anyone else, but I think 60 cups of coffee would mess me up a lot more than 1 dose of LSD...
It was 7 cups of coffee on the news this morning, mind you I might have hallucinated that.
You are not paranoid if they really are out to get you, which lets face it they are..
..come to mind.
The abstract are available? Parenthetical statement doesn't count as a subject, I don't think.
That said, maybe all the coffee drinkers just think everyone else is stealing their coffee. :)
Who is actually surprised that consuming large amounts of a brain stimulant can cause hallucinations and paranoia? It should be no shocker that when you are over stimulated, your brain starts finding new outlets.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
So now it's one man and three cups? I thought the hallucination was about two girls!
I only drink two cups per day. I also have a Coke with lunch...
Now I'm off to fight the gremlin that lives in the supply closet. He keeps stealing my stapler!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
"Triples your risk" - well, what are the risks WITHOUT coffee? I drink coffee all day long, yet I haven't had a hallucination since 1982 (the last time I did acid).
lack of sleep will case hallucinations.
And exactly what do they mean by "hallucinations?" Water swilrling down a drain may make you think you heard a female voice; "floaters" in your eyeballs (you'll get 'em when you're older) can make you momentarily think you saw something that wasn't there. I wouldn't count those as hallucinations.
"The new study also showed that people who had a high caffeine intake were not more likely to think that others were out to get them, a so-called "persecution complex".
That one little word omitted (that I bolded that WAS in TFA but not in the summary) changes the meaning completely, doesn't it? Taco, you need to cut down on the Jolt! get some sleep, dude!
Free Martian Whores!
I've had 4 cups this morning, and I feel fine. Maybe I have a high caffeine tolerance.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
And I bought a jar of Caffeine off of Unitednucler.com for 10$.
ACS/reagent grade, so great to use... I use mine with DMSO if I want the caf without bitterness. In my job, if I take a .5g hit, I feel it after about 10 minutes where I consistently get more lively and awake.
Just watch for the downs after about 6 hours after first hit. You'll get hit with extreme tiredness and apathy... You wont be close enough to a bed.
*I dont work for UnitedNuclear.com : Im just a happy purchaser.
They were probably imagining they'd have a job after leaving Uni
This is all fine and good, but arriving at work and being able to use the magic of Ninnle Linux on the desktop, with NinWM and Ninnle Office to boot, the hallucinations disappear quickly. The solution? More coffee, of course! I recommend the new Ninnle blend available at Starbucks.
I love the correlationisnotcausation tag. It gets applied to any story like this, and while it often seems to be accurate, I imagine someone would stick it on a story titled 'Study shows stabbing yourself may increase blood loss'.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
This study finally explains why Starbucks is so successful. Its products create an illusion in their customers that they are normal human beings with some real life worth living. Once these Starbucks addicts stay away from caffeine they are overwhelmed by their own sense of inadequacy and rush back to the store for another hit.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
According to the article, 3 cups of coffee makes me three times more likely to experience hallucinations than if I had no cups of coffee.
.001% just for giggles. So three times that is .003%... big deal. Indeed the article even mentions that -maybe- 10% of all people will "hear voices" at some point throughout their lives.
Well, I'm pretty sure that my chances of hallucinating on No Cups of coffee are nearly Zilch... let's say
The most profound thing I got out of the article is the fact that if you are already prone to hallucinations, Caffeine will make it worse. That doesn't surprise me, but I guess it's nice to have some data to back it up.
I think the guy that wrote this article is out to get me.
I heard him talking about it just a moment ago...
The study authors imply only a link, not causation. "Correlation is not causation" is a bit overused around here, but in this case it's worth repeating since the /. summary introduced the error. FTFA:
The researchers believe that caffeine could heighten the effect that stress has on the body, triggering the hallucinations.
However, they also suggest that people who are more prone to hallucinations could also be more stressed and more likely to consume large amounts of caffeine.
Why must we tag EVERYTHING correlationisnotcausation. Does /. suddenly have a patent disregard for statistics in it entirety? Seriously, what is the alternative here? People about to have a hallucination have a sudden caffeine urge before their episode? Looking at the study from both sides is good. Ignoring statistics entirely is cowardly. I see too many people ignoring them because they are offensive (religion correlates with violent crime, homocide, stds, abortion). And i mean blanket ignoring, not trying to deduce anything from the stats. I never used to think of /.ers as the types to plug their ears and go lalalala. But this meme is childish.
There was a time in my life when I regularly consumed 1500mg of caffeine every 24 hours. I had no hallucinations, no paranoia... Nothing.
The headaches when I stopped were nothing short of spectacular, but other than intense concentration and a frantic work pace I never saw anything crazy from the caffeine intake. And that's a hell of a lot more than 3 cups of coffee.
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
So they ARE out to get me! That's why they're making scientific studies to discover my mental weaknesses! *gulps more coffee to maintain state of catlike readiness*
...it's not a hallucination if they really are out to get you.
