What time frame for the Death by Caffeine Calculator
The one question, by orders of magnitude, that gets asked here more than any other is: “It says that 10 bottles would kill me, but is that over a month, a day, a lifetime?!”
Let’s apply some common sense to this.
If you died after a lifetime consumpution of 200 cans of soda, most Americans wouldn’t make it past age 14. That’s clearly not the answer.
If you died after 200 cans of soda in a month, well, most of the loyal readers here might not have made it past age 30. It’s painfully easy to drink 6 cans daily, especially if you’re trying to stay awake to finish a project. Conversely, it’s about 142 cups of coffee for me. That’s under 5 per day. I can drink more than that with few side effects. It’s not monthly.
Weekly? That’s just a stupid measurement.
Daily? That’s actually believable. If you managed to ingest that much caffeine in one day, you won’t be feeling so hot. In fact you may be in serious trouble. Not everyone’s liver works at the same speed, and some people have reported feeling the effects of caffeine for a full 12 hours - for most people this is more like 4-5 hours.
Here’s the answer: IT’S HOW MUCH YOU HAVE TO HAVE IN YOUR SYSTEM AT ONE TIME.
Yes, it means that it’s practically impossible to kill yourself with caffeine. Practically. Don’t actually try it! After 1 gram, you’ll be a sad panda. If you manage to even challenge the number, you’ll be a schizophrenic, crazed panda, or a passed out panda. And if you’re passed out, you might get your wallet stolen.
88 Comments
That just means that after 4 hours, half of whats in your system will be gone. So if you take 400 mg wait 4 hours then take another 400 the total in your system would be 600 not 400.
i drink 10 cups of coffee
The half-life is true, Scott, but “in your system at one time” does not mean how much you’d have to consume in 4 hours. It’s how you much you’d have to have in your system AT ONE TIME, i.e. INSTANTANEOUSLY. Just because the half-life is 4 hours doesn’t mean it all just hangs around until 4 hours pass then it magically disappears from the body; it’s constantly being broken down.
Isn’t this the LD50 (lethal dose 50) of caffiene? That would mean you would have a 50% chance of dying if you had that much. There is a big chance that you would risk serious injury, or permanent disability even if you had much, much less than this. According to Erowid, anything over 3 grams (6 Starbucks grand coffees downed in succession) could kill you. Heck, I bet you could get hospitalized for less than that. I’ve heard of teen girls downing 16 (200mg) caffeine pills and kicking the bucket. That ends up being a little over 3 grams.
So, basically it would be pretty impossible to accidentally die of caffeine intake. No one would drink that much caffeine unless it was on a dare or part of a hazing ritual. But, hazing usually is alcohol not caffeine. If for some odd reason they were using caffeine the “victim” would pass out before they finished.
that’s freaky
Is it possible to drink 6 Red Bulls in 10 minutes and die?
Possibly, but I’ve done so with no ill effects.
The fluid would get you before the caffine. Your brain would swell and, well, you die.
0.9 grams of caffine was put into a syringe by one infrequent drug user for a new drug user.
That was the first & last time for the new drug user; dead within 4 minutes.
So, now ya now.
Mountain Dew is my down-fall O_o . . . . Lol, I never knew about how much caffeine can affect you until I visited this website! This site is very informative.
one time i ate an entire box of monster………..for a year
twice
-gaps-
Death?
Z O M G
coffee is my downfall.^^
Good grief, I may have been dead since finals week 1958 and not known it. I even smoked Galoise in those days (just showing off) which probably amplified the caffeine effect by a factor of 10. From now on it’s Ovaltine for me, and with enough labels I can send for the Captain Midnight decoder whistle which may come in handy in the days ahead, particularily if they bury me prematurely due to this caffeine coma I feel coming on.
o.o
I’m probably gonna die soon.
I’m only 11 and I drink energy drinks like a fish drinks water.
Well, that explanation makes perfect sense… but uh, the crazed panda thing sounds like fun. 903 cans of Socko… Here I come. (Damn that would be an expensive suicide! 903cans*$2.50each=$2257.5 total.. Yikes!)
P.S. Thanks for all the info and the site as a whole. Very informative, and is the catalouge of information I have been searching for.
Nevermind.. I re-checked.. it’s only 93 cans… so only $232.5 total… still expensive… but more affordable and perhaps novel.
*Please note: I’m really not suicidal.. Just one of those “what ifs” that often freak people out, so it’s fun to use.
The timeframe depends on a lot of different factors, but overall can vary from 10 minutes to 20 hour.
It is believed if you have a low tollorance to caffine, the LD-50 of caffine can be 250mg in a 10-30mins.
Scientific studies has determined 150mg/kg is an average LD-50, if you about 50kg your LD-50 is 7.5g or if you are 80kg you need 12g for an LD-50. But this may also vary how strong your liver is, there has been a report that a man has suvived from 24g.
This also depends on the time it takes to digest, in most humans, it takes 5-6hours to digest caffine, but if you are pregnaut, it can take 18-20hours.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to get an LD-50 from drinking energy drinks, coffee etc, no matter how much you drink, your stomach WILL not be big enough to hold in about 10g of caffine, 200mg of coffee (100mg caffine) X 50 = 5000mg * 1/0.93 / 1000 = 5.3 liters… a human body can hold about 2-4 liters.
