Suicide by Potassium?

Factual Questions
1

I was making a batch of homemade Soylent (complete meal replacement) yesterday and had to use 50 pills of potassium citrate for one day’s portion. It was a little unnerving to put so many pills into one batch but the recipe calls for 5 grams and the pills are 99mg so that’s what I put in.

Anyways, my little experiment led to a conversation with someone who mentioned they once knew a doctor who committed suicide by potassium overdose (which impacted their heart function). This seems like a really impractical way to kill oneself unless perhaps one is doing an intravenous injection.

So what do you think, can potassium be used as a practical means of suicide? From what I read of the LD-50 is 2.6 grams/kg (I weigh 88 kg so I would need to take 228 grams or 2280 pills because I believe the FDA says you can’t have more than 99mg of potassium in one pill).

So it seems impractical to me, but what do you think?

2

I’d say it’s via injection. That’s the only way I’ve heard of.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/criem/2012/323818/

3

The LD50 of potassium chloride is 2500 mg per kg. so a person would have to eat 6 ounces of the stuff to have a 50% chance of dying.

Injection of KCl is supposed to hurt bad. Wonder why that doctor did not just use pentobarbital?

4

Ummm…then you put in 49.5 grams, not 5 grams. Were you making a tenfold batch, I hope?

Suicide by oral potassium has been done, but it’s not easy. It’s easier with prescription strength potassium supplements, which can be much stronger than over the counter ones. Still, it’s a lot of pills, and you have to take them pretty quickly to overcome the first pass metabolism, or you have to chug a whole lot of the liquid stuff which, outside of hospitals, is difficult to get anyone to prescribe (probably because it is potentially deadly and they don’t want people getting it mixed up with their cough syrup).

IV potassium is a lot easier, although yes, it burns like a bitch. But it’s “easy” enough that they give us lots of warnings in nursing school about not accidentally “pushing a Kevorkian”. (Little nursing joke there, as potassium’s symbol is K, and Kevorkian starts with K and you “push” IV meds into the tubing with a…look, it’s a lot funnier if you haven’t slept in weeks and you’re living on coffee brewed with Red Bull, okay?)

Most always, they’ll try to use a mechanical pump to put potassium in your IV at the correct (slow) rate, rather than relying on a person to go slow enough to not kill you.

5

99 mg is about 0.1 g (1000 mg in a gram).

50 pills * 0.1 g/pill is 5 g.

I’ve been at a conference all day so my brain is fried. Is my math wrong?

6

Nope - logged in to say the same thing. OP’s math and yours seems right to me.

7

Thanks for double checking. As a bench scientist I do this math all day, but I was doubting myself!

8

No you’re right, I’m wrong. Brain fried. Good thing it’s my day off and I have time to go find that damn slipped decimal. :smack:

9

Thank you all for double-checking the math.

In case anyone is curious, this is what my potassium-filled meal looks like: http://i.imgur.com/oomdQ1W.jpg

10

What is your recipe for homemade soylent? I have looked into buying some, but it is around $85 for a week’s worth of it and I eat more than the amount listed. It sounds like something interesting to try just to get the proper ratio of macro and micronutrients.

Try powdered potassium gluconate next time.

A teaspoon of powder has about 500mg.

The LD50 for sodium and potassium is about the same, but for some reason society seems far more terrified of a potassium overdose. People can and do eat 6+ grams of sodium in a single processed meal and nobody blinks, but eat more than a gram of potassium and people act like you will die.

You can always also try salt substitute, which is just KCl and cheaper as a potassium source than gluconate. However I have found that that causes me to have stomach pains while the potassium gluconate doesn’t.

11

Don’t give me any ideas.

12

You don’t get it at the pharmacy, you buy it at the garden center as 4 pound bags of Muriate of potash.

13

Does it ever burn. Like fire in your veins. I had no idea you could actually have problems with it- apparently the interaction between my BP meds (25mg hydrochlorothiazide) and the ridiculous amounts of IV fluids they were giving me after my knee surgery in January were making my potassium levels low (well duh… I was peeing like an atomic-powered peeing machine).

So they were giving me IV potassium as often as I could in hopes of bringing it up, despite my commentary that just lowering the amount of fluid would probably have done the trick, since a known side effect of HCTZ is hypokalemia (low potassium) caused by all the crazy urination.

14

I can’t comment on any of the figures cited above (e.g. the LD50, etc.). But, what I can say is that I don’t think anyone’s considering the effect of potassium excretion from the body. And, it is problems with potassium excretion that lead to deaths from hyperkalemia (high potassium) in the real world.

One of the first things to go in kidney failure, even when it’s mild and years from needing dialysis, is the ability to excrete potassium normally. So, anyone with even the slightest degree of kidney dysfunction should take these Soylent recipes with a grain of salt (ha!).

