water intoxication "is a potentially fatal disturbance in brain functions that results when the normal balance of electrolytes in the body is pushed outside safe limits by over-hydration."
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
well, how much water do you need (to drink to die)?
.
in 1995, eighteen year old Leah Betts "drank approximately 1.85 gallons of water in less than an hour and half"
-http://voices.yahoo.com/known-cases-water-intoxication-182666.html
she died. 1.85 gallons are approx. 7 liters. the author of the top 20 suicide methods reports following...
"i drank 7 liters of water in 2.5 hours. then i faced a terrible headache and a sensation of spinning head, nausea and vomited once. after vomiting, i forced down another liter of water. i went out to have a cup of tea, lighted a cigarette and that is all that i remember. i fainted, fell on the ground and had a severe cut at the back of my head. i was taken to hospital immediately by people standing around and there i had 5 stitches on my head. i was sent back to another hospital for a CT Scan and ended up with a report of signs of cerebral edema"
-http://wantdeath.blogspot.de/2011/08/water-intoxication-it-actually-works.html
yet, nth will happen "even if you drink a lot of water, as long as you drink over time as opposed to intaking an enormous volume at one time"
-http://chemistry.about.com/cs/5/f/blwaterintox.htm
that's because your kidneys can process 15 liters of water each day. if you drink slowly, you'd have to drink more than 7-8 liters. so how can you force down 7-8 liters? firstly, you could stop eating for a day or 2, to accumulate hunger. and then try to alleviate it with water instead of food. from my own experience, i usually drink excessively when there's been nth to eat for a while. secondly, maybe you won't need to drink this much after all. take a look at following occurence, which is listed as a potential suicide method in itself on some website. it's hypervitaminosis, it "refers to a condition of high storage levels of vitamins, which can lead to toxic symptoms. the medical names of the different conditions are derived from the vitamin involved: an excess of vitamin A, for example, is called hypervitaminosis A"
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_poisoning
hypervitaminosis A & hypervitaminosis D, that is, the overdose on these 2 fat-soluble vitamins, and especially on those 2, A and D (besides E and K, which are also fat-soluble) is most likely to occur
-http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminose
the kidney won't flush them out, they instead get stored in the liver & in fat. people, polar researchers to be more precise, who weren't warned not to eat the liver of ice bears, (inuits, don't eat them) died
-http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminose
apparently from an acute hypervitaminosis A. ingesting a hundredfold (or more) of the normally needed amount of vitamine A, is thought to end deadly.
.
during the Australasian Antarctic expedition of 1911–1914, Xavier Mertz died. apparently the first reported case of a hypervitamosis A fatality due to eating dog-liver.
-http://healthadvisors.blogspot.de/2013/06/vitamin-overdose-or-hypervitaminosis-a.html
there's a problem. just like all the other reports about people dying in polar regions, these are anecdotes and there's room for specualtion as to what really caused their death.
-https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2005/183/11/mawson-and-mertz-re-evaluation-their-ill-fated-mappingjourney-during-1911-1914
assuming hypervitaminosis A plays a role in these deaths, there were other contributory factors at play aswell. coldness, malnutrition, stress.
hypervitaminosis D looks no more promising: "it is instructive to note that as far back as 1939, some truly enormous doses of vitamin D were in fact found to be far less deadly than one might expect. in several countries, most infants, including preemies, survived 200,000 to as many as 600,000 units of vitamin D given in a single injected or oral dose"
-http://www.doctoryourself.com/dvitamin.htm
despite the claims that hypervitaminosis (A or D) can have life-threatening consequences, i could find not one clear-cut case where this was the case. (that is, the case that it was the sole cause of death)
however!
"symptoms of acute (short-term) toxicity include nausea, headache, fatigue, loss of appetite, dizziness, dry skin, desquamation (loss of skin), and cerebral edema (swelling in the brain)"
-http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vitamin-a/NS_patient-vitamina/DSECTION=safety
cerebral oedema is the potentially fatal outcome of over-hydration, as well as of hypervitaminosis A. thus, combining lots of water with lots of vitamin A (supplements) might reduce your need for drinking all that much.
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