Toxicology kind of does not necessarily work that way. E.g. in veterinary medicine it can become tricky, as the same thing (e.g. an anaesthetics) may make one animal react well, another species requiring much higher dose per weight, and yet another species be killed by even a small dose.
Even between mammals there are significant toxicology-relevant differences. And the schism between insects and mammals is much much wider.
Me! Me! I did! It was me! Look at me! I like caffeine! Me! Me!
Isnāt it though?
Not surprisingly, the guy I saw do this got hooked on pills - stole whatever he could get his hands on out of peopleās medicine cabinets - when he was working as a painter one summer break.
$10 says this is still better than what Michael Bay ends up giving us.
A bunch of people I hung out with decided to order a kilogram of caffeine from a lab supply house.
Now you can buy on Amazon and eBay.
I still have half a jar of the stuff, and I doubt it will ever be finished.
The main problem I have is that not only is it too powerful ā a standard vitamin capsule can hold 500mg of caffeine ā but also the powder is pretty darn compressible ā so itās tough to determine exactly how much youāre dosing.
Also, caffeine is the āstandard benchmarkā for bitterness. A caffeine-coated donut would be inedible. The best thing we found was to add caffeine to orange juice or lemonade. The bitterness is not so bad in those forms. Or add a little extra caffeine to coffee or cola. But again, if youāre not careful, you can easily take more than you intended, and feel really bad.
As for the LD50 being some ridiculous number of cups of coffee, let me just say this: IF a noobie eats a gram of caffeine, theyāre probably going to ask to go to the hospital. They very well might not end up with any serious longterm medical problems, but they are NOT going to be a happy camper for the next day or so. And like Iāve been harping: Itās very easy for a noobie to accidentally eat a gram, instead of 100mg.
I have heard of people snorting and or inhaling sublimated caffeine. Do people actually do that, you know, more than once?
Enough people choke themselves when they jerk off we gave it a name. We aināt a species made to lastā¦
-SMDS
if you are careful and have a milligram scale, it is significantly cheaper to buy the powder/crystals than even the generic pills.
however even though i would know what iām doing, i still wouldnāt trust myself to not make a mistake. go with the pills, or just drink coffee and enjoy it more.
Malic acid or citric acid is the cure. No one is snorting that though. Since that sounds like cooking, fructose, a groovy name, and a marketing department would also serve you well.
I think you got your white powder bags mixed upā¦
I know of a sub-group of young pre-collegiate psychonauts who had yet to discover lsd, but did have older siblings with mail order catalogs, and were not very bright to start out with that used overly large amounts of powdered caffeine, in razor and straw fashion. Only one of us ever became so sick as to every need emergency services. Luckily, we were at the local coffee shop (doh!) when it happened. The police officers who were on their break across the aisle were always suspicious of us, so that wasnāt a big deal. Being green was a big deal. I never did the powder again, and didnāt start drinking coffee until I was in my thirties. I still donāt use very much caffeine.
I probably should have just said āyesā¦yes they do.ā
Malic acid and citric acid are both exceptionally sour, and would be able balance the bitterness of other substances, if one could manage the accompanying sour effect these acids bring with them.
Part of the reason that orange juice and lemonade would work is just that theyāre served cold. For anyone trying to mask the taste of caffeine and citric acid, I suggest making a caffeinated lemon sorbet. Ices require a lot of sugar because they donāt have the fat content of ice creams to help them freeze. (Something tells me I shouldnāt be helping with this . . . ah well.)
EDIT: After mentioning the idea of a caffeinated lemon sorbet - I got curious about whether anyone had tried it. Hereās an Instructable for an Arnold Palmer Sorbet. Apparently it works quite well.
In reality, the Lethal dose is much less than 100mg/kg.
Iāve taken as much as 1.5 grams of caffeine on a few occasions, and it turns out that damaged my heart. Much more and I likely would have died.
I weigh 135kg so thatās much less than 100mg/kg.
Itās all ballpark estimates when it comes to measuring lethal toxicity of substances in humans. Typically thereās not enough cases of poisoning where the dose is known with good confidence, and itās not like we can set up double blinded, controlled studies to test for lethal dosage of anything in humans.
If I had a child who had purchased a package of caffeine powder like you have pictured, Iād be pushing the Attorney General to press charges of manslaughter on the seller immediately. Suggesting someone should take 1/16th of a teaspoon seems like reckless endangerment, even in the context of adults. 1/16th of a teaspoon is something you might say about ground habanero, and those kinds of spices usually come with more of a warning even though they wonāt actually kill you if you have a teaspoon. Selling it to a minor also seems negligent.
My tongue is cringing and falling off at the prospect of how bitter that would beā¦
Or tea, and enjoy it even more. 
Pretty much yes, weāve had such a fatality here in the UK a few years ago:
I tried modafinil for dealing with the occasional sleep problems. As with many stimulants, not enough is not enough, too much is jittery and annoying, and the right dose kind of helps.
But if youāve tried using caffeine to stay alert during the day after a night of not enough sleep, you know how itās really not an adequate substitute, and thereās this dark undercurrent layer of bad mood that says you really did need to have gotten actual rest? Modafinilās pretty much the same way, without quite as much jitteriness as youād get from constantly re-caffeinating all day, and the pill tastes like a pill instead of like yummy coffee. Basically, if I need drugs to stay awake, and coffee hasnāt been enough, Iāll stick to making tea all afternoon, or hot chocolate if Iām in the mood for the fat and sugar and theobromine.
A couple of decades ago, an acquaintance of mine and his druggie friends decided to test the hypothesis that just as marijuana, opium, and coca have somewhat different effects depending on whether youāre consuming the natural leaves, consuming concentrated active ingredients, or smoking active ingredients, it might be interesting to try smoking caffeine powder (in this case, crunched-up pills.)
His recommendation was that You Do Not Want To Do This, and all the unpleasant things that caffeine can do to you will happen all at once, and You Will Not Have Fun From The Experience.
