The Hallucinations Of A Coffee Drinker

Sunday morning. Sleep in. Make a pot of coffee and enjoy the quiet in the house as everyone else sleeps in later. Sleeping in for me means waking up at 7:30 without the alarm clock. That is the way it is when you normally rise at 3:30 for your morning radio job. With no one else awake, I wind up drinking the entire pot of coffee. I surf the next and watch home improvement television shows. I used to think I was just good at day dreaming. Now, I read it might be the coffee. A new study out shows a major caffeine buzz can cause the imbiber to hear things that aren't there.

Researchers brought nearly 100 participants to a lab and administered large doses of caffeine to some of them. The researchers then gave the subjects headphones emitting white noise and told them the sounds of Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" would be playing in the background. In spite of the fact the song was not actually played, some of the highly caffeinated participants reported they could hear it. The study concludes that drinking as few as five cups of coffee could increase a person's chances of experiencing auditory hallucination. The study appears in the journal "Personality and Individual Differences."