Caffeine kills high school student

[weekend addiction]

He probably assumed legal means safe at any dose. I don't doubt that he never did drugs. Sad case but shit happens sometimes

^This is an exaggeration of what people believe. People believe things that are legally are safer than they are. But no one assumes you can take 100 Tylenol cause they are legal.

 

[f33lg00d]

My point being how is education supposed to help this guy. You learn how to read in school. You learn to recognize trusted sources. Did he not go through chemistry? Did the teacher fail him by not pushing the bottle in his hand, like Helen Keller, slowly explaining over and over what overdose means?

If one knee jerk reaction is to regulate, then another is to educate. You can't educate everybody on everything

You smoking crack pmose? It takes about 10 seconds to look up what a safe dose of caffeine is.

What percent of drug users do you suppose this site has actually helped? Is there any correlation between Erowid going up and safer drug use?

You're such a dick.... This site has personally saved my life multiple times.

 

[S.J.B.]

Evans said the normal amount of caffeine in an energy drink is three to 15 micrograms and 50 micrograms is considered a lethal dose.

This doesn't seem accurate. Just over three strong energy drinks, and you're hitting a lethal dose? There would be a lot more caffeine deaths if that were the case.

 

[pmoseman]

You smoking crack pmose? It takes about 10 seconds to look up what a safe dose of caffeine is.

You're such a dick.... This site has personally saved my life multiple times.

It does take about 10 seconds and this is not an elusive illegal drug, there is information everywhere about caffeine. So education is a knee jerk reaction.

Lots of people wish making drugs harder to get would help save kids. Is everyone a dick who questions whether that only makes the problem worse or is at least a waste of money, or even a conspiracy to intentionally make things worse?

Of course this is a harm reduction site... by name. Like DARE was supposed to keep children off drugs.

This doesn't seem accurate. Just over three strong energy drinks, and you're hitting a lethal dose? There would be a lot more caffeine deaths if that were the case.

Eighteen-year-old Logan Stiner dies from taking too much caffeine powder
...
Stiner was found with more than 70 micrograms of caffeine per millilitre of blood in his system. Evans said the normal amount of caffeine in an energy drink is three to 15 micrograms and 50 micrograms is considered a lethal dose.

I figured this was per milliliter of blood still.
This website source seems to think that 3 cans of energy drink would cause some noticeable adverse effects. Anecdotally... I knew a guy at work (he appeared in good health) who would drink a few energy drinks each day and ended up leaving work in an ambulance because he thought he might be having a heart attack.

So is 700 milligrams of caffeine equal to 50 micrograms per millileter of blood??

I hope not...

It is of course more complicated, but for a really rough estimate I would divide 700 by 35 to get the peak mg/L plasma concentration. So to get 50 you need to drink 3 times more caffeine.

The peak hits after an hour and is halfway reduced some hours later, hard to estimate, but it would be way more than you are drinking.

 

[cj]

^This is an exaggeration of what people believe. People believe things that are legally are safer than they are. But no one assumes you can take 100 Tylenol cause they are legal.

Your kinda right but most 18 year olds don't even consider caffeine a drug. Packs of Tylenol have dosing instructions and a clear message that hey this is a pharmaceutical drug. Caffeine powder doesn't really have that labeling. At the end of the day we are debating what went on inside a dead kids head so it's pretty impossible to know.

 

[pmoseman]

Your kinda right but most 18 year olds don't even consider caffeine a drug. Packs of Tylenol have dosing instructions and a clear message that hey this is a pharmaceutical drug. Caffeine powder doesn't really have that labeling. At the end of the day we are debating what went on inside a dead kids head so it's pretty impossible to know.

I do know that if you want to buy caffeine online they make it fairly obvious that 200mg is a recommended dose. He knew that at least, unless someone just gave him the bottle. Regardless, he took 10 times the recommended dose, or whatever little spoon they provide in the container.

What he took was maybe one pill more than this 1600mg dose:

wow, thats one crappy death. i took 1600mg once and I though I was going to die, my heart was pounding and i was throwing up like crazy. put me off caffeine for a while

In another case of caffeine poisoning, John, you had 155 mcg of caffeine per mL of plasma.

155 mg/L or (extremely roughly) 5.5 grams is more than double what Logan had.

This website seem pretty hot and loose on the dosage, but his blood concentration tells me he was well below a lethal dose.

He knew what he was doing and wasn't trying to kill himself, he just wanted to take it up to an arbitrary limit. Seems to me he knew more about caffeine than most people but just not quite enough to safely dose.

 

[neversickanymore]

What is the point of taking the absolute maximum dose of cafine.. even mild cafine overdose sucks.

 

[pmoseman]

What is the point of taking the absolute maximum dose of cafine.. even mild cafine overdose sucks.

He was a competitive athlete. Caffeine improves your performance and wrestlers always try to lose weight.

 

[spacejunk]

Sad story.
I would say that the lack of education is to blame.
He was just a boy, and had no idea what he was doing.
He probably believed that anything you can buy on the internet legally must be safe.