Even in the presence of normal kidney function, but especially if kidney function is reduced, there are a number of medications that also impair potassium excretion. One class of such drugs are the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil) and many similar agents including good old aspirin (ASA).

Septra (also called Bactrim or cotrimoxazole), a commonly used antibiotic, raises potassium predictably and significantly and has recently been shown to increase the risk of sudden death in people who are also taking angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEI) or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs). In fact, ACEIs and ARBs by themselves inhibit potassium excretion by the kidney and thus also raise blood potassium levels predictably. The list goes on . . . diuretics (Dyazide, Aldactone), beta-blockers, . . .

Bottom line is that I would be very careful when taking any form of potassium by mouth except that found naturally in the diet unless you are sure your kidneys are working perfectly fine and are confident that you know the effects on kidney potassium handling of any medications you’re using.

ETA: Quite often, people with long-standing type II diabetes will have a problem in their kidney’s ability to excrete potassium even if the kidneys appear to be working normally in all other respects. So, what I wrote above applies to many people with diabetes as well.

15

From what I know of the soylent movement, they are creating foods that meet the US RDA of potassium. The OP is using 5 grams a day, the RDA is 4700mg.

16

I have been following this thread and others for around 6 months since my world fell apart, I lost my home, my marriage, my job and dignity and blah blah blah, was looking to end it all.

I took out a pretty good life insurance package, but in the UK well in England at least, they will not pay out on suicides until after policy has gone past 12 months.

So I was looking for a method of suicide which is undetectable by modern forensic testing and pretty efficient.

I weight 100KG approx ( a little less at the moment).

I worked out that you need 7.5g of pure 100% Potassium Chloride to kill at a Human Male of 100KG and that you will need a syringe that can hold a capacity in excess of 30ml to do so.

Before any of you hot heads go off willy nilly, there are 10 major problems with this type of suicide. These are problems found from extensive research.

  1. You need to use pure Potassium Chloride. If you use Lo-Salt then the Sodium in the Low Salt will counteract the depolarisation of the heart and you will suffer a slow agonising death lasting weeks with multiple heart attacks.

  2. The pure Potassium Chloride cannot be swallowed, I know because I tried. You can manage about 20 teaspoons worth and then you will have both chronic diarrhoea and vomiting at the same time. Now you can either take my word for it or come back on here and confirm I am right after you have done it.

  3. Getting a Syringe large enough to take 30ml or more of liquid suspension of KCL and Water. I got mine off ebay, you cannot use 5ml (6 times) you would be in Cardiac Arrest with 20 seconds of the first injection and then you will live. (No, not even I was that stupid either).

  4. Needle size is a major problem. You cannot buy a needle for injecting that is big enough to puncture a vein and inject 30ml of Potassium Chloride.

  5. You need cannulate yourself, this is a needle that fits on your arm, and has a line directly into your vein. I have been practising for 6 months and only get a hit every 1 in 6 times.

  6. You need a size 18 cannula or lower. (The lower the cannula size the larger the needle.).

  7. Using Diazapam (Valium), there are two main problems with this, one is you need to be on your A Game to cannulate and inject yourself and you cannot do that half asleep. Secondly, its meant to be a undetectable suicide so the presence of Diazepam is very suspicious.

  8. You can drink after you cannulated yourself for courage and to relieve pain.

  9. There are three types of pain involved.

a) Infusion site pain. This is extreme pain where you are injecting into the vein. You need to do it fast enough to ensure enough of the suspension is in your vein to stop your heart and you die, before you have your first cardiac arrest.
b) The Type of Cardiac Arrest is called a Arrhythmia leading to a Myocardium Infarction. This is a very painful type of heart attack as you heart literally stops, but bloods is still gushing around your body. It is best if you stand up while injecting so that you faint as blood flows away from your brain and your body puts you in a coma while your heart dies along with the rest of you.
c) If you choose to lie or sit down then the next bit of pain is the feeling of your heart stopping, this can be very distressful, which it is better to stand up and then pass out completely and not wake up.

10 Conclusions.

Death by Potassium Chloride requires a lot of planning.
You need to get your hands on 95% or better Potassium Chloride otherwise your going to be a world of hurt. You need a cannula and the skill of perform a veinipuncture (a hole in your vein), where you can inject 30ml of suspension of KCL in less than 20 seconds.
The pain while your injecting will be severe. Concentrated Suspension of KCL injected quickly into a vein in your left arm means you wont have long before you suffer a cardiac arrest.

You will want to be standing while injecting, so that when your heart stops, your brain will be deprived of oxygen and switch off. No more pain. No more beating heart.

You will in effect be in a coma (Flat lined) for about 8 minutes. After this time you cannot be revived. Once you inject your on the clock.

If you are serious about killing yourself there are a lot easier and less painful ways to do it.

17

Nope. I didn’t need to read that.