I started in 1984. I drank Dr. Pepper, but when I went to Gen-Con, I put 4 no-doze per can(crushed) in order to stay up the whole convention. Since then, I have been abusing caffeine regularly (a progression from Dr. Pepper, to Mt Dew, to Jolt and other 'energy drinks'. Current favorite of those types of drink is Bawls) since then and have yet to have any sort of problem. I go though a 2 liter of Coke Cherry Zero a day (plus 2+ 20oz of coke zero/coke cherry zero at work).
I can drink Cherry Zero right before bed, and I am asleep in no time. Of course, maybe I am just a caffeine burnout since my body now requires it (and if I go more than a few hours awake without it, I start to get a headache).
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
I sometimes have auditory hallucinations at night after an excessively busy or stressful day, if I've been up for 18 hours or so. I'll hear an underground train, or people talking (no specific words) - but when I concentrate I realise it's not there.
I put this down to being in a state of consciousness that's closer to sleep than normal. Of course, on a day like that, I consume more coffee than usual. Correlation is not causation.
...200 students...
They clearly just haven't built up adequate resistance yet.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
as well as making people think that others are "out to get them".
Explains the /. crew. Stop drinking the Dew and you won't need your tinfoil hats anymore. Or is this a gov't ploy to weaken your defenses!
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I enjoy a lovely Mountain Dew high every morning at work, and never suffer any ill effects... other than the giant spiders. Those can be a bit off putting. The glowing, telepathic ferrets usually keep them at bay, though. Hallucinations! Pfft! As if! Now excuse me. I must kiss teh sky.
I've always been turned off from so called "Energy Drinks". I see too many people pound down these combinations of corn syrup and caffeine. The boost is very brief and all that sugar can't be good for the waistline or for insulin levels. The appeal seems to be mostly marketing. If you need lots of caffeine to function you'd be better off getting a decent night's sleep regularly.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Great now I have to figure out which are my real friends and which ones I'm making up.
I find being offended by me offensive.
as well as making people think that others are "out to get them"
/continues drinking his 44oz coffee...
It's not "thinking" they are out to get you if they ARE out to get you, you insensitive clod!!
I dont work for UnitedNuclear.com : Im just a happy purchaser.
Well, now after posting on Slashdot that you can buy a big jar of pure caffeine from them, they're probably going to wish you did work for them, so they could fire you for making them get slashdotted.
First of all, I thought we knew this already? O.o
Second, it's more fun if you have a pre-existing psychiatric condition. Personally, it has some nice effects on my PTSD. On the one end, it can help with the numbness and similar symptoms, because I get amped up and happy if I drink enough of it. On the other end, holy shit does the hypervigilance, irritability, and other such symptoms get worse with enough caffeine. Of course, that's really noticeable when you're drinking 3-4 16oz energy drinks every single day, like I used to before I started to realise the extent of my problem. Even down to only one cup of coffee every day, I still don't get any more sleep though, so whatever.
Can't say I've experienced the hallucinations so much, though. But I can only imagine someone with schizophrenia or other disorders causing hallucinations (well, you could try to get away with saying PTSD has hallucinations as they are similar, but there's actually distinct differences between flashback type things of PTSD and hallucinations) drinking a lot of caffeine. Mix it with weed and it's even more fun! I could also say meth, cocaine, and some others, but that sounds like a heart attack waiting to happen, and they can cause hallucinations themselves anyway; and no I'm not kidding--working in an emergency room, I've seen my fair share of heart attacks where the only reasonable explanation was meth/cocaine use.
Nonetheless, I'd be more concerned about ulcers and other problems, like heart problems, that can come with heavy caffeine use. You can at least pass off a somewhat normal life, without ending up in the hospital for it, with the hallucinations, if you really try ;)
That 1/2 of Slashdot members where Hallucinating by 9 am this morning :)
You'll have super speed, so everything will look like it's in slow motion
Ala Fry in that Futurama episode
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
On a typical day I have 3 shots of espresso, 2 red bulls, and 2-3 regular sodas. I no longer get caffeine jitters or any immediately noticeable side effects. On some days when I'm extremely sleep deprived and I completely overdo it (4 red bulls, 6 shots of espresso) my paranoia goes through the roof. I get manic depressive.. I try not to do that anymore =)
Here's a video site that features it.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
So this Anonymous Coward guy is just in my head? Phew! I better lay off the caffeine then.
They are probably contaminated with every substance under the sun. Got to rule out the nicotine, the energy drinks, the booze, the hard drugs ...
... whether drinking 100 cups of coffee will really slows down time for you.
Back in college, when I was still super driven to be the best at everything, I used to down several cups of coffee and tea at night in order to remain awake and focused while doing my homework. It got to the point where after drinking the tea, I would suck on the teabag (keep your wiseass comments to yourself, thanks) because I'd read that saliva could extract even more caffiene.
This all ended one night when I woke up at about 3AM (after staying up until 1 doing some Physics III homework) with what sounded like a couple of dozen people having a rally in my head. I couldn't make out individual voices, words, or sentences, but the sound was distinct: lots of people were talking over one another, LOUDLY, and there was no way to get away from it or make it quieter. It was, frankly, extremely frightening, even though it only took a minute to realize what was going on and why. I wound up lying on a couch in the common area with a pillow over my head for about an hour, wishing the noise would stop so I could actually get some sleep. Eventually, it quieted enough that I could crawl back into bed and catch another four or so hours before needing to get up for class.
