
Death by Caffeine - smallegan
http://www.energyfiend.com/death-by-caffeine
======
mrcharles
It's surprisingly easy to overdose on caffeine, regardless of if you kill
yourself though. I ended up in the hospital worried about strange heart
palpitations once. It was due to too much caffeine. Apparently a litre and a
half of pepsi plus a bag of chocolate covered espresso beans is a bad idea.

That being said, I bet almost everyone here has felt the effects of caffeine
intoxication before
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Caffeine_intoxication>). It's pretty
easy to hit a level which causes those kind of symptoms.

~~~
steveplace
I drank a case of beer and two rockstars. 8 hour later, bam! Pericarditis.

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ax0n
Of course, that only takes into account the caffeine content of a beverage
divided by the LD50 of caffeine as determined in rats (in mg/Kg)

I'm pretty sure something else would go horribly wrong before I finished off
the 150th can of red bull, for example.

~~~
tomjen3
Shouldn't it then tell you - x cups of coffee and you might be dead? It is
only LD50, after all.

~~~
tryke
It's best to be pessimistic in these endeavors.

~~~
sesqu
Pessimistic would be LD1.

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thefool
So what this is saying is that its practically impossible to achieve an LD50
dose of caffeine without pills.

~~~
billswift
Yeah, I'd be vomiting it back up long before I got to 113 cups of coffee. I
normally run about a half gallon (8 cups) a day.

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Alex3917
Drinking even a tiny fraction of that much caffeine sounds awful. Caffeine has
a terrible body load, and I'm pretty sure I'd want to die after three Red
Bulls let alone 150. Coca tea is 1000x better, and they even sell it on
Amazon:

[http://www.amazon.com/Coca-Tea-Novoandina-Yungas-
Bags/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Coca-Tea-Novoandina-Yungas-
Bags/dp/B000HAAAKI)

~~~
dmm
Bah anything that is legally sold in the US has the cocaine removed. What's
the point?

~~~
dedward
Does it? The amount of active ingrdient in your normal coca leaf (which is all
tea is) is miniscule - you need hundreds of pounds to make a gram of cocaine.
You could suck back 100 bags of tea and soak them all you want and not even
come close to getting "high" - you'd just be awake - coffee or regular
caffeine-containing tea is more dangerous than that stuff.

~~~
Alex3917
"you need hundreds of pounds to make a gram of cocaine"

I think it's actually 125 grams of leaf makes one gram of cocaine. And a cup
of coca tea is like 8% of a dose of cocaine, though it gets absorbed about
twice as slow. So it's actually really not that much different than doing
cocaine, in that the difference in dosage is only an order of magnitude,
although somehow the difference is enough to make the tea completely safe and
harmless as long as it isn't abused.

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blhack
Smallgen, are you a member of heatsync labs or something? I was over there a
couple of days ago and we randomly stumbled across this when trying to find
out how much Africola somebody could drink without dying.

Although...I did post it to my website too...

Do I actually have people _using_ my site!?!?

/kidding, probably just coincidence.

~~~
smallegan
Nope, I actually just googled how much caffeine was in a couple of energy
drinks today and I came upon that site and the death by caffeine calculator
and thought it was worth sharing.

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epochwolf
> There's no caffeine in Fresca, so that won't kill you. You can go for death
> by sugar intake, though.

I thought Fresca was sugar free... death by sugar substitute?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And it thinks there IS caffeine in A&W Cream Soda. Hm.

~~~
jat850
These things usually vary by region or country. For example, in Canada, they
only very recently (or will be soon, I can't recall for sure) lifted
restrictions on caffeine in non-colas. Previously, things like Mountain Dew,
Sprite, 7-up, etc., could not contain caffeine.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Mountain Dew without caffeine! I knew the Canadians couldn't be trusted.

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edkennedy
What about the timeframe.. Is that all at once, or in a day?

~~~
felideon
About page -> What is the time frame of the Death Calculators?

[http://www.energyfiend.com/2006/08/what-time-frame-for-
the-d...](http://www.energyfiend.com/2006/08/what-time-frame-for-the-death-by-
caffeine-calculator)

~~~
TallGuyShort
Summary: all at once. That would be one heckuva bathroom break.

