These kind of studies bug me, but nonetheless, I do know that caffeine can be extremely destabilizing and sometimes (like for me) at much smaller doses than this study indicates.
People who drink at least 330 milligrams of the stimulant a day were three times as likely to have hallucinations as those who consumed less than 10 milligrams a day, Durham University researchers found in a study of 219 college students published today in Personality and Individual Differences.
The study, the first to link caffeine and hallucinations, explored the relationship between high caffeine consumption and an increased release of cortisol, a stress hormone believed to contribute to delusions, lead researcher Simon Jones said. It forms the first step toward examining nutrition as a factor in the occurrence of hallucinations, he said.
“Given the link between food and mood, and particularly between caffeine and the body’s response to stress, it seems sensible to examine what a nutritional perspective might add,” Jones said in a statement. (read the rest of the article)
You’ve just soiled half my diet, and planted the seed for me to change. I will not forget. But I can’t change yet either. Maybe if I go real slow…
there are actually a lot of foods that can effect mood…it’s worth learning which ones effect each of us…
a big thing for me was hypoglycemia, once I stabilized my blood sugar by not eating sugars or refined carbs and started eating a snack every 2 or 3 hours…that helped a lot!!
and the elimination of caffeine did as well.
I stopped drinking caffeinated beverages a few years ago. The recommendation to avoid caffeine after 5pm didn’t do me much good, and often if I did get to bed at a decent hour, I’d sleep horribly. And I’m talking about ingesting 3 cans of mountain dew, not 10 cups of coffee. But mostly I stopped drinking coffee or caffeinated soda because my moods would be less stable. Normally my moods aren’t very stable, mostly on the depression side. So I prefer to eliminate any external substance that would further interfere with my moods. Caffeine tends to put me in a good mood, so I do miss it sometimes, but I know that overall it doesn’t help at all and the good moods didn’t balance out the bad ones.
I never hallucinated from caffeine.
yup, I think it’s ironic that they drug the shit out of you so you have to take yet another drug….a stimulant…
when coffee wasn’t enough they got me started on Ritalin and all those happy drugs…
what a nightmare…
it’s no better than doing a speedball…(heroin and speed together to get high and mellow at the same time)
Same here. Without coffee the meds made me want to sleep all day and I could barely function. Now that I’m more awake I don’t need it.
yup b-life…
I used to drink way more than 7 cups of coffee a day on the cocktails they had me on…I needed it…
I think a lot of people would discover it’s messing them up if they got completely clean and then reintroduced it…addiction has a way of making you think you need it and it’s helping you out when that’s not the case at all.
now a single cup of green tea is like a line of speed…
I actually choose to have a tiny bit of green tea now and then so I can present as relatively normal for infrequent occasions…like my “silly” videos and when I was interviewed on the radio and by the journalist for the book…If I hadn’t drank the tea I wouldn’t have been able to make it through those interviews…
it’s amazing…just 1/2 a cup of green tea and I’m good for a few hours and then I crash bad and ugly…so I only do it every now and then…Iike every few months in general…
This makes sense to me. As I sit here after finishing my third cup of green tea (with saffron, cardamon, cinnamon and a little suger – it’s lovely) feeling my heart pounding in my chest I can understand how in higher doses some may experience hallucinations. As I taper off medication I’ve had to cut coffee out entirely because it now triggers panic attacks. Now I’m reduced to smelling the wonderful aroma of other people’s drinks and making myself fancy teas.
Interesting. I find I tolerate caffeine well, though steer clear of it after early afternoon. Paradoxically, I find it makes me dozy when I’m ‘up’. 330mg eh? I have between 500 – 1500 depending on if it’s a 1, 2 or 3 espresso pot day. I’ve cut down to one pot recently.
The study does make me wonder how many of these students were drinking coffee in order to stay up night after night finishing theses etc… 🙂
Hope you’re feeling a bit better, D