Intravenous Caffeine

https://www.sexdrugsandsuicide.com/p/intravenous-caffeine

by euthymiclabs • 3 years ago

170 191 3 years ago

TLDR; participants with cocaine history were administered caffeine IV. At high doses (300mg) they reported some mild euphoria, and a strange taste and/or smell.

Ask HN: aside from caffeine, what is the drug of choice around here?

boredemployee• 3 years ago

meth and adderall

bigdict• 3 years ago

AI hype

kenniskrag• 3 years ago

chocolate

awestroke• 3 years ago

Arrogance

sdwr• 3 years ago

That's the good stuff!

thedrexster• 3 years ago

LSD is my happy place -- and Adderall, but I've a prescription for that one!

suslik• 3 years ago

Microdosing?

deafpolygon• 3 years ago

crypto laced with AI

biomcgary• 3 years ago

That stuff will mess you up, man.

Gordonjcp3• 3 years ago

you want to try some snowcrash...?

JLCarveth• 3 years ago

I doubt you'll get too many serious replies, but as a Canadian my DoC is cannabis.

cactusplant7374• 3 years ago

ketamine

ycombinete• 3 years ago

Methylphenidate

mock-possum• 3 years ago

I’ve settled upon: Caffeine at work, alcohol not at work, molly to party with friends, weed to party on my own.

PKop• 3 years ago

Running, hiking, lifting

themodelplumber• 3 years ago

Serious? I pre & post all of those + bicycling. Whammy, huge difference, especially if you leverage e.g. the caffeine for mental work, or whatever else each chemical is good at.

Had some funny experiments in there but would never go back to nothing. It doesn't make sense, especially if you don't have an addictive personality & any chemical risk is more likely associated with quitting beneficial chemicals than staying on them too long.

nologic01• 3 years ago

open source utopia

BenFeldman1930• 3 years ago

Books.

hammock• 3 years ago

high doses (300mg)

What's the equivalent of a 300mg IV dose in oral ingestion?

engineer_222• 3 years ago

Per article it's 4-5 shots of espresso. Apparently caffeine is absorbed quickly by the gut, so if you shoot it all down at once, you'd get similar results.

isoprophlex• 3 years ago

web3 projects not working out; schadenfreude in general; the smell of my own farts.

uoaei2• 3 years ago

Mushrooms

ehPReth• 3 years ago

benzodiazepines.

zwieback• 3 years ago

Zungenwurst, can't get enough of it

gpas• 3 years ago

Caffeine, nicotine, thc and alcohol.

tasty_freeze3• 3 years ago

THC containing gummies, once a week, for music enhancement before bed.

Tangential details...

The 2018 hemp farm bill allows products to have up to 0.3% THC, but it took years for people to realize that gummies are hefty enough that 0.3% means a gummy can have 10-20mg of THC. So, at the ripe age of 57 I finally tried THC.

It was very frustrating because most of the good stuff I expected didn't happen: no euphoria, no munchies, no relaxation. I do get some of the negative things, like dry mouth. The one good thing I get is music enhancement, but only if I do it once a week or less (10-15mg). I've tried doing it more frequently and upping the dose to compensate, but nope: if I invoke the genie too frequently he refuses to come out of the bottle.

zls• 3 years ago

I’m surprised you do it before bed! I find that especially with edibles, using thc too close to bed makes me sleep deeply but wake up groggy. Typically I need an afternoon nap the next day. I believe thc fucks with REM.

Food is totally unchanged for you? Wild! What about movies/tv?

Loveaway• 3 years ago

Meh I think I’m done with THC. You’ll always find plenty of enthusiasm and love everywhere for it, but then I never really met or talked to a single person who didn’t eventually became conflicted about it and concluded the negatives far outweigh whatever you get out of it.

Thankfully it’s doesn’t cause any serious harm to you as far as drugs go.

