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Florida Man Illustrates Why You Should Never Mix Cocaine and Pufferfish

Image Credit: Pixabay

You know, in case you’re tempted to mix the two. As one does…

This harrowing tale features a 43-year-old man who showed up at a Florida (of course) hospital stating he needed help after doing “too much blow” at home.

Doctors realized they weren’t dealing with a simple overdose case, though, when the patient revealed he had also eaten (poisonous) pufferfish liver. Before the day was done, they had to hook him up to a ventilator and a dialysis machine before he went into multiple system failure.

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Pufferfish (or blowfish) is an occasionally deadly Japanese delicacy that needs to be prepared by an expert before being consumed. It contains a poison called tetrodotoxin that must be removed before the fish is eaten, and according to the CDC, around 50 people in Japan die from eating ill-prepared pufferfish every year.

It only takes around 2mg of the stuff to kill a person, which makes it 1200x more toxic than cyanide. Also, tetrodotoxin has no antidote.

Which is to say, it’s definitely not something you want to mess around with if you’re not sure you know what you’re doing.

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In the Florida case, the man’s symptoms of chest pains, vomiting, numbness in his legs, abdominal pain and muscle weakness, and an inability to speak clearly, cleared up within 24 hours, though he continues to require dialysis treatment.

He also developed pneumonia, which briefly required a breathing tube.

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Avoid the pufferfish, friends, unless you find yourself at a reputable restaurant in Japan.

I mean. Avoid the cocaine, too, but that should go without saying.