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Subscribe to RSSWe all get a little irritable after one too many cups of coffee, but a Kentucky man is claiming that too much caffeine actually caused him to unknowingly strangle his spouse.
Charged with murdering his wife, Amanda, in May of 2009, Woody Will Smith, 33, is claiming at his trial that he ingested so much caffeine – in the form of soft drinks, energy drinks and diet pills -- that it rendered him temporarily insane.
Could consuming too much caffeine make a person lose touch with reality and send them into a murderous rage?
“If you’re an individual who has an underlying abnormality -- bipolar disorder or manic depressive illness or paranoid schizophrenia – caffeine could precipitate a manic episode,” says Dr. Alan Hirsch, neurologist and psychiatrist and founder of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago. “But that’s if you already have one of those disorders.”
A combination of caffeine-laden sodas and drinks and diet pills, though, might make a “normal” person manic, he says.
“Amphetamines alone can induce psychosis,” he says. “If he were taking a prescription such as Ritalin or a street drug like speed, those alone could induce mania in somebody who’s normal. Add caffeine to it and it would help precipitate that.”
But just because a person is manic – or temporarily psychotic – doesn’t mean they’ll become violent, he quickly adds.
“The big jump is not that that you can cause someone to be psychotic, it’s that most people who are psychotic or manic don’t kill anyone,” he says. “An act of murder would be extraordinarily unusual for an individual who’s transiently psychotic.”
Rather than precipitating a murderous rage, Hirsch says a caffeine overdose would most likely cause an individual to have increased heart rate, increased sweating, shakiness, headache, abdominal pain, rapid speech, and disjointed thoughts.
“They’d have fluctuations of emotions from high to low and would be irritable and angry and feeling pressure, but they wouldn’t be murderous,” he says, comparing the “caffeine intoxication” defense to the so-called Twinkie defense.
“Murder would be very, very unlikely,” he says. “Caffeine is the number one drug in the U.S. If caffeine insanity led you to be murderous, you’d find dead bodies at Starbucks. You’d be seeing murders all over the place.”
How about you guys? Are you crazier after too much caffeine -- or not enough?
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If someone is psychologically unstable I can see how caffeine could possibly magnify the effect, just like many drugs (alcohol for example). However I don't think it's possible for caffeine to "make you crazy".
When I first read this I laughed, but then I remembered the "Twinkie" defense and thought 'This fool could actually get away with murder'. Our society has become so used to the 'it's not my fault' defense that some jury just might buy this bull.
Why would this person be taking diet pills, energy drinks & diet soda??? Was he trying to set up a defense? Any so-called expert that agrees to testify on his behalf should have their head examined for even being willing to be associated with this stupidity.
The experts are on caffeine!!!
He was taking so much caffeine so he could stay UP all night so she couldn't sneak out to cheat on him....sighs
When I was younger, there was no diagnosis as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). When my peers returned from Southeast Asia, usually Vietnam, most were changed men. Some came back with real anger issues, flashbacks, and other psychotic symptoms. We now call this PTSD and offer treatment. Back in the day, these men were just released back into a civilian world that refused to listen to them and that offered no help. A few of these men could get really violent when angered or when hit by a flashback. Add the irritability caused by too much caffeine and I can easily see them injuring or killing someone, without realizing what they were doing until afterward.
You know what?? This is BULLCRAP! I lived right across the alley from these people in Dayton when it happened- before the police even left the scene everybody in TOWN was saying, "Well, the bitch has been cheating on him for a LONG time, doing it right out in the open, what did you expect to have happen?!" That lady had been running all over town cheating and EVERYBODY knew it. I think he just lost it cause she wouldn't QUIT! It was hideous how he did that to her, and murder is not right. However, I DO understand how bad it must hurt to have someone you love hurt YOU over and over and over with seemingly NO heart, conscience or remorse for HER actions. I think the guy HAD a heart, that's why he killed her. Sigh :(
I'm bipolar and I drink coffee. It doesn't make me crazy, just have a bowel movement... wonder if there's a correlation there with the dude, hrm...
I think that if coffee could do this to a person their would be a whole lot more murders in this country. It is just another excuse to get away with murder.
coffee has caused me 3 speeding tickets, 1 ticket for unsafe change of lane and 1 car accident in the last 10 years.
Couldn't be that you are not just a bad driver?
Nothing like that big cup of steaming hot laxative in the morning!
OK...what about Devils food cake? Chocolate and caffeine. If any judge lets this jerk off on this defense...he or she should be sentenced too.
If it did a lot of sailors would be nuts...wait maybe it does.
At 63 yrs. old, I have been an avid coffee drinker since I was 14 and the only time you have to fear my temper is when I HAVEN'T had my coffee. First comes a squeezy stomach, followed by a throbbing headache, and then I turn into a !st class, A-#1 B----.