Anyway, caffiene: it's a drug, and now I limit myself to one cup in the AM and occasionally another in the afternoon, or a very small cup with dessert. Auditory hallucinations are no fun, and I found that I value the quality of a healthy life much more than the rewards of intense focused work these days.
The article does not mention the mental state of these students, any adverse health problems they may already be suffering from, a genetic disposition towards these behaviors or anything like that. These "scientists" are clearly out to get you, me, and everyone else.
I had given up caffeine for about 6 months, and then needed to pull an all-nighter at work. I went to the 7-11 and got a Double Gulp of Coca-Cola, and drank it all pretty quickly. Within about an hour, I started seeing "movement" out of the corner of my eye - just little flashes, but enough to startle me and make me turn and look. I also got paranoid; I was on a construction site (only one there) and even though my car was right outside my window, and a diesel to boot, I became convinced someone was trying to steal the car silently. I would check every 15 minutes to see if it was still there.
These symptoms are also seen in recreational users of amphetamines, so I assumed (afterward) that it was an overdose of stimulants per se, not that it was caffeine.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
What I find most surprising is the lack of regulation. The government regulates countless other 'drugs' (cannabis comes to mind). How are the effects of caffeine on the body any different than say aspirin, alcohol, or even sugar substitutes? Because coffee comes in the form of a nice hot beverage it's sociable acceptable to have a few too many cups. If i have to drink 5 cups a day to feel 'normal' should i seek help? The hypocrisy in society is sometimes overwhelming.
The voices inside my head are telling me that this study is severely flawed, and I should just relax and have another cup of coffee...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I can hallucinate using just a radio and a ping pong ball
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Some of the medical genetics studies I work on have measures for those, and having seen the questions and coded them, I can affirm that they're not quite as reliable as you may think.
Besides, every time I drink more than three cups of coffee, I get this visual hallucination that I'm being asked to work to hard and this auditory hallucination that my boss has an unreasonable deadline ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Obligatory Futurama.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
All you need is 100 cups of coffee and then time will slow down as well.
is there really isn't a Gnome sitting on top of my monitor. I really don't drink that much coffee it's just the little fucker keeps stealing it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That this explains EVERYTHING.
The data doesn't tell us much if they don't filter out test subjects with schizo tendencies, ADHD, etc.
Some psychological tendencies do increase the proclivity to consume caffeine and nicotine if it is readily available.
I like to drink coffee, and I also like energy drinks. I really liked the 5-hour energy, which has a bunch of B vitamins, and also enzymes -- a different approach to energy. I find this keeps me going all day, if I drink one sortof in the morning. Redbull makes me crash from the caffeine. I also can't drink more than three of them at once (Bleah!). I like the beverage called Cocaine, which had a bit of capsaicin. I don't remember what else was in it. They've since stopped selling that in stores around here. Also, love your sig =_)
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I used to find it very easy to induce auditory hallucinations with a combination of sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation; e.g. stay up for 36 hours then put in earplugs and try to sleep. Since caffeine is known to interfere with sleep, is it possible that these hallucinations are not caused directly by the caffeine, but rather by a lack of sleep brought on by caffeine consumption on previous days?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Maybe the coffee just makes them open their eyes, and see reality ( Oh No ! )
I thought it was the Jesus acid I took at a Dead show in Eugene that never quite seemed to wear off. Now I know its just my hopeless espresso dependency. Three years ago I got my own machine. Two years ago Peet's opened up a few blocks away. Its the Marin Methadone clinic, once Peet's gets its hooks in you are done. I need a miracle, triple espresso, everyday.
... why coffee makes this seem like a great place to work. The only problem is the one, terrifying side effect:
The coffee wears off.
Have gnu, will travel.
Strong Sad on caffeine
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
They are out to get you. They are only trying to trick you into consuming less caffeine, so that you will be less alert. Must...fight...urge...to sleep...
Second study finds that after two cups of coffee you may mistake your first cup of shroom tea for your third of coffee.
This study CORRELATES high intake of caffeine to auditory/visual hallucinations--and ASSUMES caffeine came first. What if people who are already prone to having these hallucinations tend to consume more caffeine?
Another correlation of this nature is that people with schizophrenia are ~75% likely to smoke and others with mental illness are prone to this trend as well. Source Here.
Also, this study was held at a university, and their test subjects are freshmen/sophomore level psych majors looking to get extra credit in their 300 level class. These students are already stressed about exams, relationships, money, and the fact they will probably have to work at Starbucks when they graduate because they got a Pysch degree--so to suggest that the sample is not bias in that way (and is indeed not anymore stressed than the regular adult population) is unscientific.
"Engineering. Where the noble, semi-skilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream." -Sheldon
I drank enough energy drinks/coffee this morning to be equivalent to several hundred millgrams of caffeine, and it's sharpened my focus and calmed me down, though I've gotten a bit jangled. I suspect I have ADHD though, so the reverse stimulant effect is not surprising.
