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Think Before You Leap....
Caffeine (tablets)
Citation:   Soren. "Think Before You Leap....: An Experience with Caffeine (tablets) (exp73243)". Erowid.org. Apr 20, 2020. erowid.org/exp/73243

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
200 mg oral Caffeine (pill / tablet)
  T+ 0:45 200 mg oral Caffeine (pill / tablet)
BODY WEIGHT: 170 lb
Although I have a soda or two a day, I have ADHD, so low doses of caffeine calm me, if anything. The past couple of days I have been eating very little and sleeping horribly
The past couple of days I have been eating very little and sleeping horribly
and for short amounts of time, which probably had a bit to do with the agony of my experience, especially since I normally have extremely healthy sleeping patterns, and I have a normal appetite for a 15 year old.

Yesterday I woke up at 1:30 in the afternoon, and went across the street to hang out. At midnight we went to Denny's to play Dungeons and Dragons.

This was a Thursday night, and I do community service every Friday morning from 8 to 11. I knew we'd be there for a long time, and I wouldn't be able to get some sleep.

My cousin's friend obsessively carries around caffeine pills, which he is extremely generous with. So, I asked him for two, at about 1 in the morning. I had taken one or two once or twice before, with no effect whatsoever. So, after popping those two, I asked for two more to keep in my pocket for Hospice later.

After about 45 minutes, I felt NOTHING, so, without saying anything to anyone about it, I pop the other two pills... BIG MISTAKE!!!!!

Very soon I start to feel it. I get very... I can only describe it as this bizarre feeling in my bones that just screams: MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE. So, I was fidgeting an awful lot, and if I wasn't so nauseated, dizzy, and confused I'd be running all over the place.

I had to go to the bathroom an awful lot, too. I urinated several times each hour all night and day. Also, thank god nobody else was there, cause I had horrific diarrhea- I had no idea my body could hold so much, especially after eating so little! And I have irritable bowel syndrome
I have irritable bowel syndrome
, and I have had some horrific stomach pain. Let me make this perfectly clear: This WAS the worst stomach pain I have ever had. It felt like there was something inside of me, squeezing my intestines.

My hands started shaking a little, and I got pretty scared. I would zone out frequently, and got the chills, then a fever, and sometimes both at the same time, all over, or sometimes part of me would be cold, another part hot.

I felt the intense need to concentrate on SOMETHING, ANYTHING. So, I started to draw one of my favorite little original comic characters to draw. I couldn't focus, and my hands were shaking so much that he looked absolutely horrible. Circles and reasonably straight lines were impossible, no matter how slowly I drew.

My sense of time got a little weird. Like... after ages of D&D, I'd look at the clock, and not even five minutes would pass, but I'd go to the bathroom, piss really quickly, and it would have taken 10 minutes. Sometimes the minutes jumped by, other times they dragged on. It was bizarre.

Eventually, it was 5 a.m. We paid. I was hopping in fucking circles, squirming, darting my eyes all over the place, paranoid as hell.

When we got into the van, I struggled to sit still, as my body was WAY too exhausted to squirm like a five year old. Then, when we got out, I RAN across the street to my house, down the four stairs to the bathroom, because if I got there a SECOND later I would have shit my white pants.

Then, I was absolutely EXHAUSTED from my little run, and struggled to catch my breath. Afterward, I struggled up the four stairs, and into the garage, to go on google and try to figure out what to do.

See, at this point I had taken my temperature, which was 101 degrees (and being the big wimp I am, feel like I'm burning to death when my temperature is 99 degrees, so I felt horribly). I seriously felt like I was dying. The fucking devil was squeezing my intestines with razor-sharp fingernails, my head felt like it was going to burst, and I was paranoid as all hell, darting my eyes around and making sure there wasn't an axe murderer in the room.

I found NOTHING on what to do, except for emergency information. I was hoping to find out what I could do to make myself more comfortable. For instance, was it safe to take medicine? should I eat? Sleep? Or what?

I felt like absolute shit, and needed to kill some time, so I decided to take a shower, putting it in the hottest temperature possible, which was incredibly relaxing, and cleared my sinuses, making it a bit easier to breathe. Then I put it on the coldest, and stayed in there for about an hour. I left the shower, taking my temperature again, and it went down two degrees!

I still felt like I was going to die. Just... not as much as before. I was still nauseated, but my bowels were empty as could be, and I was drinking alot of ice water (I got so dehydrated...), and whatnot.

I lounged around nude in my bedroom for about half an hour, my body aching too much to do anything. Again, warped sense of time, it felt like three minutes, and then it was 7, and I had to start getting ready.

I still couldn't force myself to eat, but I did whine to my mom about how horribly I felt, and she promised to pick me up at 10 instead of 11.

