Going Loco? Too Much Coffee Can Cause Hallucinations Among Heavy Drinkers
Bad news for extreme coffee lovers out there. New research has found that
stressed-out coffee guzzlers are three times more likely to experience a “break from reality” than non-coffee drinkers. It’s not as bad as seeing pink elephants or hearing tiny voices in your head, but too much coffee can lead to hallucinations and hearing things.
Uh oh.
Hearing White Christmas in your head.Professor Simon Crowe form La Trobe University tested 92 people with different levels of caffeine intake and stress. Consuming five cups of coffee a day was classified as heavy drinking.
The subjects believed they were undergoing a hearing test and listened to Bing Crosby singing White Christmas. They then listened to three minutes of static noise and were told to press the buzzer if they heard any snippets of White Christmas in the static. The song White Christmas was chosen because it is considered soothing and had been used in other tests.
How did caffeine affect test performance? The participants who had low caffeine levels buzzed once on average. But the serious drinkers with high stress levels buzzed three times.
“If you are stressed and have a high level of caffeine, you are more likely to notice things that aren’t there, see things that aren’t there,” Prof. Crowe said.
The study revealed that about 15% of the population claimed they had...
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