I agree with this.
And I find it rather ghoulish the way pmoseman pushes this Prohibitionist, anti-education, anti-regulation argument every time there is a news story of a terrible death like this.
This was a poor kid that did something foolish - i'm sure we all made youthful blunders - and it cost him his life.

People's desire for - and increasingly easy access to - a huge variety of substances is the reality of the situation in the modern world.
How could any legislature hope to possibly keep every single chemical out of people's hands?
Short of an authoritarian police state, no amount of controls can be - or have been - effective in preventing people from accessing drugs - from novel psychoactives to the caffeine powder in this case.

I feel bad for his family and friends - and I feel bad for the guy himself; another victim of a propaganda war that tells us these drugs are bad but these other, legal drugs are fine - and harmless.

Look at how caffeine-loaded "energy drinks" are marketed to children - like, well drugs.
When you are underage and living by "the rules" as society lays them out - these caffeine products are advertised by promising to improve your performance, stamina, energy, confidence, masculinity etc etc.
It's a long time since i was that young and impressionable - but I do recall the allure of things like "jolt cola" with it's promotional like "twice the caffeine!" (of other cola drinks - presumably) - and how this seemed kind of reckless and rebellious to consume as a 13/14 year old. The implied message was that more caffeine = more stimulation/pleasure/fun.

Now that I am much older and wiser - and well aware of the unpleasant and undesirable effects of drinking too much caffeine - this seems really silly - but the innate appeal of mind altering substances is unavoidable - even for people who "don't take drugs".

Regardless of what lead to this death, education and/or access to accurate information is the only sensible approach to trying to prevent it happening again.

 

[neversickanymore]

The weight thing makes sense but caffeine at an uncomfortable level let alone that level would not improve ones performance IMO.. Ever see someone all wired up try to move and think well? Think cracked out cracky trying to walk, or a person on a meth bender trying to reason accurately and quickly.

 

[pmoseman]

The weight thing makes sense but caffeine at an uncomfortable level let alone that level would not improve ones performance IMO.. Ever see someone all wired up try to move and think well? Think cracked out cracky trying to walk, or a person on a meth bender trying to reason accurately and quickly.

... and taking caffeine to lose weight does not work. Seriously... I just got done talking about all of this.

And I find it rather ghoulish the way pmoseman pushes this Prohibitionist, anti-education, anti-regulation argument every time there is a news story of a terrible death like this.
This was a poor kid that did something foolish - i'm sure we all made youthful blunders - and it cost him his life.

People's desire for - and increasingly easy access to - a huge variety of substances is the reality of the situation in the modern world.
How could any legislature hope to possibly keep every single chemical out of people's hands?
Short of an authoritarian police state, no amount of controls can be - or have been - effective in preventing people from accessing drugs - from novel psychoactives to the caffeine powder in this case.

I feel bad for his family and friends - and I feel bad for the guy himself; another victim of a propaganda war that tells us these drugs are bad but these other, legal drugs are fine - and harmless.

Look at how caffeine-loaded "energy drinks" are marketed to children - like, well drugs.
When you are underage and living by "the rules" as society lays them out - these caffeine products are marketed to be very attractive in promising to improve your performance, stamina, energy, confidence, masculinity etc etc.
It's a long time since i was that young and impressionable - but I do recall the allure of things like "jolt cola" with it's promotional like "twice the caffeine!" (of other cola drinks - presumably) - and how this seemed kind of reckless and rebellious to consume as a 13/14 year old. The implied message was that more caffeine = more stimulation/pleasure/fun.

Now that I am much older and wiser - and well aware of the unpleasant or undesirable effects of drinking too much caffeine - this seems really silly - but the innate appeal of mind altering substances is unavoidable - even for people who "don't take drugs".

Regardless of what lead to this death, education and/or access to accurate information is the only sensible approach to trying to prevent it happening again.

Ditto.

 

[neversickanymore]

... and taking caffeine to lose weight does not work. Seriously... I just got done talking about all of this.

Caffeine is an appetite suppressant.. You use exercise and diet to lose the weight pmose.. you use the cafine to try and relieve the hunger during the weight loss.

 

[pmoseman]

Caffeine is an appetite suppressant.. You use exercise and diet to lose the weight pmose.. you use the cafine to try and relieve the hunger during the weight loss.

Seriously dude...

What is the point of taking the absolute maximum dose of cafine.. even mild cafine overdose sucks.

Do you want to ask questions or answer them?
You ask the question and I answer it, then you dedicde to answer your own question? Maybe he took because faeries are in wonderland, nobody actually knows anything...
If you simply read what I already wrote, I am talking about water weight. That is what I automatically think of when you talk about a wrestler. That is how wrestlers lose weight right before a competition, so they can gain it back. If you lose all your energy storage, that is going to hurt you in competition, you can't go into a match dehydrated and without any energy.
I already said it improves athletic performance. You know... working out... gaining muscle... losing weight... its all tied together. Does that answer your question?