This article specifies "soft drinks", "energy" drinks and DIET PILLS. This combination could send a person "overboard" depending on which drinks were consumed and what "diet pills" were consumed. However, it sounds to me that this might be a futile attempt to cover the use of "meth" whiich CAN alter behavior.
If the wife was cheating (as a previous poster suggested), why not just divorce the women. Even the Pope will sanction a divorce on grounds of adultry. Then go out and find yourself someone better. They are out there, you know.
then again the pope would sanction you sleeping with 12 year olds..... oh wait he did do that or at least cover it up :-) just kidding I couldn't resist!
Coffee got a older woman 10 million bucks because McDonalds served it to hot in the drive through and she spilled it between her legs . So now lets just drink some hot coffee and go out and kill people and get away with it . Ya got to love the system ... What a joke ! I think I'll drink some coffee and run for a political job . That way I can say the coffee made me do the crime .
When I was a doctor in the Air Force, we had a student who had hooked a couple of check rides, and generally was doing poor. He came to see me for an evaluation, and I inquired about his caffeine intake. He was drinking about 3 monsters a day, a couple of cups of coffee in the morning, and taking supplements for weight lifting. In all, his caffeine intake was near 1600 mg a day. The tall coffee from starbucks is about 100-120 mg of caffeine. This guy was exhibiting hypomanic symptoms from the caffeine intoxication. We weaned him off and in about a month the guy was back to normal.
I myself used to drink a pot a day during residency to stay awake and function, but over time I lost the benefit of it and only experienced negative effects. Now, even so much as a cup in the morning screws up my sleep in the evening.
I can see how this defense might work, as preposterous as it seems.
so-o-o-o-o-o chocolate covered coffee beans would turn me into a banshee???
Can't live without my brew...if a doctor told me I'd have to give up my coffee or die, I'd be getting my affairs in order...
Almost killed myself over one of those bags of choc. covered coffee beans - doesn't get any better than that (coffee AND chocolate)! Years ago, I bought what I would guess to be a 6-8 oz. bag of those things from a local coffee shop, emptied it into a bowl on the counter and started doing housework. Everytime I passed the bowl I would pop 1 or 2 in my mouth and about 5 hours later I noticed I had to sit down because my whole body was literally shaking! Then I realized I had eaten just about that whole bag of goodness without realizing it. It was scary - luckily I was young and in excellent health so it eventually went through my system with no harm done...except I do have the urge to kill someone when I'm cleaning my house now.
Talk about an insult to someones intelligence!
This is just another excuse to not take responsibility for your own actions-temporary insanity due to excessive caffeine intake. Oh, PLEASE - It was not the caffeine that made him kill her, it was his inability to deal with her cheating that made him kill her. Why not just divorce her if she was cheating? If there was insanity involved here, it was because he tolerated it for so long without doing something about it.
This is very close to the "twinky defense" the guy that shot Milk tried to use...... I'm just waiting for the "my laundry soap I washed my sheets with made me crazy" defense....
I think we are just too caught up in the "why" someone did it in our system, it should not matter "why" it should matter "that" they did it or not who cares about why?
not having caffiene for 24 hours wwill give me a headache that hurts so bad I wish it was just a migraine instead, and i could see myself possibly becoming psychotic from withdrawal, but not from having it in any amount, in fact the more caffiene i drink the clearer i think. caffiene may be a stimulant but it is not an amphetamine or even amphetamine like, so it will never cause an amphetamine psychosis, and i have never heard of a caffiene psychosis in anyone before.
Not that it matters much, but the "Twinkie Defense" was never "the Twinkies made him do it." The argument was that Dan White- who murdered Harvey Milk- was depressed and therefore had diminished mental capacity. As evidence of his depression his lawyers showed that this former health nut/workout buff was eating junk food and becoming slovenly. The press called it the Twinkie Defense- even though Twinkies were never mentioned by name in the defense. And they weren't saying the junk food caused his behavior- it was a symptom of his depression.
The jury found he did have diminished mental capacity and so did not convict him of pre meditation.
Hm, this is interesting. In somewhat of a way, I believe coffee had made him crazy. But, it wasn't JUST the coffee. I believe it was a mixture of things. For one, his wife was cheating, and for two, it was mentioned that he had put up with it. I believe he was 'bottling up' his emotions, and so either the coffee made that worse, or finally broke the bottle. I can give an example from personal experience. I am 14, a reasonable coffee drinker in highschool, and generally teased about my appearance. I am apparently mature for my age, as so I have been told, and so I am able to ignore it. Lately, my coffee addiction has gotten stronger. But, it has also helped me really express how I feel about the bullies. Instead of just taking it, I am able to react. And, all week all I have been thinking about is killing every one of them. And, a theory of mine is the fact i drink too much coffee. The mixture of bottling up my emotions/a lot of coffee pretty much caused me to feel literally insane, and WANT to kill everybody. to some, this'll just sound like a crazy, adolescent 14 year old, but i feel I this is...serious.