Caffeine can intoxicate you as much as alcohol or drugs
By Kristina Charania
Photos by Simon le Nippon
As November fades into December, we will officially be entering the final stretch of our semester-long university derby. Sleep Deprivation is already sneaking up along the left-hand track and approaching our frontrunners: No Social Life, Get Good Grades, and crowd favourite Where The Hell Is My Beer-Battered Christmas Chicken.
For SFU insomniacs, caffeine is integral to surviving the last furlong of exam month — students chug Monster energy drinks and five-hour shots Monday through Friday as if possessed by a particularly cruel demon. So naturally, caffeine addiction is a silly fear within the world of academics, because seriously, no caffeine? How adorably naive! Caffeine intoxication sounds like a foreign concept out of a dusty textbook.
This is serious business, though. According to a recent CBC News article, 25-year-old Jyong Chul Lee threatened his residence advisor in September while eating at a school cafeteria. He was consequentially charged with mischief and criminal harassment, removed from Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia, and deported back to Korea. Interestingly, Lee’s behaviour was not attributed to the depression or anxiety normally associated with university studies. His lawyer instead suggested that Lee acted out of character due to the caffeine stupor created by consuming several energy drinks. Even graver cases exist: Woody Will Smith in Kentucky murdered his own wife by strangling her with an extension cord after getting hopped up on coffee, energy drinks and caffeine pills.[pullquote]guarana is an additional source of caffeine that may add a potential 20 to 30 milligrams to an energy drink without being included on the label’s caffeine count.[/pullquote]
If you’d prefer to make it past Dec. 16 with you and your loved ones alive and well, soak up the following advice like a sponge.
The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — psychology peeps will recognize this as the DSM-IV-TR — states that caffeine intoxication is a valid disorder with side effects including restlessness, insomnia, muscle twitching, rambling speech, and disrupted heartbeat. Individuals with a family history of heart conditions or disorders that weaken the blood vessels should refrain from caffeine consumption entirely, because the stimulants could present further bodily consequence to the user, including unexpected death.
Normally, the ingestion of a sum of caffeine equivalent to 80 to 100 cups of coffee will result in an adult’s death, and 500 milligrams of caffeine in the body will qualify you as caffeine intoxicated. While an energy drink won’t exactly kill your regular student, these beverages are technically dietary supplements that aren’t regulated by the FDA like a food product would be — they can contain much more caffeine than listed on their packaging and still be sold to the public. For example, guarana is an additional source of caffeine that may add a potential 20 to 30 milligrams to an energy drink without being included on the label’s caffeine count. Surprise!
Because of this ambiguity, it’s best for study die-hards to stick to one or two coffees or a single energy drink a day in order to stay below the 500 milligram intoxication threshold. Popping back an extra Rockstar or caffeine pill is quick and seems harmless until side-effects like long-term caffeine addiction become detrimental to your mental processes. Lee and our Kentucky killer could tell you as much.
If you are now wondering how the hell you’re supposed to stay awake through the misery of final papers, as you begin to doze off reading this last sentence, the answer is really simple: go the fuck to sleep.