I wonder though, about a 100 years ago, when weed was criminalised, it wasn’t just made illegal - people went out of their way to destroy and get rid of every single hemp plant they could find in nature. Across the whole globe no less. That’s quite a statement. Maybe that’s bound to happen again.

mtlmtlmtlmtl5• 3 years ago

Is there anything other than THC in those gummies? Many of the effects might depend on non-THC cannabinoids. Also, for some reason, some effects happen upon smoking or vaping but not through edibles. There are various theories about why, but it's all very complicated.

willcipriano• 3 years ago

Adrenochrome

mtlmtlmtlmtl5• 3 years ago

Low dose dextro-amphetamine for ADHD in everyday life, weed for music and various other enjoyment, only occasionally. Alcohol and whatever nose-friendly stimulants are available for parties. Psychedelics at most annually(ideally 2C-B or (1p-)LSD, but I've tried a whole host of different ones) for deep contemplation and introspection.

Watching my brother destroy his life with Heroin has kept me away from opioids for the most part, but I don't like the way they make me feel anyway.

recursive_loops2• 3 years ago

Opioids are no joke for sure. If you have good self discipline and can limit yourself to one every 2 to 3 days, it can be amazing and safe. But it makes you feel really good and many people don't have the self control required, so I recommend staying away. If you develop a physical dependence, it is not pleasant to say the least.

zeta0134• 3 years ago

Music. String ensembles are the best, choir is a close second. Rapid response, mild euphoria, no unpleasant side effects. Repeated exposure can induce fatigue, making it an excellent sleep aid.

hoosieree• 3 years ago

Successful debugging session euphoria.

oramit• 3 years ago

Caffeine pretty much every day, I can only have it in the mornings though or it interferes with sleep. Alcohol a few times a week, usually just one or two drinks. Now that i'm mid thirties the booze hits me much harder than before and hangovers are easy to get. Pot gummies on the weekend when I want to relax. I know quite a few heavy users who will smoke a couple joints then go do yardwork - crazy. If I have any i'm eating a heavy meal and playing video games. I sleep great with it. I started smoking cigars over the pandemic, only a couple times a month, you certainly get a nicotine buzz that is kind of nice. It is smelly though so I don't do it often and it's more for the ritual and relaxation than the buzz. Amyl nitrates for other recreation.

Wow writing that all out makes me look like a degenerate :)

kayodelycaon• 3 years ago

Personally, prescription medications are great: legal, consistent, safe, and effective.

Wellbutrin (NDRI) every morning. Helps with attention and alertness. It isn't classified as a stimulant, so I don't need to deal with the regulations around regular ADHD meds. It also helps with sexual dysfunction caused by other meds.

Benzos for social events. Way better than alcohol. All of the chill and none of the impairment. :)

zhynn2• 3 years ago

kratom.

zhynn2• 3 years ago

leverage.

matheusmoreira2• 3 years ago

Prescription amphetamines.

loves_mangoes• 3 years ago

I had heard that there's a community of people who insufflate caffeine on Reddit, but this one is news to me.

Seems a little funny to go through all the trouble and extreme stigma of injecting yourself with an IV drug, only to pick ground up coffee beans as your poison of choice (!)

The study is interesting mostly for the fact that someone tried it, but ultimately the results don't show a very strong effect. I wouldn't put too much confidence in how well it would replicate either, these kind of studies can have a lot of variation.

Every drug seems to have a “right” way to take it. You [...] booty bump ecstasy

That is not really typical. People normally eat it as ecstasy pills, or as MDMA powder.

Most recreational drugs can be taken rectally, that usually makes for a higher bio-availability and a faster peak plasma concentration. Some people do that a lot, with everything. It is not specific to ecstasy, that I know of.

germinalphrase2• 3 years ago

A paramedic friend advised that if you ever end up in the hospital in a lot of pain, always opt for the suppository.

stronglikedan• 3 years ago

Your friend isn't wrong. It's pretty much a direct blood vessel highway to the brain.

leetrout2• 3 years ago

Reoccurring kidney stone sufferer here!

Belladonna and Opium (B&O) suppositories are one of the best things that I've discovered. They were very reluctant to write me a prescription for them but they were life changing last time I had to pass a stone. Dunno what would happen if I asked for one outright... when I tell them dilaudid doesn't do much for me I get treated very skeptically.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03332056

TurkishPoptart• 3 years ago

What's the reasoning? Instead of an IV? If I was in extreme pain, I would by default opt for an IV, which would be the fastest way to relieve it.

timerol• 3 years ago

There's a footnote below on ecstasy

_joel• 3 years ago

double bum drop

ses1984• 3 years ago

Was the footnote there when you wrote this comment?

