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by jrochkind1 2808 days ago
From that article,

> The threshold of caffeine toxicity appears to be around 400 mg/day in healthy adults

That's only about 4 cups of coffee, man! Or just two "NoDoz".

The article does not mention snorting caffeine. It seems reasonable to me to predict that if people starting snorting caffeine in an effort to get greater neuropharmacalogical effects, it would be pretty easy to go over 400mg.

There are few (if any?) documented deaths from caffeine overdose from drinking coffee (or even energy drinks), probably because the delivery mechanism means you need to drink a lot of beverage to get that much caffeine (8+ cups of coffee is really gonna fill up your stomach etc.). There ARE documented deaths from caffeine overdose from caffeine pills etc. though. Mechanism of delivery matters. The range between usual caffeine dose and an amount that can be dangerous is smaller than most people think (in that respect similar to aspirin and acetaminophen).

I am not sure what you mean by "to the point of effect", but I don't believe the literature you cite supports your claim that "You can snort caffeine to the point of effect and healthy individuals will be fine." Method of delivery does matter, in part because it effects practical dosages.

In fact, we don't need to guess, while as far as I know nobody's snorting it, highly-concentrated caffeine in powder/granule form (presumably similar to what we'd hypothetically imagine people snorting) _is_ documented as dangerous:

> "FDA Warns Consumers About Pure and Highly Concentrated Caffeine"

> "The FDA advises consumers to avoid pure and highly concentrated caffeine sold in bulk as powdered and liquid dietary supplements."

> "It can be extremely difficult to accurately measure pure and highly concentrated caffeine, and you can easily consume a dangerous or even lethal amount."

> "Dietary supplements consisting of pure or highly concentrated caffeine are potentially dangerous, and serious adverse events can result, including death."

-- https://www.fda.gov/Food/DietarySupplements/ProductsIngredie...

> "On May 27, his brother found him unresponsive on their living room floor. In an effort to increase his energy, Mr. Stiner had used caffeine powder a friend had purchased on Amazon, but miscalculated the dosage, overdosed and died. The medical examiner said the cause of death was “cardiac arrhythmia and seizure, due to acute caffeine toxicity due to excessive caffeine ingestion.”"

-- https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/caffeine-powder-po...

1 comments

I don't think you're making a counterargument here; I'm not saying caffeine doesn't have negative impacts on health at any level. I'm saying to the point of effect (which again I detailed), it is safer than cocaine is comparably.

The mechanism of ingest only matters if the latency of effect is so great that a user goes past the point of pleasurable effect. Drinking or snorting cocaine has negative physiological effect closer to the point of pleasurable pyschological effect than does caffeine.

That's like saying fentanyl isn't particularly dangerous, because you aren't going to OD on the level that is pleasurable. Not how it works. If the difference in dose between what you would have wanted and a toxic dose is relatively small, that makes it dangerous.

Pure or high-concentration caffeine is quite clearly dangerous.

> That's like saying fentanyl isn't particularly dangerous, because you aren't going to OD on the level that is pleasurable.

It's actually the total opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying that caffeine specifically is less likely to do that than cocaine (or fentanyl).

> Pure or high-concentration caffeine is quite clearly dangerous.

This is another argument I did not make.