Fun fact: caffeine's actual toxicity is so low that if you were to off yourself by drinking coffee, water overdose would get you before caffeine overdose.
@Amikke Source?
@dichotomiker I honestly don't remember lol
@Amikke What is a better solvent for this?
@AmpBenzScientist water's fine, I've heard of an experiment where an intern accidentally measured an order of magnitude more caffeine than intended into plain glasses of water and sent 2 people to the hospital for weeks. It's just that the concentration of caffeine in water to achieve its intended effect is much lower than what's needed to be toxic.
@jmw150 this might apply to cold brew, if you can achieve a high enough concentration
@Amikke Caffeine intoxication is 1 part euphoria with 2 parts explosive diarrhea/projectile vomiting and panic attacks. I consume around a gram a day. Don't worry, I'm a Mathematician and no stranger to stimulants. ;)
I wonder if that is still true with cold brew coffee. You can make a fairly concentrated concoction.
@Amikke
LD50 of caffeine is 150-200 mg per kg.
A cup of Moka coffee contains some 120 mg per coffee cup (around 50 ml)
Let's say a 70 kg person, the lethal dose would be 14 g of caffeine, which is 117 cups of coffee, that is less than 6 liters.
You can definitely drink 6 liters of water without dying.
@rastinza I didn't manage to quickly find a sensible source that goes into details, but according to Wikipedia the LD50 of water for rats is 150 ml/kg. Assuming a similar one for humans, the lethal dose for your 70kg person would be 10.5l, which is indeed more than 6l. That gets more complicated considering different levels of initial hydration and the speed of drinking, but I assume not by 175%.
However when we consider standard drip coffee which according to Wikipedia contains ~145mg per 200ml cup, the volume of coffee you need to drink to achieve the 14g would be ~96.6 cups, meaning 19.3l, which is nearly twice the LD.
So I assume whoever wrote the fun fact didn't use very strong coffee for the "wow" effect. That doesn't make sense for someone legitimately attempting suicide by caffeine, but checks out otherwise.
@Amikke
It works out with drip coffee.
However, I dislike that diluted broth of coffee and I wouldn't drink it even to kill myself
@Amikke Hah, cool.