Most people consume ecstasy by mouth, but I’ve heard from many that anal ecstasy is a more satisfying experience.

I think the author was being a little facetious.

polishdude202• 3 years ago

More like... fecetious

girvo• 3 years ago

Nearly any drug (modulo those that have very specific contraindications for it, like codeine) that can be taken rectally can be IVed too. Back when I was still an active heroin addict, I would IV MDMA if I was going out for the night. It’s incredibly intense, more intense than most other drugs when administered that way. bk-MDMA was superior to even MDMA itself when IVed, as well.

nightowl_games• 3 years ago

Just chiming in to say: Holy shit and you've done well to still be alive. You've seen some shit.

pcthrowaway2• 3 years ago

I had heard that there's a community of people who insufflate caffeine on Reddit

I'm curious if it even absorbs well via the sinuses. From experience with powdered caffeine (mixing with shampoo as a folk treatment for hair loss), it doesn't readily dissolve at room temperature water, though of course it dissolves just fine in hot water, which is why the standard quick extraction from coffee beans involves hot water (cold brew by contrast, involves long periods of steeping for a result that still has less caffeine)

jaggederest• 3 years ago

Caffeine is only "sparingly" soluble in water (as opposed to "freely" soluble in boiling water).

Chemists have wonderful words to quantify the exact degree of solubility under various conditions: "sparingly soluble" means it generally takes 30-100ml of solvent to dissolve 1g of the material in question.

So, if you're hip to the quantity of caffeine in your beans (by, perhaps, grinding and boiling 100g and then analytically extracting the mass of relatively pure caffeine with something like DCM, followed by recrystallization in water maybe), you can figure out how much caffeine will be present in your cold brew based on the quantity of solvent.

reaperman• 3 years ago

all the trouble and extreme stigma of injecting yourself

IM and subQ is surprisingly not much trouble, as long as you have a relatively pure dissolvable compound and safe solvent (various oils or bacteriostatic water) it takes like 2 minutes and $1.50 in supplies (a $0.25 syringe, two $0.25 needles, and a $1 PVDF/PETF 0.22um syringe filter). Not much more hassle than at-home insulin or TRT injections.

But definitely a huge stigma, and often the pharmacokinetics of IM/subQ administration aren't desirable for many drugs.

fuzzfactor2• 3 years ago

Snorting caffeine is one of the most comparable ways to realize that it's just as "safe" as cocaine.

janderland• 3 years ago

What? You must be confounding route of administration with safety. Sure, oral administration is technically the safest because of first pass metabolism, but the choice of drug is a MUCH bigger safety factor. Snorting caffeine is much safer than snorting cocaine by every metric.

valine4• 3 years ago

I experience a chalky scent from high dose caffeine pills. I don’t think the taste is unique to the intravenous caffeine.

joecool10292• 3 years ago

Are they pure or adulturated with calcium? Most of the caffeine pills I've spotted are not just caffeine and I think this is the chalkiness you would be experiencing.

valine4• 3 years ago

They’re pure as far as I know. Would calcium be listed as an ingredient?

brnaftr361• 3 years ago

Same, and on occasion I have had coffee do the same.

That's if I'm reading this correctly and you're describing the smell in your blood?

valine4• 3 years ago

I assume so, either that or its neurological. Its like the scent comes from inside my head.

0_____0• 3 years ago

I've been trying to figure out if other people get this too! Finally I'm able to corroborate this. Never thought of it as chalky, to me it's indescribable in a way that one might attempt to approximate with such a word.

Not related to caffeine pills though, I get it from caffeine itself.

none_to_remain• 3 years ago

I found coffee drinking + mask wearing pretty cumbersome during the situation, and I was surprised they still make No-Doz. Seemed like something that would have been regulated away by now. Don't notice any chalkiness though.

xattt• 3 years ago

Not mentioned in the article, but IV caffeine citrate is routinely used as a drip to support hypoventilating pre-term neonates.

rossdavidh• 3 years ago

Yes, my daughter (born several months prematurely) was given caffeine for a while. The nurses described it to me as "reminding her heart to keep beating and her lungs to keep working", since she was so premature that it wasn't something they were supposed to have to do without the mother's help yet.