Have they perhaps considered that it's the hallucinations that somehow drive the craving for coffee, and not the other way around?
I've been seeing floaters in my eyes as long as I can remember.
3 cups might cause hallucinations, but 300 cups causes you to slow time down and save all of your friends from a raging fire. (Obligatory Futurama Reference)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
My better half once sent me (and rightly so) to a psychiatrist after I had been drinking coffee that had been concentrating and cooking on the coffee machine for some days at a new job I was being offered. No idea what would be in such a concoction.
(On the other hand, I must have been already somewhat out of balance even to consider drinking such a coffee.)
OMG did you see Billy??, He was TOTALLY looking at me, I am going to DIE!!
If I ingest less caffeine, does this mean fewer people will be out to get me?
Squirrel!
They even wrote a song about it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UsR9Ap41R8
...but it's often quite close.
The disregard for quantifiable relationships here is silly. Screaming correlationisnotcausation is exactly like screaming, "Just because there's smoke doesn't mean there's fire." That can be true, in a limited number of cases. In the vast majority of cases, smoke does correctly imply fire, and a strong correlation often correctly implies causation.
Can there be outliers? Sure. Can there be a third-party cause for the correlation? Sure. Is the most likely explanation often the most accurate one? You bet.
My old stats prof used to say that the causal link between smoking and lung cancer has never been proven - never run the double-blinds, etc. However, it is correlated beyond any reasonable doubt. Sometimes enough really is enough.
-High Caffeine Consumption Causes hallucinations
-Tampa, Fl has the highest caffeine consumption in the US
-Tampa Bay has an extremely high scientologist population
It all makes sense now.
Similes are like metaphors
There is no mention of the control group. Only a polling of 200 students, and most likely ALL of them use caffine. Is it really that surprising to find that large percentages of our population feel like they "sense the dead" or feel as if the are "being persecuted?" Also, would the 200 students who are using a drug (caffeine) to increase performance disclose the use of other (psychotropic) drugs (marijuana).
Well, at least that is what my college experience consisted of...a pretty steady diet of caffeine, marijuana, and alcohol...and maybe even a few harder things occasionally. Shit my boss is looking, he is trying to fire me. Where is my coffee? Oh, fuck, the voices are back...I hear dead people, you know.
"There ought to be limits to freedom." -George W. Bush
I drink a two litre of Coke daily. Not the same one...that'd be gross. I don't have hallucinations, visual or auditory. I do have tinnitus, but that comes from listening to Knopfler's intro to Money for Nothing at maximum volume on my headphones when I was in high school.
Alot more people than you think have "hallucinations" and don't know it, mostly because they don't know what a hallucination actually is.
If we were going to believe Hollywood, visual hallucinations would be things like people who aren't there or ants or stuff from an acid trip. Auditory hallucinations would only be things like hearing voices.
But visual could be things like seeing shadows moving in the corners of your eyes, or a flash of color or movement. Auditory could be hearing music in your mind for just a second.
Wikipedia has a fairly decent overview of it.
So you have to have hallucinations to begin with? Well then I wouldn't need the coffee then, would I? Scam!!
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
I drink three cups of coffee so I can fight off the people I think are trying to get me.
Damnit... I got a french press for christmas and was lovin it.
Tina Fey was right: if you're feeling too good about yourself, the internet is always there to bring you back down.
From the episode where Grandpa is left to look after the kids.
Grandpa: Are you sure your mother lets you drink coffee?
Bart (hands shaking with outstretched cup): For the last time, yes!!
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
I think they are confusing coffee with pot, jmtc...
growing up I used to put away a 12 pack of mt dew everyday, and now as an adult I easily drink 10 cups of coffee a day (I've got a 22 ounce coffee cup too!) I've never had hallucinations unless I specifically invoked them through other means. Anyone ever wonder if the college students were on any drug, other than caffeine?
Not to mention I'm not high stung, and I don't think anyone is out to get me, and yes I do sleep just fine at night.
Maybe for the general case this study is correct (and displays what everyone already knew) But in my case it's totally inaccurate. I'd like to see this study preformed on professional developers (such as myself) I bet the results would be totally different. Then again maybe I've built up such a tolerance to caffeine that it just doesn't phase me any more.
I need TP for my bunghole.
It turns out that one thing that brings together the radical leaders of both political spectrums really is a good cup of Joe.
This is my sig.
The telegraph is wrong once again... Nobody talked about 3 cups but 7 cups of instant coffee. Here is the study from a more reliable source
For awhile I was drinking around 6 cups of tea at work and like 3 litres of Red Bull in the evening and yes if you do keep it up then it fucks with you but worse yet is it can constipate you.
Maybe they just became more acutely aware of the researchers out to get them.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
I have been drinking coffee (fully caffeinated) regularly, more than 3 cups a day, for the last 40 years. I don't hallucinate, am not paranoid, nor does coffee keep me awake at night. Maybe the study should have been conducted as to the more likely possibility that today's students have weaker constitutions? I'm just sayin'.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7827761.stm reports 7 cups of daily intake of "instant" coffee. I am not sure why the header mentions three cups...
