Coffee Overdose: Too Much of a Good Thing?

As a bona fide coffee-lover, I never really thought this was possible:

A teenage waitress overdosed on caffeine after drinking 14 shots of espresso.

Jasmine Willis, 17, could hardly breathe and was taken to hospital with a high temperature and heart palpitations.

She had drunk almost three times the recommended daily amount of caffeine in just four hours.

Miss Willis, a student, was working part-time out in her father Gary's recently-opened sandwich bar after sitting her GCSEs.

She began her coffee binge last Wednesday after getting only five hours' sleep the previous night.

"I decided to have a double espresso to perk me up," she said. "It did the trick so I had one after another and they seemed to be working. I felt great - as if I could take on the world."

By noon she was feeling unwell and crying and laughing uncontrollably in front of bewildered customers.

Miss Willis said: "My nerves were jangling. Tears were streaming down my face. People kept asking me if I was all right."

Her father sent her home but by the following morning she could not feel her lips and was struggling to breathe.

Miss Willis, from Stanley, County Durham, spent several hours under observation at the University Hospital of North Durham, where the caffeine overdose was diagnosed.

(Full story here)

I guess you can have too much of a good thing.