Fancy another cup of espresso? You might not when the ghosts start talking to you.
A study by Durham University in England, has found that caffeine doesn’t just give you the shakes and stop you sleeping: it can actually give you hallucinations.
200 students were asked about their typical intake of caffeine containing products, such as coffee, tea and energy drinks as well as chocolate bars and caffeine tablets.
Heavy caffeine drinkers (7+ cups of instant coffee a day) were found to be more prone to hallucinating, with some saying they feel the presence of dead people. Those that drank less than one cup were found to have three times less chance of these weird hallucinations.
However, this isn’t due to caffeine’s ability to break through to the spirit realm, you’ll be pleased to know, but rather the increased effect it has on stress.
Mental health charity MIND has said that the hallucinations are separate from actual mental illness, and can be caused by any stressful situation.
And, of course, the British Coffee Association(BCA) has condemned the study, saying that the study focused purely on caffeine and not the effects of other substances or situations.
The BCA also says that decaffeinated coffee carries no adverse effects and can be drunk freely, but , really, who wants to do that?
