Ditto on missing Overlawyered. Many thanks to Walter for all these years of interesting news stories and insights.

On the fatal caffeine overdose, I recall witnessing a (luckily) non-fatal overdose decades ago.

In the early 1970s, when large scale mainframe computers were the only game in town for number crunching, programmers often put in much longer than 8 hour workdays to get pressing projects done.

Where I was working at the time, I witnessed an apparently less than clinically sane programmer attempt to stay awake for several days to get some project done. On the second or third morning, he drank the programming group’s entire 40-cup urn of freshly brewed coffee in the course of a few hours.

Some programmers noticed the coffee urn was empty, and wondered what happened to it. The computer operators at the I/O desk reported that he made no sense whatever when he came to the window to collect output from his program runs.

Soon, everyone in the programming group noticed. He began wandering around the facility speaking incoherently.

Somebody called an ambulance service, uncertain whether he was physically or mentally ill. The ambulance medics took vital signs, and pronounced him dangerously physically ill. Pulse rate and blood pressure were off the charts. They heard of his voluminous coffee drinking, and took him to a hospital where they pumped out the contents of his stomach and likely saved his life.

How much did it take to reach this amount then?
Volume of distribution for caffeine is 0.5-0.7 L/kg
So if he is the mythical 70 kg adult, then the caffeine required to get his blood level up to 70 mcg/ml would be about 2.5 grams. About half a teaspoon of pure caffeine, the amount in 40 shots of espresso.

Kind of a surprise the kid didn’t scoop more into his drink.

Gonna miss this site. Thank you Walter