Heavy Coffee Use Leads To Hallucinations

A bit dubious about this:

People who drink at least 330 milligrams of the stimulant a day were three times as likely to have hallucinations as those who consumed less than 10 milligrams a day, Durham University researchers found in a study of 219 college students published today in Personality and Individual Differences.

The study, the first to link caffeine and hallucinations, explored the relationship between high caffeine consumption and an increased release of cortisol, a stress hormone believed to contribute to delusions, lead researcher Simon Jones said. It forms the first step toward examining nutrition as a factor in the occurrence of hallucinations, he said.

[...]

Nine of the 22 people in the highest-caffeine group reported hearing disembodied voices, compared with three of the 22 people in the lowest-caffeine group, Jones said. Participants also reported seeing things that weren’t there and sensing the presence of dead people.

-- Seven Cups of Coffee a Day May Lead to Hallucinations (Update1)

OK, seven cups is pretty heavy use, all in all - but I can easily down five in a day and find the idea of seeing ghosts from the caffiene alone a bit of a stretch.

But it does sound like an interesting weekend experiment...