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Monday, October 06, 2008

Is drinking a bottle of Nyquil fatal?

If you may have overdosed on Acetaminophen, please don't read this article -- call American Association of Poison Control Centers: 1-800-222-1222.)
 
If you are thinking about suicide, this appears to be a painful way to die so trying to induce overdose is not going to take the pain away. Please call 1-800-784-2433 to talk to someone about your feelings.  Comments on this post have been disabled.

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"Acetaminophen overdose is one of the most common poisonings worldwide." (National Institute of Health)

I knew that Acetaminophen was bad in large amounts but I didn't know how bad. Essentially, I couldn't find adequate resources on this topic so I did some research of my own. According to the link, it appears only 8 extra strength pills (500 mg) can cause serious problems and 14 -- untreated -- can kill you. You have about 8 hours after taking them, and then liver failure will kill you in a few days.

This is a big issue for people who get really severe headaches, for elderly folks who forget how many pills they've taken. However, the other group is people who drink a whole bottle of NyQuil either to get the mild alcohol high or to go to sleep.

The NyQuil wikipedia page also has cautions that seem to point to unspecified danger:
"It is essential to avoid excessive amounts of acetaminophen as this may cause damage to the liver. This risk is additive when separate co-ingestion of acetaminophen is used. The normal maximum for acetaminophen per day is 65 mg/kg/24hrs or 4g/day, whichever is less."
However, this doesn't say whether or not drinking a *whole* bottle is a bad idea. However, according to NIH information, doing so appears to be quite harmful. Here's the math:
  1. There are 500 mg Acetaminophen per every 15mL in NyQuil (source)
  2. A bottle of NyQuil contains 10 oz, which converts to 295.7 mL (source)
  3. So there are 9,856 mL of Acetaminophen in every bottle [(295.7/15)*500]
  4. 7,000 mg is supposed to be threshold for possible liver failure.
Therefore, there is a strong chance that drinking a whole bottle could cause serious health problems, including liver failure. My math or my assumptions may be incorrect so please comment if I've made a mistake. There are a long list of other variables including ingesting food, body weight, pre-existing liver problems, and more that would change this. If you're not sure, please contact the Poison Control hotline at the top of this article.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are 500mg acetaminophen per 30mL of NyQuil not 15mL. It's closer to 5000mg of acetaminophen per bottle, not 9000mg

Folding Home said...

Cool, thanks for the info. If I can find a bottle, I'll go back and check this.

Unknown said...

My wife is drinking one full bottle per day. She says it is to help her sleep, but I know it is not healthy for her. She wants me to leave her alone about it and not being anything negative to the table. The fact is is that if she continues to drink one bottle per day, her liver will cease to function and she will die from that. That is a positive in a negative situation. I have no one else that will stress this to her so she will take it seriously. I've tried and it does no good.

Folding Home said...

James: Not sure what you're looking for here. If she won't listen, I'm not sure what else to say. Good luck with that?

Anonymous said...

I've od'd on nyquil tried to commit suicide drank a bottle of nyquil and half a bottle of tylonol

Folding Home said...

Anonymous: Very sorry to hear that. I'm glad you didn't succeed.

Anonymous said...

I drank a whole bottle once and just cuz and i called poison control cuz idk i was sketchin and this mexo was like how many ml did you dring and i was like 7 oz and he started freakin out so i hung up and was like fuck it and just made myself throw it up and that was in a timespan of like 30 mins within drinking i was straight it was like 1230 at that point and i had work the next day at like 945 and it sucked ass, but like it couldve been worse cuz my job is pretty easy, but yeah if u just drank a bottle of nyquil and are like oh fuck why did i just do that, just throw it up, itll be altight

Anonymous said...

Is there really a such thing as actually setting your mind and trying to commit suicide and failing or is that referred to otherwise as grabbing for attention i dont belive that anyone truly wanting to get the job done can fail just my opinion probably 75% of the househould meds and chemicals will kill you with enough ingested you obviously didn't want to bad enough to do 15 minutes of research so therefore you know theres good there somewhere and just need to search it out you'll enjoy the journey way more than "trying" to end your life best of luck to you

Folding Home said...

> you'll enjoy the journey way more than "trying" to end your life

Wow. Really wish I'd never posted this fucking article.