I work in the kitchen, and for the first hour we sat around, waiting for the patients to wake up, and the nurses to give us their orders. My legs hurt too much to stand, but sitting caused me to nod off. Conversation was like fucking rocket science, due to my lack of attention span and overall confusion.

Again, fucked up sense of time, and soon an hour had passed. By this time, I had taken my pulse. Usually it's about 85 beats a minute. It was 108. I would walk three feet to the other side of the kitchen to get milk out of the fridge, and be panting.

My breathing was very slow and labored, partially due to my tremendous efforts to not vomit, but mostly because I was horribly out of breath. My face became flushed. I visibly looked like shit. Not as horrible as I did about 4 or 5 hours ago, but I still looked pretty bad.

Almost as if by a miracle, I made it through those two hours without dying. I signed out, and waited a minute for my mom. We went to Home Depot, and I waited in the truck. I never knew that sitting in a truck with the nice, cold air blasting could produce so much sweat, or make one be so out of breath. I got very paranoid again, wondering if I was going to die, pass out, or what. I decided I would pass out, not be able to breathe, then die.

My mother came out with what she needed, and some beef jerky and a coke for me. Then she remembered I was sick because of the amount of caffeine in my body, and felt like an idiot. The jerky just made me more hungry, but I was too nauseated to eat when I came home.

At this point it was 10:30. I took the pills at about 1, then 1:45. I tried to sleep, but I couldn't breathe, due to my clogged nose, and my overall exhaustion, and I was extremely hungry.

So I sat downstairs, ate the jerky. My conversational skills had improved significantly, my sense of humor returning, and my speech became slightly more relevant to the topic, but still not very much so- but my speech patterns are usually a little irrelevant or hard to follow.

My bones were aching, and my body cried for sleep and more food. My mother, out of pity, took me to Publix for nasal spray and sushi. I frequently made her stop so I could catch my breath, and I was still flushed and sweaty.

About 45 minutes, 15 squirts of nasal spray in each nostril, 7 pieces of sushi, and one ice cold shower later, I went to sleep. It was about 1 p.m. at this point. My fever went down a little, but I otherwise felt horrible.

The minute my eyes were shut and my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep. Four hours later my mom woke me up to tell me some good news. I went downstairs, grabbing my coke from earlier, and my remaining sushi. My hands were shaking and I was too weak to open the bottle. The sushi made me feel better, but I had a throbbing headache.

It's 9 p.m. now. I've eaten three bites out of a package of microwavable lasagna since then. My breathing is a little bit abnormal, and my heart's still a little bit fast. My fever is 100 degrees, and I'm painfully nauseated still. I'm still working on that bottle of coke, but I've drank three bottles of water in the past four hours. I go the bathroom, almost literally, once every five minutes. The devil's still squeezing every last bit of fecal matter out of my intestines, but thankfully I haven't vomited yet (well, I did a couple of times, just a little in my mouth, but that doesn't count, really).

My hands are still shaking, and I think I need another cold shower. I'm going to sleep shortly- I'm struggling to stay awake, typing this. I'm still sort of confused, and my normally impeccable typing skills are pretty shitty. It took me an extremely long time to gather the concentration to write this. I'm not sure if the bizarre feeling in my bones is a compulsion to move or extreme fatigue.

Reading up on caffeine, it's pretty clear that tougher people than me, with more experience with sleeplessness, caffeine, and not eating regularly, can get pretty fucking sick from more than 250 mg of this shit. And it seems most do it because of the misconception that legal=not absolutely horrific in excess. Also, many people don't know how much is too much, like me. I had NO idea that caffeine could make people so sick.
I had NO idea that caffeine could make people so sick.


I'm pretty proud to say I've survived this, ha ha. It really did toughen me up a bit, and it's kinda made me appreciate my health alot more. It strengthened my position that nobody should take ANY substance without a wealth of knowledge on it, and preferably a mentor of some sort who is experienced with it. ESPECIALLY stupid ass teenagers like myself.

I have never smoked, or taken more than a sip of alcohol. I've taken a couple of my mom's pain killers or muscle relaxers (with her permission) whenever over the counter stuff didn't do the trick, and that shit would get me three sheets to the wind. Granted, I've always been extremely curious about certain psychoactive drugs, mainly for their mind-opening abilities.

Any temptation has been temporarily squelched because of my caffeine-gone-wrong experience. I've learned I don't have the knowledge or maturity to use any mind altering substance quite yet, and that the effects are not fun at all. I did not even enjoy the 'positive' effects before I came crashing down.

I will never touch a stimulant again, with the exception of the occasional soda. Especially for the purpose of staying awake- next time I'll try something a little healthier, like doing some freaking jumping jacks or drinking some cold water, which works an awful lot better for me.

Exp Year: 2008ExpID: 73243
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 15
Published: Apr 20, 2020Views: 2,320
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Caffeine (11) : Various (28), Health Problems (27), Difficult Experiences (5)

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