DOSE:

6800 mg

oral

Caffeine

(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

[Erowid Note: The doses described in this report are potentially life threatening. The amount taken is beyond a heavy dose and could pose serious health risks or result in unwanted, extreme effects. Doses such as this have been known to cause hospitalizations and/or deaths. Sometimes extremely high doses reported are errors rather than actual doses used.]

During the summer of 2004, I was on vacation with my parents and friend, 'A', in Maui, Hawaii. I was (and still am) in a state of deep depression. For this reason I had recently started what is known as self-medicating, in the later part of my junior year of high school. I was having problems such as sleeping, concentrating, and keeping active (all signs of depression) that I decided to try pot. As I found out, it was very efficient with helping my situation and masked my mood. Eventually, I tried cigarettes with the same positive result and soon had the mindset that I would try anything that came my way. This moves us to 8 months later.

My friend, A, was a particularly good kid and never drank, smoked, nothing. However, six days before, I stole a bottle of alcohol from the ABC store (a Hawaiian version of Seven Eleven). We finally ran dry and stupid ol' me needed another fix. I remembered seeing some caffeine pills in the same ABC store the day before and decided to get some. I came up with two packages, one of No Doz and one of Vivarin, thinking that each might have different effects. Minutes later we arrived behind some restaurant in the local plaza and I proceded to down 34 pills (6,800 mg) while my friend took 4 (though he said he took many more). From what I remember, the time was about 6:30 p.m.. We strolled back to the house, expecting to feel the 'speed-like' high. Just then, we ran into two hot girls that yelled at us the night before. Like most guys would, we chatted and soon found ourselves sitting with them on the sand, enjoying the sunset. I was talking very fast and feeling hyped up at this point.

I told them what we did and they thought it was stupid and laughed. Twenty minutes later, I was having an incredibly hard time talking and couldn't have a complete thought. I would basically say the first word of every sentence that came into my head, which would sound something like 'I, who, did you, why, but, didn't, where' obviously making no sense to observers. For about an hour this continued and I managed to point to one of the girls' waterbottles and asked for some. I drank the whole thing and threw up. She kept filling it and bringing it to me about a dozen times while her friend kept her arm around my shoulder as I spewed. It was pretty nice of them to say the least, as I missed puking on her by an inch once or twice, even getting a few drops on her hand.

Moving on, we somehow made it back to the pool area of the condos that we were staying at and sat down. They said their goodbyes and I basically just sat there shaking and feeling very dried out. We immediately went back to our room and layed down. It finally dawned on me that my friend A hadn't taken that many as he fell asleep immediately. A little while later I heard my parents come home and prayed that they wouldn't come in our room. They didn't and I soon heard them go upstairs.

For the next four hours I lay face up in bed with wriggling fingers with eyes WIDE open staring at the ceiling. I felt that if 'A' fell asleep I must too. I shut my eyes to no avail and stayed up thinking in fragments. My heart was beating as if I was running a marathon and my breathing was heavy and extreeeemely slow. My skin felt like it had needles poking out of it and I randomly had shock sensations thoughout my body. My eyes felt very dry as well. I knew I had to vomit to get the shit out of my system but I wasn't sure if my parents were awake or not. I got very impatient and ran to the bathroom finding that they were, in fact, asleep. I cupped faucet water into my hands and almost immediately puked in the toilet. I did this an uncountable number of times as I couldn't hold down very much water without puking it out. I found this to my advantage and tried gulping down water as quickly as I could. Every time I did so, yellowish liquid came out of me that tasted unimaginably sour. I dry heaved half the time and sometimes saw black polka dots when I really did so.

After about two hour of doing this, I knelt down on the floor and must have passed out because I remember getting up moments later not remembering what I just did. I went back to my bed and tried desperately to wake 'A' up for help. He didn't wanna bother. I lay on the floor shaking and then went back to the bathroom to commence vomiting. I did this all night until 7:00 a.m. the next morning. I was very uncertain as to whether or not I was going to die, as I halfheartedly wanted to. I wanted to find out what I could do to remedy the overdose and asked my friend to go upstairs and get the laptop from my parents. He did, plugged it into the phone jack, powered it on and typed in 'caffeine overdose' on google. He found an admissible website and read that 8,000 mg was lethal for an adult weighing 'X' amount of pounds. I immediately started thinking two things (yes I could think somewhat clearly at this point). One was that I didn't take 8 grams, and the other was that I could die this morning.

He read that an OD requires lots of charcoal consumption and stomach pumping. Using my stupid logic, I decided not to tell my parents since they would be mega pissed and were already drug testing me. So I basically sat cross legged on the bed, arms crossed around my stomach rocking myself back and forth in agony while my friend browsed the internet and my parents went out to eat at a pancake house. I stayed home all day feeling completely intoxicated and couldn't keep anything down, not cookies nor water nor chips. Things only started to get better when I had spaghetti later that night and it actually settled. The starch must have dilluted the poison. The rest of the evening I felt better, just a little jittery and very tired. We even met up with one of the girls from last night later on and talked for a while.

The only thing that gives me paranoia to this day is that I might have done permanent damage to my heart, stomach, and brain. Though I talked to a psychiatrist about this and he said it likely didn't. Another thing that I remember is that any beverage with caffeine in it tasted bitter and horrible for about the next four months. The horror film still plays in my head when I drink coffee. That has been what will always be, the worst day of my life... that is of course, if I don't do it again.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 58165
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 25, 2009	Views: 40,943
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