3 Cups of Coffee Increases Hallucinations 628
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.'"
Re:60 cups (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a big difference between feeling anxious and hallucinating. I'm just surprised it took only 3 cups.
I call BS (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Wow, bad reporting or bad science? (Score:5, Interesting)
And severe paranoia, as well. Once I been up and about for just over 70 hours and that is _not_ healthy. Slept for 17 hours after that. Never going to that again, it was living hell.
Try mixing it with real psych problems! (Score:4, Interesting)
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 ;)
Re:60 cups (Score:5, Interesting)
source [xs4all.nl]
But its on the internet, so its gotta be true! Right?!?! Take it with a grain of salt and a cup o' joe.
So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can hallucinate using just a radio and a ping pong ball [boston.com]
Re:60 cups (Score:3, Interesting)
Our coffee extratcs more caf, but with less coffee flavour, while they extract flavour with less caffeine..
[citation needed]
Anyway, I *know* that nowadays you can get coffee in the US instead of just tinted water.
Your coffee extracts more caffeine ? Passing a litre of water through a spoonful of coffee that's barely enough for a cup extracts more caffeine ? Well, ok, whatever.
Yes, in the "US oriented chains" over here, if you sound US American, of if you speak English, they might ask you if you want your coffee "US style" or "American style", in which case they'll just dilute it in 4 or 5 times as much water.
Note that here in France, expressos will have about 175% the water they have in Italy. We're too far north.
Visual and Auditory Hallucinations may vary (Score:4, Interesting)
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 ...
Re:60 cups (Score:4, Interesting)
Freezing in airtight container is of best for storage. Failing that, airtight containers are next. Refrigeration of course will pick up humidity like you said.
My morning routine is this:
Get filtered water from fridge pitcher and start heating to a boil.
Get beans from airtight ziploc bag out of freezer, take what I need, press air out and reseal.
Grind beans at coarse grind, which is around the time the water is boiling. Into the french press and 3 minutes later, coffee.
Re:the words "no shit" (Score:1, Interesting)
How does it cause constipation when it's a laxative and diuretic?
Correlation is not causation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wow, bad reporting or bad science? (Score:3, Interesting)
"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 average human can and will hallucinate without the aid of chemical substance, lack of sleep, or stress. They are just more likely to under those conditions.
What could be the case is that the human mind is not really comprehending 100% of the data input correctly. There are not enough neurons to process all of the light photons that enter your eye so your brain just makes a guesstimation. This is why looking those optical illusion pictures on the web make you feel funny or make you believe in something (like that size difference or color difference optical illusions) that is not true.
Which really might mean that the hallucination was always there but the person might just not take notice until they are under conditions which makes such visualization stand out.
However, often times it is very hard to get someone to differentiate between a hallucination and a false memory.
They claim they might have seen something that did not exist, but did a faulty brain really see it or did it simply have a faulty memory?
Maybe (Score:1, Interesting)
Maybe the coffee just makes them open their eyes, and see reality ( Oh No ! )
Re:60 cups (Score:2, Interesting)
Had a group project due, and I'd agree to handle all the techy DVD authoring if the rest of the group did all the materials.
They did, but only got the last bits to me the day before it was due in. So I had about 18 hours to do the whole project (minus the images and text).
It helped, in that one of the people in my group had to pick up the DVD in person as I was too ill to even walk to Uni and hand it in myself.
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)
Once upon a morning a long time ago, at an ISP now long since defunct, I drank 4 espressos, 6 double cappuccinos and a full pot of my regular strong coffee. I also had a "coffee bean" candy bar in addition to a couple really rich chocolate eclairs. I actually got a nose bleed, but no hallucinations.
OTOH: My sister and one of her friends once drank 3 cans (each) of Jolt cola, a 2L of Mountain Dew (each) and then split a few full 1lb bags of Plain Chocolate M&Ms. The hallucinated for at least an hour until they crashed - and hard. Probably needless to say: they both felt sick for a full day afterward.
Not everyone hallucinates... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:RTFA (Score:2, Interesting)
I once spent an evening with friends (this was a long time ago, mind you) drinking Jolt and tequila. Don't ask.
I really felt nothing more than simply drunk that night, but about 4AM the next morning I woke up to see writhing intestines and other assorted entrails strewn all over the floor. I had to step between them to go be violently sick in the bathroom, and they had gone by the time I got back to bed. But the intense feeling of mind-numbing terror was such that I couldn't sleep for hours. Neither my roommate nor our co-conspirators experienced anything of the kind. We eventually decided it must have been my already-high caffeine intake, combined with the booze and the extra caffeine spike from the Jolt.
Haven't touched tequila since, and I've gone easier on the caffeine, too...
Control? (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:60 cups (Score:2, Interesting)
Wow thanks for making me realize how much I miss BC aspirin powder :P
I can't find the stuff in stores any longer. Now I need to find it online and order some. For me this stuff was one of the best ways to get rid of headaches. It was a decent mix of caffeine (only 33 mg) & aspirin. You could rub it into your gums to help "jump start" the relief. I'm guessing you could also snort it, but I was never brave enough.
This isn't out of the realm of possibility. (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org] has a fairly decent overview of it.
Re:60 cups (Score:1, Interesting)
and what about me? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Wow, bad reporting or bad science? (Score:2, Interesting)
lack of sleep will cause severe paranoia as well
When did the U.S. last sleep?
Be a patriot! Smoke and die for your country! (Score:5, Interesting)
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,
Caffeine abuse via smoking (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Look at this and tell me (Score:1, Interesting)
Caffeine and Alcohol often mix badly (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention you will sleep a lot better!!!
I am\was in the same boat as you. Besides gaining weight, I also thought that I could go to sleep at night with no problems. Sure, I would "go to bed" but after I laid in bed for 45 minutes I would finally go to sleep. That is if I did not have any types of anxiety issues. I thought this was normal behavior because I have been drinking Pepsi like water for my whole adult life.
Now that I have quit all caffeine, I am astonished at the difference! First off, going to sleep takes all of about 10 minutes. Secondly, no more anxiety attacks! Words really can't describe the difference. It is wonderful to go to bed and actually fall asleep.
I am amazed how many people say "Oh, I can drink 13 cans of soda a day and go to sleep with no issues". I have friends and family that were prescribed medication to sleep. One of them was actually taking the sleeping pills with Pepsi! I tell them about my changes and they blow me off like I am crazy!
I was able to convince one of my friends that I really was not crazy and this would would help. I let her know that she could drink all the caffeine she wanted up till 12:00pm, but after 12.. that was it. It sucks for a few weeks, but after that she was just like me.. WOW I can not believe the difference. Sleeping like a baby now!
Bottom line.. If you are like my other asshat friends and think you can drink soda and go to sleep with no issues... You have no clue what you are talking about!
It happened to me (Score:2, Interesting)