Jan

Greetings from my deathbed

That's right. Keep drinking. Don't be afraid. The visions are here to help you...

I pretty much never drink coffee. I like how it smells, and to a certain extent how it tastes going down the hatch, but the fun stops there. Once it hits my system, it upsets my stomach, jangles my nerves, and makes me jumpy as a cat.

That’s what makes it strange that I chose today – a day I could very well die of some worthless multi-symptom ailment that lingers still and has me worried I’m going to throw out my back or crack a lung with the horrific dry, hacking cough – to drink three large cups of the stuff.

And then, as I was trying to figure out if it made me feel better or worse – ”Am I now less like a lifeless corpse and more like a blood hungry zombie? Does my head feel like it’s going to fly off and take a trip around the ceiling because of the caffeine or because I have one new symptom in my death symphony?” - I got more bad news.You see, I was trying to assess these critical inputs when I happened upon this little cheery nugget from the BBC:

People who drink too much coffee could start seeing ghosts or hearing strange voices, UK research has suggested.

People who drank more than seven cups of instant coffee a day were three times more likely to hallucinate than those who took just one, a study found.

A Durham University team questioned 200 students about their caffeine intake, the journal Personality and Individual Differences reported.

However, academics say the findings do not prove a “causal link”.

They also stress that experiencing hallucinations is not a definite sign of mental illness and that about 3% of people regularly hear voices. (3%! That makes me feel practically normal…)

“This is the first step toward looking at the wider factors associated with hallucinations,” said psychology PhD student Simon Jones, who led the study.

Under stress

He said previous research had suggested factors such as childhood trauma could be linked to hallucinations.

When under stress, the body releases a hormone called cortisol which is produced in greater quantities after consuming caffeine.

The extra cortisol boost could be what causes a person to hallucinate.

Therefore, Mr James added, it made sense to examine the link between caffeine and mood. Besides coffee, sources such as tea, chocolate, “pep” pills and energy drinks contain caffeine. After asking the students about their typical intake, the research team assessed their susceptibility to hallucinatory experiences and stress levels.

Among the experiences reported were seeing things that were not there, hearing voices, and sensing the presence of dead people.

The Durham study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and Medical Research Council.

I see dead people.

I see myself as a dead person, actually…but that’s probably not the same thing?

No seriously, I figure I never drink coffee and I had three large mugs of it, so I may be rounding the bend toward the seven-cup tipping point. In fact, the cherry Coke I’m sipping on as I type this could launch me into a career as the next Sylvia Browne or John Edward.