There IS NO REASON TO TAKE THIS MUCH CAFFEINE. First of all, caffeine does not make you lose water... that is apparently a myth, shit I only read one article, second of all, you need the equivalent of two cups of coffee to MAX OUT ON ATHLETIC IMPROVMENT.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

A number of folks here need a lesson on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Wiki both of those words, guys. "Volume of distribution" is another concept that's worth understanding when it comes to drug dosing. How to dose drugs for maximum duration of only the effects wanted is not at all intuitive, especially to young wrestlers who are stereotypically hardened to the idea of risking their health in the name of athletic glory. Shoot this thread over to the guys in Neuroscience and Pharmacology Discussion, and I'm sure you'll get a lesson in these concepts that's shorter, brusquer, and more precisely worded than anything I could write.

Caffeine's effects are numerous, because this drug ramps up a biochemical pathway very basic to the body's metabolism -- the cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) pathway. Tinkering with highly fundamental processes to a dynamic system is always best done sparingly and incrementally, since the effects at the macro level are often dramatic, hard to predict, and frequently detrimental to the integrity of the whole system. If you had the power to do such things, I bet you'd hesitate before removing a letter from the alphabet of a language, or changing the density of the cinder blocks in the foundation of your house. Tweaking a very basic metabolic and regulatory pathway in a living thing is on this level of risk. Add caffeine to the list of ancient legal drugs that would probably be banned if they were newly discovered today.

 

[pmoseman]

It would clearly be abused and used wrecklessly before people understood how it worked. Now that we understand how to use it safely and effectively, there is no need to ban it.

 

[neversickanymore]

Seriously dude...

Do you want to ask questions or answer them?
You ask the question and I answer it, then you dedicde to answer your own question? Maybe he took because faeries are in wonderland, nobody actually knows anything...
If you simply read what I already wrote, I am talking about water weight. That is what I automatically think of when you talk about a wrestler. That is how wrestlers lose weight right before a competition, so they can gain it back. If you lose all your energy storage, that is going to hurt you in competition, you can't go into a match dehydrated and without any energy.
I already said it improves athletic performance. You know... working out... gaining muscle... losing weight... its all tied together. Does that answer your question?

Pmose are you having a bad day? Take a hot bath, work on your depressive thinking, put on some Mozart, read a positive part of the Bible, knock down a few rosaries.

A little like the kettle again pmose.. you are the queen of questions like these are you not?

Stimulants don't make you increase muscle, neither does dieting or caloric deficits that cause weight loss. Caffeine as far as I know is a mild diuretic so it could cause minor water loss. Losing weight in the fashion that wrestlers do does not improve athletic performance. Fairies are allergic to caffeine and it reacts explosively with fairy dust so I don't think they would be encouraging its use.

Since cafine increases dopamine it would likely improve a persons ability to move somewhat.

Some alertness also.

There IS NO REASON TO TAKE THIS MUCH CAFFEINE. First of all, caffeine does not make you lose water... that is apparently a myth, shit I only read one article, second of all, you need the equivalent of two cups of coffee to MAX OUT ON ATHLETIC IMPROVMENT.

Exactly.. but unless it was an accident, which seems unlikely as he seemed to use the stuff regularly, there is a reason.. but what was it?

NSFW:

EDIT: it actually looks like the effects of cafine on appetite is being debated.. but when consumed with nicotine it seems to decrease appetite even more than nicotine alone.

 

[Roger&Me]

Stiner was found with more than 70 micrograms of caffeine per millilitre of blood in his system. Evans said the normal amount of caffeine in an energy drink is three to 15 micrograms and 50 micrograms is considered a lethal dose.

this is poorly written, and in such a way that conveys that the author is unfamiliar with the subject they are writing about.

it should say the normal amount of caffeine in an energy drink results in serum caffeine levels of 3-15ug per mL. if an energy drink only had 15 micrograms of caffeine in it, it would be totally inactive.

this being said, i feel bad for the kid. drugs are just tools, all drugs have the potential to be dangerous or harmful if misused. this is yet another casualty of our society's massively skewed perspective on drugs.

 

[pmoseman]

this is poorly written, and in such a way that conveys that the author is unfamiliar with the subject they are writing about.

it should say the normal amount of caffeine in an energy drink results in serum caffeine levels of 3-15ug per mL. if an energy drink only had 15 micrograms of caffeine in it, it would be totally inactive.

We already talked about that as well.

this being said, i feel bad for the kid. drugs are just tools, all drugs have the potential to be dangerous or harmful if misused. this is yet another casualty of our society's massively skewed perspective on drugs.

I do not see any evidence of that.

 

[ro4eva]

Stiner did not take drugs and only drank the occasional cup of coffee.

My condolences and all, but can the mainstream media please stop acting like space cadets?

 

[pmoseman]

My condolences and all, but can the mainstream media please stop acting like space cadets?

You do have a point. It is a drug, caffeine is often used as a medicine, but drug can also mean narcotics, such as an opiate, or hallucinogens, such as LSD. That is clearly what they mean when they say he did not take drugs.