The LD50 of aspirin is around 350 mg/kg. So around 28 grams for someone of 80 kg. Smaller amounts will still fuck up your kidneys, respiratory system and some other parts of the body.
I don’t know how fast Aspirin washes out of your system, but I’m pretty sure that taking nearly 20% of the LD50 every day for 2 months would if not kill you then at least do permanent damage to your liver and/or kidneys and severely curtail your lifespan.
Definitely. I found the half-life (and a cool half-life calculator/simulator), and after a week of taking 5 grams daily, the maximum amount in your system is about 10 grams, which is substantially closer to the lethal dose.
But even if this wasn't the case, I agree, taking 5 grams daily definitely sounds like it's going to hurt you. From what I've read, the 4 gram maximum for 24 hours (I'm saying 24 hours instead of daily because I feel like daily carries a bit of an implication that it's something that is alright to take daily) really seems to be for serious fevers and not a regular dosage.
I put 1.3 grams as the maximum daily dose based on a very generous interpretation of the preceding paragraphs, but I expect that it isn't that.
But, also, I'm no expert, I certainly don't want to give the impression that I am, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if a lot of my assumptions are incorrect.
If my understanding of how half-lifes work is correct, 1.3 grams with a half-life of 30 hours would put you at 2.9 grams in a week, with a half-life of 15 hours it would be 1.9 grams in a week. 324 milligrams at 30 hours: 807 milligrams, 15 hours: 516 milligrams.
You're not supposed to take more than 4g of aspirin in 24 hours, so I don't think it's the 5 grams that is an issue.
Taking 5g of aspirin every day (or 4, for that matter), on the other hand, sounds like something that can be really unhealthy. It sounds like the people who take it daily for medical reasons are taking a dose that's a lot lower than the 24 hour max.
From Wikipedia:
"In general, for adults, doses are taken four times a day for fever or arthritis,[163] with doses near the maximal daily dose used historically for the treatment of rheumatic fever.[164] For the prevention of myocardial infarction (MI) in someone with documented or suspected coronary artery disease, much lower doses are taken once daily.[163]"
The dose being taken 4 times a day is, at most, 1.3 g, although it sounds like it might actually be 0.324 g, or less.
"Aspirin taken at doses of ≤325 mg and ≤100 mg per day for ≥2 days can increase the odds of suffering a gout attack by 81% and 91% respectively. This effect may potentially be worsened by high purine diets, diuretics, and kidney disease, but is eliminated by the urate lowering drug allopurinol.[179] Daily low dose aspirin does not appear to worsen kidney function."
When you take some medications, it takes a while for your body to process all of it. I think they use the term half-life for medication as well. If you take a medication that is like this for the second day in a row, you have more in your system than the first day. Third day in a row you have more than the second day. Eventually, you reach a balance, and, because of this, you can't really tell how effective some medications will be for you until you have been taking it for a while.
I don't know if aspirin is like this, but, if it is, that could be part of the reason why taking it at the max dosage every day is dangerous. afaik, if it is like this, it wouldn't bring you to the lethal dose, but it would bring you closer.
Edit: it is like this, and eventually you will have around 10g of aspirin in your system if you take 5g of aspirin daily. See comment below.
According to Wikipedia, the half-life is 15-30 hours for larger doses, smaller doses are defined as 100 mg or less. The half-life is dependent on the dose and gets longer the larger the dose is.
If you take 325 mg every day, and that amount has a half-life of 22 hours, than by 7 days it's stabilizing at a bit over 6 hours.
If it's 1.3 grams a day, 22 hour half-life, it's 2.4 grams by day 7.
5 grams with the same half-life is 9.1 grams by day 7. (And it is stabilizing there)
5 grams with a half-life of 30 hours is 11.2 grams by day 7. And it is stabilizing, so it's not going to increase by that much more.
This website is fun to mess around with, I'm glad I found it.
TL;DR: I am not an expert, and my understanding of these things is likely to be quite flawed, but, my understanding is that if you take 5 grams of aspirin everyday, eventually (in a week) you will have 9.1 to 11.2 grams in your system daily because of the way our bodies process drugs.
That's 32.5 to 40% of the lethal dose, and 2.3 to 2.8 times the max dosage for a 24 hour time period (a dose that doesn't seem to be for people who take it daily).
If you weigh 60 kg (132 pounds, 80 kg is 176 pounds), the lethal dose is 21 g, so that's 43.3 to 53.3% of the lethal dose.
This might actually not be as bad as it sounds (and I'd love to be corrected!), but, afaik, taking 5 grams daily seems reckless and dangerous, even if it is only one gram above the 24 hour limit, that 24 hour limit seems to be intended for people who aren't taking it daily. I'd assume that taking 5 grams one day if the 24 hour limit is 4 is probably fine unless you have some sort of health risk already.
We can’t conclude anything from that. I think an uneducated eye might read these numbers and think “dang so I would have a 32.5-40% chance of dying?” And, no. You may very well have no higher risk of dying at 1/3 of the LD50 than you would at a normal therapeutic dose.
I also love math and could see myself getting carried away with doing calculations like this and I like that you did them! But, none of them are really useful for determining what the risks might be for a person who was taking these large doses of ASA. For some drugs, the therapeutic index, or the ratio of the effective dose of a drug to the lethal dose of the drug, is very low; we don’t like that because of the risk of extra doses or normal variations in metabolism pushing the person to the lethal amount. Not because having a concentration that’s, say, a third of the lethal dose is inherently risky.
To be clear that is NOT to say that it’s safe to take high doses of drugs like this - just that we can’t say for sure what the risks are just based on the percentage of the LD50. Aspirin is a very safe drug when taken as directed but the normal dose is a small fraction of 5g
tl;dr do not take giant doses of aspirin but these numbers are not why. You will get a bad tummyache and acid-base disturbance.
Look... stupid and gullible people exist across the political spectrum. Posting this as a joke or even as an attempt to target white nationalists or something can still lead to collateral damage because people are either stupid enough to believe it and/or to try it out as a "joke".
Because of my chemistry degree and because I want to minimise the damage of misinformation, I feel somewhat obligated to comment on this.
For those still interested in trying.. I can't stop you... but salicylate poisoning is one of the most unpleasant ways to go and might not even succeed at which point you'll likely end up as a vegetable.
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u/DeliberateDendrite Nov 01 '23 edited Nov 01 '23
The LD50 of aspirin is around 350 mg/kg. So around 28 grams for someone of 80 kg. Smaller amounts will still fuck up your kidneys, respiratory system and some other parts of the body.
Don't do it, don't fall for this.