The headlines were everywhere for a couple of news cycles: teen dies of caffeine overdose.
It’s an alarming story and bears repeating.
A 16-year-old in South Carolina, USA, drank three caffeinated drinks in two hours. They were a latte, a diet soft drink and an energy drink. Within three hours of the first sip, cardiac arrhythmia had killed him.
He wasn’t unhealthy, a coroner ruled last week. The caffeine was just too much for him.
Readers of The Courier are, of course, no strangers to such issues, because of Can It, this newspaper’s impressive campaign against allowing energy drinks in schools. Its aims should be supported but this teenager’s death is particularly scary.
Three hours. That’s all it took. The drinks involved are American but this can’t just be viewed as yet another horrifying news story from far away. It would be easy to replicate the experience with similar or identical drinks anywhere in the developed world.
I’m fully addicted to caffeine and I joke about it all the time. Just one early morning or late night and I’m tweeting about my need for coffee making me dangerous to fellow humans. I’m starting to think that joke isn’t funny any more.
Two days before writing this, I had four coffees before my first meeting of the morning. Today I was working from home and had two before I did anything meaningful.
Until last month, I was working in a building that had its own branch of an extremely popular coffee chain and I was in there so often the baristas didn’t even bother to ask what I wanted. They’d see me approach and have my coffee ready before I came through the door, smiling as they provided a good service.
Now I’m wondering about my choices.
Yes, we’ve long known that caffeine is bad and, yes, this death represents an extreme case but the biggest tragedy is this young person drank this stuff recreationally, with little awareness of the effects.
Consider me a bit more aware and a bit more careful. I think, sometimes, I may switch to water.