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Comment by LarsAlereon | Hacker News Reader

My experience has been that caffeine is good for me, but the delivery mechanisms we use need a lot of work. I've found good results using extended release caffeine pills to avoid jitters and a crash. I also find that drinking caffeine is a problem because it makes it more difficult to pace my dosing consistently. Also, just not trying to use caffeine to get by with regularly not sleeping enough is huge.

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I've had scares of friends nearly dying to caffeine overdose from pills.

Drinking your caffeine may make "consistent" dosing harder, but it more importantly it makes accidental overdosing somewhat harder because you consume liquids a lot slower than you can consume pills and your bladder acts as a natural dose limiter over time.

My experience is the opposite, it's a lot easier to consume more caffeine than you intended when it's dissolved in a liquid. The big risk of overdose is when you mess with powder you have to measure out yourself, anything pre-dosed is much safe by comparison.

Not at "natural" quantities of "dissolved". Tea and coffee only have so much naturally. Sodas mostly stick to about those averages. Obviously "energy drinks" are a wild west sometimes, and drinker beware, but in the context of "safe doses", it is very hard to overdose on tea and coffee (and chocolate and most sodas).

japanese green tea contains 2-3x more coffeine than coffee but the release time is much slower and more consistent. if spikes are a problem i recommend looking into it. it's very tasty too if prepared correctly. (hojicha, roasted green tea, on the other hand has very little coffeine)

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