My wife, who had gone through significant discomfort in order to cut off caffeine while pregnant (she was told otherwise the baby could be born already addicted to caffeine), was a bit exasperated when told that almost the first thing they did was give her daughter a caffeine IV. It was probably still the right thing for her to have done (so the caffeine IV had full affect), but I could sympathize with her position.

carimura• 3 years ago

Coffee enemas are apparently an influencer thing right now.

jandrese• 3 years ago

Whenever I hear something like this my first thought is that it's some stupid TikTok "challenge" that's intended to get people to humiliate/injure themselves on camera for the lols.

ikmckenz• 3 years ago

Coffee enemas were a big thing in the 90s. The coffee is not hot (obviously). But you’d be correct to think there’s no benefit.

salad-tycoon2• 3 years ago

There was a show called “my weird addiction” or something similar. A young good looking couple would frequently take breaks to do coffee enemas. She likes “Java” or something, he preferred something else and more like espresso. I think they had a kid. Only episode I ever watched.

What a treat.

haskellandchill• 3 years ago

IV drugs, not for the feint of heart. Even with a good technique you will eventually blow up your spot and need to go fishing, then it gets horrific.

amelius• 3 years ago

So, getting the downsides of coffee without the upsides of drinking it?

ttymck• 3 years ago

Ah yes the venerable tooth decay upside.

HPMOR• 3 years ago

Coffee doesn't cause tooth decay. Sugar causes tooth decay. You can drink Coffee without sugar.

crickey• 3 years ago

Tooth decay is inevitable unless ur eating meat with water as your diet.

ano-ther• 3 years ago

Didn’t realise caffeine was used IV in anesthesia. Apparently it speeds up awakening (which makes sense to me as a non-medic). https://theanesthesiaconsultant.com/2019/06/18/intravenous-c...

But the story in OP is that the patient received caffeine IV at the beginning of the surgery (inducing severe anxiety).

Does anyone know why you would do this?

IIAOPSW• 3 years ago

Maybe someone put the wrong IV in?

flangola7• 3 years ago

Epinephrine increases the strength of painkillers. That's why there's caffeine in Excedrin.

freedomben3• 3 years ago

I thought the caffeine was there to restrict/narrow blood vessels which usually helps with migraines. Multi-purpose maybe?

etskinner• 3 years ago

What does epinephrine have to do with caffeine?

manmal• 3 years ago

Maybe for vasoconstriction.

kilroy123• 3 years ago

I had caffeine in an IV before. I was going under for surgery, and the doctor asked are you a coffee drinker? I told him oh yes, I'm a huge coffee drinker.

When I woke up from the surgery, it was pretty weird. I was wide awake and alert very quickly. Never got a caffeine withdraw headache. It was awesome.

Havoc• 3 years ago

I know people use a similar strategy for napping. Some people (not me) can fall asleep very fast so they down a coffee and go sleep for a nap...and then wake up super fresh 30 mins later

scns2• 3 years ago

Combined the effect is stronger than each on its own. Caffeine takes ~15 minutes to work. Sadly no source handy but i once read that naps are most effective below 15 minutes. Above it is possible to enter deeper sleep states and wake up worse than before.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

Anecdote: someone told me she knew some nurses and they knew a quick way to get over hangovers. Quite illegal, but it involves IV.

Don't come at me: I'm not recommending this, I've never done it, and your nurse friends probably won't do it for you.

Edit: TIL it's not illegal. However, in a hospital I'm pretty sure the nurses aren't supposed to do it for free.

er4hn• 3 years ago

Illegal where? This is a "show up to your hotel room" service you can get in Las Vegas.

fullspectrumdev• 3 years ago

It’s legal - I’ve stayed at hotels even in London where you can get a nurse administered IV of some bullshit in your room. I passed on that, and went with the time honoured method of a greasy fry and a pint.