I was most gratified to read in the art
Will you two SHUT UP?? I'm trying to type here!
NO YOU CAN'T! Now shut up!
I was most gratified to read in the article that auditory hallucinations are not unusual.
But THC ain't patentable, so it stays illegal.
And corn makes growers a lot of money, even though hemp is a better source for biofuel.
And the wood-pulp based paper industry is happy with its methods, even though canvas lasts hundreds of years and doesn't go yellow.
Sorry. I really could care less about what people choose to ingest/not ingest/etc. But for someone modded *insightful* you really have a pretty stark contradiction there. Let me see if I follow you: Marijuana "can't be patented" so it stays illegal. And yet corn and wood pulp growers are raking it in?
Gotcha.
In further news it has been found that watching adult films, along with diet and excercise, can cause weight loss.
Of course just about ANYTHING along with diet and excercise can cause weight loss. If the article is to be looked at in a rational sense we come back to the same old adage:
CORRELLATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
it's not full of bugs now, before or ever we've all been imagining it
I just tell the spiders they're not real. If they disagree, I smoosh them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually I drank 2 jugs of coffee before I got to bed yesterday. I had interesting dreams about a new holographic interface I had to learn, but it ended up in holographic porn. But I don't think that had something to do with caffeine. Now please excuse me while I'm encrypting my hard drives..
I drink about 40 FL oz. of Mountain Dew on a daily basis.
Should I be hallucinating like crazy? Should I be more paranoid than I already am?
Caffeine is not a hallucinagen ... it is simply a stimulant. I love crap research like this because it is simply designed to make people fearful. Folks, every other week somebody says chocolate is a carinogen. On the off weeks, it is suddenly a powerful antioxident. Just because "research" was done on a topic or issue doesn't mean that the research is remotely valid. Precious little research is truely objective and you have to consider the source of the research and motivations of those conducting it. This research could well have been done as a "promotion" for a different kind of stimulant that a company hopes to market successfully. The term, "research," has been used unscrupulously by marketing departments hoping to make *lots* of money at the potential expense of your health. Look at Archer Daniels Midland's aggressive push of corn syrup as an example. They had bogus research and lobby to show that Stevia (a naturally occuring, alternative sweetner to surgar) could be potentially cancerous. Oooops, turns out that the real poision is what ADM wants to sell and make millions at it.
That's nothing. After 100 cups of coffee, your body is so sped up by the caffeine that time slows to a halt and you can rescue several people, a robot, and a crustacean from a burning building.
I know it's true. I saw it on tv.
Appropriate?: http://www.bbspot.com/News/2002/12/coffee.html
"Use cases are fairy tales..." I. S. 2005
You'd probably die of water intoxication long before caffeine poisoning with that sort of coffee habit. 10 liters is about right for an adult, though the 3 hour time period might be a bit long given the well-known diuretic effect of coffee.
I'm sorry, but I have to run from the dinosaurs now. Pesky things.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Reading all the responses here, it sure looks like different folks have widely different reactions to caffeine -- no big surprise, but big medical in the media has yet to understand that everyone's a bit different, and no, one size definitely does not fit all.
Anyway, the one time in my life that I *have* hallucinated was after drinking far too much of the witches' brew coffee at a local greasy spoon, the dregs of the pot that had been sitting on the burner all afternoon and had simmered down to sludge by just before closing time when we usually showed up. I had maybe half a dozen cups of that, and my friend and I were having a ball talking about all sorts of wackiness. Once the diner kicked us out to close, we went driving on back country roads like usual to catch some air in some places and continue talking.
Aside from general perceptual distortions, every time we passed a Mobil gas station, I felt like I was getting sucked into the red "O" in the signs.
All the winding roads soon made me carsick though, and we pulled over. By that point it was around 2AM or so. The local sherriff pulled over a few minutes later -- "All right boys, whaddya been drinking?"
Both of us: "Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffeesir, toomuchcoffee!" ... It's 2AM. Go home."
Sherriff: "Huh... well, I'm'a have to give you a breathalyzer test."
(given the look on the sherriff's face, we must have scored negative values)
"Boys,
But yeah, the next day was unpleasant, even without the M&Ms. :-P
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
You're being sarcastic, but several years ago I was living in Japan, and saw something awfully close to what you describe.
The government in the US at the time was trying to figure out what to do with the settlement of the Big Tobacco lawsuit, and many states were putting together anti-smoking campaigns. I don't know if you've ever been to Japan, but folks there are big smokers.
So some mid-level bureaucrat in the Ministry of Health and Welfare was interviewed on the evening news, and asked if the government in Japan would also be engaging in anti-smoking efforts. With a level of candour unthinkable on the other side of the pond, this fellow plainly stated that no, Japan's government would not, because smoking would help reduce the aging population and thereby limit the ultimate public expenditures required to care for a large elderly population.
Japan. What else can I say. :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Sorry to add to the tide of "I remember this one time" posts but I had to share this one.