So the only way you are going to get LD-50 is by consuming pure caffine, usually by pills. if you have 100mg pills, you need 50 pills for a LD-50 (50% of a lethal dose) or 200mg pills you need 25 of them.
At about 1g of caffine in about a 1-1.5hours you will notice symptoms of Acute caffeine poisoning gives early symptoms of anorexia, tremor, and restlessness.
At about 5g in about 1hour+, you will notice nausea, vomiting, and confusion.
7-8g you may have delirium, seizures, and hyperglycemia.
10-12g (LD-50) usually at 2hours+ you may notice nervousness, irritability, anxiety, muscle twitching, insomnia, palpitations and hyperreflexia.
So the average human has about 10g in 4-6hour period, in about 2 hours you will have a 50% chance of becoming a fatal victom of caffine.
Woops, I screwed up my calculations on required coffee intake for LD-50, i was basing it off caffine, not including the rest (water, other coffee products)
It’s actually 200mg * 50 = 10000 * 1/0.93 = 10.753 liters = 2-5 times the size your stomach can hold.
Also the chances are GREATLY increased if you have underlaying heart conditions that you may or may not know about, so it may be possible to die from coffee, energy drinks or even coke.
Also prolonged use of high levels of caffine may decrease the needed levels for LD-50, eg you have take 5g every day for a week with an LD-50 of 10g, since your blood cells shrink from excess consumption, the next week, your LD-50 might be at 9.5g, next month at same rate (8-7g) etc. Much like how alcohol can slowly kill you.
And if you are drinking or taking over drugs, it may increase your effects of the caffine or vise-verse.
This may also cause or raise heart problems if you smoke, take other drugs or drink excess amounts of alcohol.
For a healthy adult, about 10grams of caffine in 3-6 hours (time it takes to get processed by the liver) weighing 50-66kg (200-150mg/kg) can give a LD-50 asumming that no other drugs are in the system at the time period.
Damn i must be on my way to death soon i drink like a gallon of expresso a day and im at the point that 1,500mg of caffeine then i can go right to sleep see you all where we all go when we die…..peace
I gotta have at least a morning cup a joe.
yay, that means my new found consumption of one 24 ounce can of AMP a day won’t hurt me! Does anyone else have the problem of caffeine not having any effects on your fatigue? like it doesn’t do anything for you? Yeah, for me sometimes it works the opposite way… it makes me more lethargic. yay.
40 cans of Rockstar Juiced HERE I COME! Seriously — our stomachs will explode before we even drink a tenth of the liquids required to acquire such a high amount of caffeine (especially those of you who have a 200+ can amount) in a short amount of time.
Minor correction, but LD-50 isn’t 50% of a lethal dose, it is the dose (usually in mg drug/kg body mass) needed to switch off half of the test subjects (usually not precocious, red-headed, singing orphans).
LD-50 doesn’t tell you what you really want to know though, you’d really want to know what the minimum (and maximum, if you’re the curious sort) fatal dose is in an otherwise healthy individual.
Elantrix was right about one thing though: God help you if you try to take a fatal dose of caffeine in the form of a commercially available beverage because your stomach, glomeruli, and/or bladder will be blown to ribbons if you even get a fraction of the way beyond the amount your body will try to tell you to stop at.
Just as a psa, DO NOT — DO NOT — DO NOT consume any appreciable quantity of caffeine if you are taking (or have taken within the previous 7-14 days) a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI). “Caffeine interacts with MAOIs (including drugs with MAOI activity such as furazolidone, isoniazid, INH, linezolid, procarbazine, and high doses of yohimbine). Dangerous cardiac arrhythmias or severe hypertension can occur because of the potentiation of caffeine’s sympathomimetic effects by MAOIs.” (Clinical Pharmacology, 2007)
Occasionally, I come across a news report where an athlete has died from over-hydration - drinking too much water messed up their electrolytes. So, it would probably be more likely that you would die from that before you would die from an OD of caffeine if you drank only caffeinated beverages.
(There was also a recent article about a woman who died from a radio contest where people tried to see who can drink the most water without having to go to the bathroom - do a search on “hold your wee for a wii” if you want to know more)
What if someone grinded up a lot of caffeine pills equaling around 10-15g and mixed it with water. THen wouldnt they just die pretty quickly?
The most reason you would die from caffeine would be that you injested so much of it in one time that it would make your heart beat so fast it would either rupture or go out of sync and stop, hence die.
Whats the easiest way to fight a caffeine craving??
I’ve tried a lot but not much helps…
4 hours? That’s how much I get tortured everyday standing on my feet.
Can’t die easily with caffeine, but can’t stop drinking it.
So in the meantime, drinky drinky.
If caffeine does not stimulate you, i.e. Red Bull before bed has little effect, then you’re most likely A.D.D. Talk to your Doctor. You’ll have to experiment with increasing dosages, but when you find it, the difference is amazing!
I have A.D.H.D so my balance is all whacked out i took a 5 hour rush some other muscle energy drinks and a big can of monster. Went right to bed. It all helps me relax and concentrate. Basically i took ridilin since i was in 1st grade to 10th and thats pretty much speed.
My biology major roomate has informed me that the half-life of caffeine is approx. 4 hours. So it’s effectively a 4 hour window.