DOSE: T+ 0:00	500 mg	oral	Caffeine	(pill / tablet)
T+ 1:00	1000 mg	oral	Caffeine	(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

60 lb

It was a Thursday afternoon the week after my exams and I was at home by myself bored, but too tired and lethargic to do anything, until I remembered that I still had a packet of No-Doz in my drawer. I decided to only take 5, because I hadn't done any caffeine or other stimulants in large amounts since before my exams (unlike with some other people, I find that it makes me more distractible and less serious about things) and I just wanted to be more awake and not speeding. Before my exams I'd been using caffeine quite a bit to get a cheap speed-ish buzz without as bad a crash, though I cut down on it a bit when a friend of mine OD-ed after staying up on it for 36 hours. I had also been drinking heavily once or twice a week and smoking weed a bit as well.

Well I took the pills with some water at about 3:30, put on a trance CD, sat down, and waited for the effects to kick in. The onset was very gradual, about 3:45 I started to feel that I could understand the music better, and by about 4:15 I was feeling the full effects. I was feeling pretty happy and slightly more awake than normal, but I wanted more of the feeling and decided that I wanted the full on caffeine effects so at 4:30 after the trance CD finished I took 10 more tablets with some ginger to stop the nausea. As I took them I thought to myself 'there is no way I can wait half an hour for these to kick in, I have to DO something.' It was then that in hindsight, a really stupid idea came into my head. [Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!] I would get my car and drive to the local gym and try to sneak in. Even though I had made a promise to myself never to drive again when I was on drugs, the caffeine was telling me I had to do it.

Anyway I got into my car and as I was driving the 2nd set of tablets kicked in. I don't know whether the caffeine already in my system made them go to my head faster, or whether it was because I had less in my stomach, but the 2nd set kicked in extremely rapidly.

One minute I was driving, the next I felt this incredible head rush like someone was setting off TNT inside my head. I could not think about anything other than 'shit, this is so powerful’. I couldn't even make up my mind whether I liked it or not until it faded away into a sort of a glowing feeling that spread throughout my body and then I thought 'oh yes, this is good'. I pulled my car over so that I could check my mind to make sure that it was all in one piece, the head rush was so intense that I thought it must have damaged something. I remember looking at all the people driving past me and thinking, 'shit, they must know that I'm on caffeine', at the time what I had just gone through was so powerful that I thought everyone around me must have known about it.

Anyway I decided I couldn't find out whether my mind was in one piece or not until the caffeine wore off so I kept on driving to the gym, where, amazingly enough, I got in. The caffeine had made me so hyper that I could lift weights way heavier than anything I had managed before. I could easily bench press 55 kilos and I could make 2 reps of 70 kilos, while I was lifting I had head rushes like the one I'd had before, but much less intense, I then decided for some reason to go on a treadmill (normally I hate them) and ran very fast for about 20 minutes, went and got a drink of water and then ran again for another 20 minutes. My heart rate was 160 after I'd been resting and 200 after I'd been running.

After I'd been running for a while I started to get paranoia, it started off as me thinking 'everyone knows I'm on drugs, they're all laughing at me behind my back, they think I'm an idiot' and then changed to 'the gym people know I'm not a member, they're going to call the cops to take me to jail', I would freak out whenever I saw anyone who worked there, and I kept thinking that the two women on the treadmills next to me were undercover cops sent to spy on me. I ended up grabbing my bag and running out of the gym to my car, where I drove home, making heaps of detours and backtracks to make sure I wasn't being followed.

Once I got home at about 7:30 I watched action videos for about 5 hours, but I never got through a whole one because I couldn't focus on one thing for that long, these occupied my mind and stopped the paranoia. At about 12:30 I went and put on another trance CD, and sat and listened to them until about 4:00, when I noticed that the effects were wearing off. I also realised that I had to start work in half an hour, and I had no more tablets left. So I called my boss and told him I was sick with a migraine, then went to bed. But I was still too wired to sleep so I grabbed a book and started reading it very fast (340 pages in 40 minutes, probably getting close to the world record, and that was as I was coming off it).

At 5:00 I finally got to sleep, except that at about 5:30 I suddenly woke up sitting upright in bed staring at the clock, then went back to sleep really fast, even faster than alcohol or weed makes me do it.

I woke up at about 4:00 the next day, and spent it all lying on the couch too wrecked to do anything until 8:00 when I went back to sleep.

I would say that my experience has completely transformed me. I don't feel dumb or depressed like I was worried caffeine would make me, instead I am completely happy and mellow. Caffeine seems to have taken all the anger and frustration in me and let it out in one long roller coaster ride. I feel like I've been born again, everything seems new and wonderful to me. I used to go through phases where I would feel sorry for myself, dwelling on the bad things that have happened to me and the problems I was facing then. Now I've put my past behind me and instead of getting worried about things, I just think 'shit goes wrong, how am I going to fix it?' I hear of people getting stressed out about their jobs or families or social life and I just can't understand it any more. The only problem is that this feeling seems to be slowly dimishing with time.

I still take small doses of caffeine every now and then, but nothing big (though I will if I ever start to feel stressed again). I'm not sure why caffeine has done this to me.

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 21320
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 30, 2006	Views: 19,119
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Caffeine (11) : Various (28), General (1)