A buddy of mine decided to experiment with a dose of LSD against pretty much everyone who told him he was being an idiot. He dropped it, and awhile later we all went out to grab dinner at a local diner in Chicago. Almost as if on queue, a group of 20 people from a country/western place came in in full costume (poofy dresses, cowboy hats, chaps, etc) and sat at a bunch of tables across from us. One of them had apparently won a cardboard cutout of a life-size Elvis. They'd propped it up against the wall and kept joking to it during their meal.
There was a silent agreement at the table to pretend everything was normal and to not make any mention of this to our LSD-tripping buddy, who spent the entire time checking and rechecking to see if Elvis was really in the building with a bunch of cowboys.
No hallucinations that I remember, but it was not fun.
My girlfriend at the time had a couple of caffeine pills, which for some reason I remembered from my youth as not having much of an effect on me. So I downed them both, then went home and proceeded to make and drink an entire pot of black coffee for my all-nighter.
By 4am I was shaking like a junkie. I was having hot flashes and cold sweats, alternately. I felt so nauseated that I went to the bathroom repeatedly and stuck my finger down my throat, praying that something would come up. Nothing did but a little bit of brown sludge. My head was spinning. My teeth were clenching. My eyes were darting around. I felt confused, like I couldn't really concentrate on anything.
Did I mention that I needed to be at the airport by 6am for a business trip?
On the cab ride to the airport, I was hanging my head out the window like a dog. The cabbie kept shooting me dirty looks, like I was going to puke in his cab. Sorry pal; believe me, I wish I could. First thing I did at the airport was make a beeline for the men's room and get down on my knees again. I felt really bad for the poor guy in the stall next to me who had to listen to my retching as I dry-heaved. Still, it didn't help. In the mirror I looked like a wax manikin soaked in sweat.
On the plane I started to feel better. "Oh thank god," I thought. "What I need now is water... maybe even a little orange juice." I had the flight attendant bring me a beverage. Mistake. Two sips in, and the barf bag was in my lap. Lucky for everyone on the flight, though -- I still couldn't puke.
Anyway, this went on for the entire day. When I got back home from my trip at about 9pm, I went straight to bed, still shaking, still pale, still sweaty. And I lay there. Probably it was about four hours before I could get to sleep.
The next day I told my girlfriend about my ordeal and she explained that she'd thought it was a little strange that I'd taken both of the caffeine pills at once. When she was driving cross-country from New Jersey, she said, she'd usually take half a pill with a little bit of water.
So I learned my lesson -- but the upshot was that I'm not sure I was ever the same again. An ounce or two into a strong cup of Pete's coffee would almost throw me into a panic attack, because I could feel all the effects coming on again. One time, the coffee machine at the office was broken so that it wasn't sending the full amount of water through the grounds -- in other words, you ended up with a strong pot. I didn't realize this, and I ended up having to go home early.
So, to the parent's point: Hell yeah it's a drug, and some people mess around with it too lightly.
Breakfast served all day!
If the amount (7 whole nutmegs?) is no exaggeration, your friend is lucky he didn't kill himself. Nutmeg is quite toxic at high doses.
And no, the list of symptoms doesn't sound like "a whole barrel-load of fun" to me either. :-P
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
The War on Drugs needs to be extended to hallucinatory drugs like caffeine. Hippies arguing that "coffee" is made from natural ingredients will have to be brought in line. Cocaine too is derived from natural ingredients. Coffee beans (the basis of soon-to-be illegal home-made hallucinogens) will likewise be banned, along with all apparatus to extract the drug from its source materials.
Companies like Starbucks will have to become "clean" on short notice, or face huge fines and see their management become the target of criminal prosecution. Well-monitored sales of "decaf" might be allowed for the time being to allow addicts a period in which to detox themselves.
Theine too (found in tea) must be banned, along with tea leaves, teapots, and tea strainers. The sale of electric kettles may have to be regulated as well. Licenses for the operation of said electric kettles, microwave ovens, and stoves are being considered for those with clean criminal records.
Overseas countries will be put on notice that failure to institute proper control of the above substances, their natural precursors, and apparatus to refine said hallucinatory drugs will be viewed as criminally irresponsible, may result in trade sanctions.
When it comes to War on Drugs there can be no compromise!
Oo, I like that measure. So how many is it?
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
A very reasonable post, right until you made the leap of faith about diet sodas being bad. Your whole previous post was about sugar content, so how does that reasoning go?
Some years ago, an acquaintance of mine and his druggie friends decided that, since many other drugs have differing effects between the natural plant form, ingested refined powder, and smoked refined powder, it might be interesting to try smoking caffeine. So they crunched up some caffeine pills and smoked them.
Results: You do not want to do this. Do not try it at home, do not try it at work, do not try it with other trained professionals... He said that all the bad effects of regular caffeine abuse show up very quickly - shaking, jitters, nausea, headaches. It was interesting to have done it, but it was Not Fun. On the other hand, he was young enough at the time and had sufficient practice with other substances that are Not Good Ideas either that he didn't get a heart attack, and if there were any hallucinations added to the paranoia, they didn't lead to any additional dangerous behaviour, but YMMV.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
and tell me I don't think about coffee 7/11.
(ok, so trimethylxanthine wouldn't fit ^_^)
Now that is truly strange. Who's behind this??
"Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes." - Confucius
show of hands ... how many people are going to go out and do exactly this thanks to this advice?
this is exactly why marijuana should be legal. Because not being able to get ahold of it leads to really stupid human tricks.
caffeine doesn't fuck you up.
And after reading this article, the policies of the Bush administration, Dick Cheney's behavior in particular, suddenly makes sense. ;^)
For the most part, LSD doesn't cause true hallucinations -- it distorts things.
those things are really there, man! Remember that matter is mostly made up of air. When you see the wood grain on your desk flowing, you're literally seeing the molecules in the desk bouncing around. When you see your face melt off and drip sizzling on the countertop when you look in the mirror, you are literally watching your personality dissolve into the phantasmagoric infinities of nothingness. It's real, man, real I tell you!!! Hey who the fuck let all these bats in the room??
...lets you move at supersonic speeds like The Flash...or Fry.
As the anti-drunk-driving people say, coffee won't make you any less drunk, it'll just make you a wide-awake drunk. Mixing enough caffeine with your booze makes it easier to get far more drunk that you would if you weren't having the caffeine, or at least to not notice when you should have stopped, potentially leading to experiences like yours (though in your case the caffeine may have added to the hallucinations.) Red Bull and vodka seems to be a popular variant on that, but even rum and coke can do it. (Brain Wash and mixed drinks appear to be a bad combination as well, even if it's the red kind as opposed to the evil blue-dye version :-)
My favorite variant on that is Irish Coffee - since it's hot, I get hit with alcohol vapors right away, but it probably makes it something that I drink slowly and don't have too many of, so I haven't hit the bad-feedback-loop with it.
For some reason people attribute evil-don't-do-that-again-ness more to tequila than to other liquors; I don't know if it's something actually about the tequila, or that it's often mixed in smooth-tasting fruity drinks that are easy to overconsume, or if it's that many people first encounter tequila at parties in early adulthood, when they don't have much experience with drinking and haven't learned not to overindulge yet, as opposed to something like beer that fills you up if you're drinking a lot.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
you made them all up.
My brother did this once with caffeine pills when he was in his teens. He was trying to work but it wound up making him nauseous and jittery, and he started freaking out.
He somehow decided that he could mitigate the effects of caffeine with alcohol. So he hit Dad's liquor cabinet. Half a bottle of scotch (the good stuff too!) later, he was breaking things and stumbling around the house.
Our parents were not happy when they got home that night.
But you will feel that way so it just make them more likely to succeed!
Coffee and nicotine together, in massive college-student sized doses, make a potent psychoactive witch's brew. I used to smoke 2 to 4 packs of Winstons daily (back when a pack cost 50 cents!), and drink eight or nine cups of Folger's daily. The result is not exactly Fry in coffee nirvana, but it is extraordinary and hardly noticeable until you've quit both for a few years. Then you feel like you've taken stupid pills for the next eight years. You never do mellow out, just get clinically depressed.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
At least with most popular hallucinogens, the parts of your brain that see things and the parts that tell you they're real are triggered differently, so you generally know. I've seen medical research that says that some of them (I think it was DMT?) trigger your reality-detection functions fairly heavily, so the things you see look more real, but in my limited experiences with LSD and mushrooms during my misspent youth, you could easily tell that some of the things you were seeing are not regular reality, though you probably won't notice all of them, and some things are just cooler than they normally would be. (Like trees - they're Big! and Green! And have lots and lots of leaves making friendly faces!)
On the other hand, there are some environments that are different enough from regular reality that it's hard to tell which things *aren't* caused by hallucinations, like that Grateful Dead show - the dwarf with the misshapen shaved head juggling blobby things that looked like his head was really there, and the really really skinny girl twirling shiny things who was tripping too, and was everything extra purple and green and freaky because of the shrooms, or was it just that kind of crowd?
But then there was that obvious caffeine hallucination that the customer in Europe you dragged yourself out of bed to call at 5am wanted the project delivered three weeks earlier, and needed you to configure Feature Z which you'd repeatedly told them wasn't going to be ready until late next year; that couldn't possibly have happened.
According to people like Terence McKenna, it's fairly standard for people who take ayahuasca or DMT to see dome-shaped things and talk with gnome-like beings, which sounds a lot like true hallucinations to me. (On the other hand, I'm not sure that it exactly sounds like _recreation_...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Well at least they layed down a rational reason and were 100% open and honest about it. Which is more then can be said for just about every other government in the world.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
As Mikael said, there are very few drugs that can fit an effective dose onto a square of blotter paper, and most of them are far more obscure and expensive than LSD, which is pretty cheap stuff to make. It's not at all the same market forces as lacing marijuana with PCP to make it seem stronger or diluting it with oregano, or selling meth as ecstasy. If somebody's going to try to rip off their LSD customers, they usually do so by selling blotter paper with no drugs on it at all, because they're not expecting the customer to see them again.
Studies of the quality of street drugs have occasionally found other drugs in tablet-form LSD, which isn't very common, but with blotter paper it's usually either actual LSD, or else it's all or part LSA because they didn't cook their LSD quite right (which is pretty much the only reason for making LSA.) Comments about LSD being "speedy" are usually either because the dose is too low to trigger hallucinations or because it's too much LSA.
