I knew I fucked up about two minutes after I chugged my pre-workout drink. My heart was racing faster than I had ever felt in my life. My face was pouring with sweat and I started to feel very anxious and nauseous. My friend was honking his horn in the driveway to hurry me up so we could go to the gym. I decided to ignore how I was feeling and just go with my friend, so I hopped in the car, and off we went.
As we’re driving to the gym, I realize with absolute certainty that something is definitely wrong. “I think I mixed caffeine in my drink instead of creatine man. I don’t feel right. I mixed 5 grams of that shit. Oh No!”
My friend, ignoring the panic in my voice and refusing to take me seriously – tells me to relax and we continue to the gym. We usually mess around with each other and always take things too far, so it wasn’t a ridiculous thing to assume I was joking.
In a final attempt to try and convince myself that everything is okay, I decided to just go to the gym and to “workout” whatever is wrong with me. We get to the gym. I swipe my card and I head straight to the squat rack.
At this point, I am able to squat 225lbs for about 6-8 reps after a good warm-up and stretch, but I was way too anxious to even think about doing any of that. Instead, I go and set the bar up with 225lbs. My heart begins to race faster, but I ignore it and go on to squat my normal 225lb weight for over 30 reps – an absolutely unthinkable number. There was no struggle in my effort. I just went up and down, up and down until my legs were numb: I couldn’t feel anything below my waist.
I put the bar back and pause for a moment. My heart rate is pumping so fast now that I am genuinely concerned. I may be having a heart attack. I can’t lie to myself any longer. I took caffeine. I know I did. And I need to get it out of my body.
I sprint to the change room to purge myself of the caffeine and make myself puke. I throw open the door and look for a free stall, only to find them all occupied. With no other option, I bend down to the nearest urinal, stick my finger down my throat and throw up what looks to be fluorescent orange bile.
My friend comes into the bathroom to find me with my head in a urinal filled with vomit and piss. It’s obvious now that I am not joking around and am in serious trouble. He tries to calm me down but there is nothing he can do. He tells me to wait and gets a representative from the gym to see if they can help.
The rep offers to get me an ambulance, but my anxiety is growing more and more out of control and the thought of being wheeled away in a gurney only makes it worse. I shake my head, tell them no and leave the gym with my friend. I asked him to drive me to the hospital. My friend, being the considerate and kind person he is, tells me that he has an appointment to go to and can only drive me halfway.
It’s the middle of winter in Toronto and my friend drops me off 20 minutes away from the hospital. It’s snowing outside and the sidewalk and roads are covered in grey slush.
This is as bad a situation as I have ever been in.
I begin my walk to the hospital with my two fingers on my pulse. My heart is pounding harder and harder and it physically hurts at this point. The more I walk, the faster my pulse gets and the more it hurts. I’m starting to panic and don’t know what to do, so I opt to get on all fours, sling my gym bag around my neck and begin crawling in hopes that I can reduce my heart rate.
As I crawl to the hospital, I start to feel a tingling in my body and notice that the grey slush I have been trekking through has turned into a vibrant purplish-green colour. The cars whizzing past me on the road are no longer making noise. Instead, the sounds they’re making have turned into waves of different coloured light that are enveloping me and dancing all around until they consume the whole sky.
I’m tripping like I just took two tabs of LSD.
Despite my hallucinations, I finally make it to the hospital where I am told to sit down and wait. I’m not hallucinating as much, but the walls around me are breathing and the floor is swaying from side to side.
After about 20 minutes, I see a doctor who begins to do a number of different tests on me. He asks me how much caffeine I consumed and I tell him that I dissolved 5 grams into some juice and chugged it in about 10 seconds. The doctor turned around and stared at me with utter shock. “You consumed the equivalent of 50 cups of coffee in under 10 seconds. You should be dead. Your fast metabolism saved you. Any normal human being with a slower metabolic rate would be dead right now. You are incredibly lucky to be alive.”
There wasn’t much the doctor could do for me. The caffeine was in my system, I had thrown up a large amount of it and my metabolism had saved me from possible death. “Continue to drink water. “Try and rest up,” the doctor insisted.
So I went home to rest but it was impossible. I didn’t sleep for 3 days.
To this day, I haven’t taken any pre-workout or supplements and I haven’t had a cup of coffee since.