This is one of those things that came up at the dinner table, but for the life of me I can’t remember how.
Anyway, a guy was trying to describe this to me. According to him, people high on Ecstasy consume dangerous amounts of water and sometimes die from overhydration. He wasn’t too sure about the mechanics of it, but said that the cells reach some sort of saturation density and basically shut down. I asked him “So what do they die of?” and he said… “I think everything just kind of stops working.”
So
Exactly how much water would someone have to consume for it to be deadly?
What happens on the cellular level once someone hits the deadly point?
But this is NOT the problem with ecstacy. Dehydration is far more likely, and far more deadly. Frankly, while not impossible, it’s very difficult to voluntarily consume so much water that you die of it.
It does happen. Some of the people are so frightened by the dehydration stories that they deliberately consume very large amounts of water to prevent it. They then die by water overdose.
On to the specifics:
It depends.
The big problem is that sodium and potassium levels get too low in the bloodstream due to dilution. This causes cells to overfill themselves by osmosis. This is especially dangerous with nerve cells and can lead to dizziness, vertigo, convulsions, coma, and or death.
A return to one, it still depends, but with 2 out the way, you can see that it depends on the size of the person, what their normal salt intake is like, how long since they last ate, how salty was their last meal, etc.
Well, if you want to know the name of what they die of, it is generally called acute water intoxication. If you want the process, I am pretty sure that it is from their nervous system shutting down. I suspect that it is probably similar to meningitis. Hopefully QtM will swing though with some more details soon.
Well, I’m beyond trying to summarize a bunch of stuff I don’t really know, but a google search on hyperhydration, MDMA and fatality will get you lots to look at. Apparently there are relatively few deaths directly attributable to MDMA and, if anything, dehydration is a bigger problem then hyperhydration. As is often the case, the lore appears to have it backwards.
Don’t worry about hyperhydration. Lots of jurisdictions are forcing people who host raves to not provide water and “cool-down” rooms for their customers. This guarantees that lots of kids will die from dehydration, but it should eliminate the tiny percentage that might die from hyperhydration. The War on Drugs marches on.