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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/Dad_Quest on 2023-10-09 19:58:40.

Didn’t happen today, but rather over many weeks with a “resolution” today.

A few months back, I came down with a serious case of viral bacterial pneumonia. My whole family got sick - but I was the only one who got worse. Like an idiot, I tried to just wait it out, but it wasn’t showing any sign of improving.

So, I got antibiotics, took them, got better, the end. Right? Absolutely not.

I learned today that you’re not supposed to mix caffeine with most antibiotics, because they can disrupt your liver’s ability to process caffeine, which can cause you to have prolonged side effects or even overdose in severe cases. Combined with that, severe pneumonia can apparently alter the way your liver processes caffeine altogether.

I’m here today to tell you that a caffeine overdose is not nearly as fun as it sounds. It felt like my body was shutting down. I ended up in the ER, waited 5 hours without being seen (thanks for that), went home and waited it out, eventually felt okay. After a passing word from an Internet Stranger I started experimenting with low doses of caffeine and discovered that I had in fact become extremely sensitive to it. 5mg (half of a small hot chocolate from dunkin donuts) is enough to give me paresthesia in the head, arms, legs, and back, raise my heart rate, and give me a headache, even now long after I’ve recovered. For reference, that day, I had consumed somewhere between 200mg and 400mg of caffeine. I only learned about the interaction between coffee and antibiotics today.

I used to be a very heavy coffee drinker, 400mg+ per day. Going through a cold-turkey detox (while still recovering from pneumonia) was also horrible. The only upside is that I’ve been trying to cut down on coffee for years - just would’ve rather not had a near death experience to go with it.

TL;DR: didn’t get treated for severe pneumonia in time and drank coffee on antibiotics, became dangerously sensitive to caffeine and forced into withdrawal