The illegal part is if the nurse is stealing the IV and “works” from their workplace (a hospital).

justinator• 3 years ago

There are IV bars in Colorado so not all that illegal (doing at home: yeah a little different). You can get just a reg. IV, or vitamins - that sort of thing.

Being at a high altitude, hangovers suck up here, so there may be a market. I don't drink anymore - and it wasn't a hard decision. I haven't been down to sea level in a very long time, but drinking is completely different up here than down there.

DangitBobby• 3 years ago

It's not illegal here. They advertise it in bar restrooms as a "hangover and extreme sports recovery" treatment.

freedomben3• 3 years ago

what's the way? just rehydration drip? that's widely known and there's nothing illegal about it if you have the equipment

dguest• 3 years ago

In case people are wondering, you the IV injects a few hundred ml of saline, which most medical professionals would have access to. There were clubs that specialized in selling this to hungover people [1]. I wouldn't lightly risk sending myself into septic or hypervolemic shock but I know former EMTs who swear by it.

[1] https://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fitness/advice/a14177/iv-...

latchkey• 3 years ago

https://hangoveriv.com/

shagie2• 3 years ago

At a meeting where Electronic Medical Records was on the agenda, I happened to have been sitting next to a manager involved with that and joked about that you can't take ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Code T43.616A ( Underdosing of caffeine, initial encounter https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/S00-T88/T36-T50/T43/... ) to Starbucks with a prescription.

He chuckled a bit and told a tale of when he actually had that show up on his hospital visit once.

He was in the hospital for some reason. That next morning he was rather grumpy and after snapping at the doctor apologized and noted that it was 2 hours after he normally had his morning coffee... which he couldn't have. The doctor asked if he'd be better if he had some caffeine and the manager said "probably."

So T43.616A showed up on his chart and shortly after that a nurse came by and added one cup of coffee caffeine equivalent to his IV. Apparently it degrumped the manager sufficiently shortly afterwards.

The IV was much more than the cup of coffee from Starbucks and there was some dickering with insurance about if that was a necessary or elective treatment.

He concluded with that he wouldn't recommend it again.

yellow_lead• 3 years ago

added one cup of coffee caffeine equivalent to his IV.
The IV was much more than the cup of coffee

To be clear you mean about same concentration i.e 100mg but higher absorption?

chimeracoder• 3 years ago

To be clear you mean about same concentration i.e 100mg but higher absorption?

I think he means that the IV caffeine cost much more than a cup of Starbucks would have.

akiselev• 3 years ago

Starbucks is like $5 per 100-200mg. IV caffeine is like $500 per 100-200mg.

shagie2• 3 years ago

The price that the hospital billed was much more than the cup of coffee.

2devnull3• 3 years ago

Now that’s some relevant info!

harperlee• 3 years ago

If that was US what did it cost? Possibly the most expensive coffee of his life!

sethbannon• 3 years ago

I was curious about the booty bumping of ecstasy comment.

https://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/plugging-...

rejectfinite• 3 years ago

Caffine pills are cheap af...

ChrisMarshallNY• 3 years ago

Sounds like one of these "cocktails": https://www.ivbars.com/cocktails

netcraft• 3 years ago

I recently had a nuclear stress test where they injected me with a radioactive tracer through an IV. The nurse told me that sometimes it can give you a pretty wicked headache and to let them know if I started having any pain and they would give me caffeine through my IV. I had needed to abstain from any caffeine for 24-48 hours ahead of the test so this was surprising to me - but luckily I didn't need it through the IV. But I really wondered what it would feel like...

pcthrowaway2• 3 years ago

Every drug seems to have a “right” way to take it. You drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, snort powdered cocaine, inject heroin, and booty bump ecstasy

Nicotine at least is probably more commonly consumed via alternative means now (in North America, in <40 demographics at the very least)

Vaping would likely be the most common, but there are also patches, gum, lozenges, dip, and snuff. I've never heard of anally consumed nicotine though

cperciva• 3 years ago

I've never heard of anally consumed nicotine thoug

Never heard of blowing smoke up someone's ass? It was literal in the 18th century.

crazygringo• 3 years ago

Wow, I thought for sure that would turn out to be an urban legend, but it's real and was medical:

...it was a general mainstream medical procedure used to, among many other things, resuscitate people who were otherwise presumed dead. In fact, it was such a commonly used resuscitation method for drowning victims particularly... Smoke was blown up the rectum by inserting a tube. This tube was connected to a fumigator and a bellows which when compressed forced smoke into the rectum. Sometimes a more direct route to the lungs was taken by forcing the smoke into the nose and mouth, but most physicians felt the rectal method was more effective. The nicotine in the tobacco was thought to stimulate the heart to beat stronger and faster, thus encouraging respiration... Artificial respiration was used if the tobacco enema did not successfully revive them. [1]

So it's not like it was for fun. But I can see how for fast delivery of nicotine, it made perfect sense.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/blowing-smoke-up-your-ass-used-to-be-lit...

salad-tycoon2• 3 years ago

There’s also nasal spray and I think drinks in Japan. Snuff (nose) is big India I believe.

If you stretch out your hand and fingers and draw a line down from your index and thumb there’s the radial fossa aka “anatomical snuffbox.”

I’ve never done rectal or IV nicotine but I’ve done all the rest. For my money, the Swedes make the best smokeless tobacco. I’m guessing it’s big there?

vijucat• 3 years ago

Most people consume ecstasy by mouth, but I’ve heard from many that anal ecstasy is a more satisfying experience.

I don't know why now and why this, but this has convinced me that I really need to cut down on what I read online. 99% of it does not go towards my life objectives and 100% of it is probably taking up space in my brain. To be clear, I would have laughed at that fact and moved on before. It just hit me differently today; I could be thinking about my family, work, friends, whatever, but now I know some irrelevant fact about ingesting drugs via the butt.

pharrington2• 3 years ago

I guess I don't understand why people are shocked to learn that recreational drugs can be ingested rectally, but don't bat an eye about the existence of medicinal suppositories. (Or maybe people are shocked to find out about suppositories?)

novia• 3 years ago

You've missed the point. The GP is saying that consuming data at random does not contribute towards the things they personally prioritize in life.

tomcam• 3 years ago

Well, I mean, I don’t love thinking about suppositories tbh

ThrowawayTestr• 3 years ago

Fun fact: people have died from buttchugging (alcoholics will pour beer into their butts to get drunk quicker)

OkayPhysicist• 3 years ago

It's significantly more dangerous than drinking to excess since it sidesteps vomiting.

ClassyJacket• 3 years ago

It is very hard for me to imagine anything more satisfying than taking MDMA. I do not need to experiment with other orifices, orally works just fine.

reverendjames2• 3 years ago

It hit you different because you're subconsciously interested in putting drugs in your butt, and you took the time to comment because you wanted to learn more. Maybe.

pgl• 3 years ago

I think this may be referring to this study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29206091/

"Effects of caffeine administration on sedation and respiratory parameters in patients recovering from anesthesia"

Caffeine has been shown to enhance the speed of recovery from general anesthesia in murine models, though data in human patients is lacking. This is a retrospective review of intravenous caffeine administration (median dose 150 [125, 250] mg) to 151 heavily sedated patients in the post-anesthesia recovery area, to determine the association between caffeine administration and changes in sedation score, respiratory rate, and oxyhemoglobin saturation.

zgs• 3 years ago

A guy I know once suggested a wet suit and a caffeinated bath.

By the time you release you've had too much, you're not even halfway there.

waynecochran• 3 years ago

Migraine sufferer here. Been to the emergency room for bad headaches about 8 times. I get a cocktail of toroidal, benedryl, an caffeine by IV w a morphine chaser. Works.

strangus• 3 years ago

The Bum's Rush.

fithisux• 3 years ago

Reserach for cheaper drugs?

iamnotsure• 3 years ago

Drugs work or not due to symbolic context; which is not obvious, but can be inferred, when they actually do stop working and there is no scientific explanation for that.

darawk• 3 years ago

As probably the only person on HN who has ever intentionally IV'd caffeine...I can confirm that it's not really that interesting. Just like regular caffeine, but slightly faster. Oral caffeine already absorbs pretty rapidly anyway.

Intravenous Caffeine

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