Caffeine Can Make You See Things?
January 15, 2009 by Peggy Rowland
Filed under Women's Health
Perhaps so! According to a new study by Durham University, people with a higher caffeine intake are more likely to report seeing or hearing things that aren’t there.
Should you worry about hallucinations?
Well, I hope you’re not hearing voices or seeing things! But if you are, and you have more than the equivalent of seven cups of instant coffee a day, caffeine could be to blame.
The study reports that high caffeine users (7 or more cups a day), were three times more likely to hear voices than low caffeine users (less than the equivalent of one cup of instant coffee a day).
The tendency to hallucinate may be linked with an increased release of the stress hormone cortisol. When there’s more caffeine and some stress, there’s more cortisol.
Learn more at Science Daily: High Caffeine Intake Linked To Hallucination Proneness
Image via MorgueFile.
As silly as it first struck me, this, I believe. I might as well have a caffeine IV, and I hallucinate (in the sense of having to look again, sometimes really hard; not in the “have a mushroom” sense) fairly frequently.
Nicotine withdrawal make it way, way worse, though, which backs up the stress theory in my sample size of one.
Hi Sam!
I believe everyone has that sense of looking again sometimes. But maybe you could try an experiment of cutting down on the caffeine for a week or two to see if that makes a difference. It would be interesting to see…