Comments on: It could happen to you: caffeine shock

By: Lyndzi

Lyndzi — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:51:43 +0000

i had too many red bull and cherry vodka drinks. the bartender made the drinks so weak…that i didnt get a buzz so i kept goin back to the bar for more more more….by the time i got home i couldnt sleep and my heart was beating hard and fast..i dodnt want to be alone. i couldnt sleep or relax and i hyperventilated and my hands and arms went numb. I felt like i was going to pass out. I wqent to urgent care and they told me that there was othing they could do for me…just relax and drink lots of water and wait for all the caffine to get out of my system. BE CAREFUL WITH CAFFINE!!!!!

By: havokblast

havokblast — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:57:53 +0000

One night some friends and I went out to go play putt putt and I chugged two of the Blue Demon energy drinks followed by 3 Mountain Dews. We got to the putt putt place and they were closed so we went to get ice cream and I got two scoops of espresso flavored… After we finished eating we went to Starbucks, it being around 11 pm by then and not much else open. me and one of the guys were looking at the menu and out of the blue I asked him, “What do you think 10 shots of espresso would be like?”

He answered with, I dont know… try it.”

So I did. Now I’m not a coffee type of guy so I proceeded to fill the rest of this large cup with sugar (to help improve taste). Then I chugged that in about a minute. the effects were almost instantaneous. I was shaking constantly, heart was flying, I was talking nonstop, as I was walking I could feel the blood flowing around in me and couldn’t walk in a straight line. I also raced another friend (who would not have even come close to under normal circumstances) and came within 2 inches of beating him.

Then I threw up. For the next two hours. Never did it again.

By: cm

cm — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:39:10 +0000

Tara:
I looked around and couldn’t find the caffeine content in an espresso bean (amazing the info you CAN’T find on the internet!) I did find out that caffeine has a naturally bitter taste, so that explains the bitterness of my peppermints.

By: Tara

Tara — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 03:22:15 +0000

cm:

I don’t know how much caffeine is in an espresso bean, but there isn’t that much in the peppermints. I use to have a thing of caffeinated peppermints and the back of the tin said that 6 of them equaled 1 soda.

By: Janel

Janel — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 05:35:02 +0000

One of my friends went into shock like that from taking an Excedrin. Of course, she doesn’t usually have caffeine in her system at all so that made it worse. Add on top of it 3 days of not very much sleep, lots of work, dehydration, and abnormally hot weather and it was pretty bad.

By: cm

cm — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:46:47 +0000

The first time I tried a chocolate covered espresso bean, I loved it, so bought a pound and proceeded to eat them like M&Ms. Needless to say, a little while later I thought I was going to jump out of my skin. Even though I can eat chocolate and drink coffee today, I have no desire for a chocolate covered espresso bean. Does anybody know how much caffeine is in one? Wouldn’t it be a good idea for the caffeine content to be included with the nutritional information on all the caffeinated drinks out there? I bought caffeinated mints, and wondered about little kids (or big ones) overdosing on them, but it turns out they are slightly bitter – probably a good thing.

By: Ransom

Ransom — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:56:23 +0000

These stories are all frightening and amazing — keep ‘em coming, guys! And thanks!

By: Tara

Tara — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:56:04 +0000

I’ve had an experience with caffeine once kind of like that girl’s. I just came off from a 14 hour night shift at work, and I needed to stay up the rest of the day due to my cousin being in town, so I decided to drink some caffeine and stay up. At first I drank 2 Cafe Lattes. Then I still felt sleepy so I drank 2 double shot drinks from Starbucks. A couple of hours later I drank 2 shots of espresso. About 4 hours later, after being up for a little over 24 hours, and being about an hour away from home, I drank a 24 ounce Pepsi to keep me up so I could “safely” drive home. When I got home I had been up about 26-27 hours. When I tried to calm down and go to bed I started shaking real bad. Then it started being EXTREMELY difficult to breathe. My legs were real weak, so I almost fell when I tried to get out of bed, but I managed to make it to my hallway before I couldn’t go any further. I sat down in my hallway and started to cry hysterically for no reason at all, and I couldn’t stop. My heart was also palpitating. I was convinced I was going to die right there in my hallway. So, convinced I was going to die anyway, I decided to drag myself to the kitchen and take 2 Tylenol PM’s just to see what it did. About 15-20 minutes later I was much more calm, so I went and laid down in bed and fell asleep in less than 20 minutes, woke up the next morning, and was fine. Needless to say I do NOT drink caffeine as much as I use to. I use to drink quite a bit when I worked on nights. After that I tried to quit completely, but that didn’t last too long. I’m starting to drink a bit much again. Every time I get carried away with coffee, or tea, I always think of that night.

By: Kaitie

Kaitie — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:11:15 +0000

I’ve never been a big fan of caffiene. Almost all of my friends at school are total addicts and they think I’m crazy. But I guess I’d much rather be kind of tired than get a headache from a lack of caffiene that was keeping me up.

Maybe I’ll just point them in the direction of this article the next time tehy bug me about it…

By: Leadhyena

Leadhyena — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:41:33 +0000

@Allison:
Actually it has more to do with density than it does with caffeine content. Your standard solo espresso has 100mg of caffeine, about 1/2 the amount of your common cup of Arabica coffee (BTW the wikipedia article on this is incorrect, I’ll post a correction later). A doppio espresso therefor has the same caffeine as one cup of coffee. Most of your espresso drinks usually have between 2-4 shots of espresso in them, meaning they can possibly have more caffeine than a cup of coffee.
However, much of the effect of throwing back a shot of espresso is simply due to it hitting your system faster, in much the same way that a shot of alcohol makes you intoxicated faster than a beer, even though they contain the same amount of alcohol.