I get the little shadow movement thing, or perhaps less frequenly some little blue "tracers" or "zoomies" (remniscent of a cameraflash burning a retina, but more sporadic and shorter lasting when they occur.) However they have nothing to do with caffiene or any other drug intake. Instead it's a clue that I'm suffering from bad sleep deprivation, and I need to get my ass to bed so I can defrag my brain while catching up on some Z's. I suspect if I forced myself to stay awake longer in that dazed state, I could probably start seeing some even crazier shit - but the irritable mood I get into by then probably wouldn't help for such an experiment.
The only affect I can get from caffiene that might be related, is that it doesn't really help much with the sleep-deprivation part.
From TFA:
The new study also showed that people who had a high caffeine intake were NOT more likely to think that others were out to get them
I don't need 3 cups of coffee to know people are out to get me
"Theobromine is the major alkaloid in cacao (Theobroma cacao). Caffeine, on the other hand, is only to be found in cacao in very small quantities and theophylline only in trace amounts."
Off topic, but good to know: Cacao beans must be fumigated for pests when they exit their country of origin and when they enter the USA. They must also be fumigated once a year thereafter. Because they remain usable for food products for up to 20 years, your chocolate may have been fumigated dozens of times.
A few companies offer solutions to this problem:
http://www.kallari.com/chocolate2.html
The Japanese government, when it comes to tobacco control, has a severe conflict of interest. Japan Tobacco, the major (more than 60% of the market) supplier of cigarettes in Japan, is 50% owned by the government -- it used to be two-thirds government owned.
Given the degree of tobacco use in Japan, I'd wager that the profits earned through tobacco sales more than compensate for the consequent heath-care costs in the population. Further, the long incestuous relationship between government, public service bureaucracy and industry is most definitely expressed in the connections between the Ministry of Finance and JT: as far as I know, every president of JT has come from the top end of the Ministry of Finance, in the amakudari tradition.
The mid-level bureaucrat in question I doubt was expressing an honest opinion on the aging demographic, but rather was trying to justify a very cozy but entirely medically irresponsible government relationship.
Of course quite a lot of us consume coffee because we enjoy drinking it. Same with tea. And Snus. This is just another "Research Paper" turned into tabloid journalism for those who enjoy stimulants of a different ilk with less flavour.
/.Vitriol will produce hallucinations in the healthiest of individuals.
Generates clicks too, one should imagine but without them, none of us would exist in SlashDotReality and three cups of
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
And the first thing my doctor said when I was diagnosed was, "avoid caffeine." I know every time I drink more than a cup of coffee worth of caffeine, I feel loopy and anxious.
Damn. And all these years I thought those colleges at work were out to get me, while it was the coffee machine all along...
How the hell can you intravenously administer a solution of 3.2g caffeine accidentally? It would need around 100ml water, given its solubility 0f 25mg/ml at room temperature.
3-5 cups of coffee a day reduces the risk of getting alzheimers when you grow older:
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=597&a=873898
(in Swedish of course)
so... hallucinations or dementia?
what was the first option again? oh and why is there a penguin on my couch?
- I choked on the red pill and now I'm stuck in limbo
I was young, had been up all night and was not used to drinking coffee. Before going to work, I drank a large cup of very strong coffee... All day long, I kept asking my co-worker "what did you say?" and always got "nothing" as an answer. Sometimes I had also the feeling that somebody tapped on my shoulder. That really freaked me out. I'm glad it never happened to me since.
Chaffir: Russian prisoner's DIY drug. Take 1:1 amount of water and black tea by volume, boil, replace tea with fresh one, boil again. Don't try to sweaten this with sugar - it may damage heart.
No f****** way!
--exa--
Grab a java, it's good for your brain
(As a Ruby and Perl programmer I have to disagree and state that Java is very bad for the health of your brain but I could be wrong and/or hallucinating ;-) )
Back to my Gaggia.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Does this article really exist or it's just a hallucin... OH NOT AGAIN!!!
So THAT's why the purple republican monkey with the knife disappeared from the office. I feel so much better now.
Thing is, are they dying earlier because of all that smoking? Back in the 1980s the stats must have been something like > 60% of males smoking.
;).
They still seem to be living rather long, maybe the tobacco they use in Japan isn't grown using as much phosphate fertilizer and so less radioactive (and thus less carcinogenic)?
Anyway, I once told a smoking friend my reasoning on why smoking wasn't so bad for everyone else (and I might have even thanked him), and for some reason he immediately tried to quit
I personally think that people legally regarded as adults should be allowed to smoke and there should be places readily available for them to smoke in (in some cases they should have to pay for them - either through taxes or other means). However they should also be informed and educated about the full consequences of their decision to smoke (including addiction, successful quitting rate).
INCREASING hallucinations? Since when did hallucinating become commonplace? Worry about the drugs first, kids. (And caffeine is a stimulant, not a hallucinogen. The wording of the title seems to suggest otherwise.)
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