Or, and hear me out, people outside of cocaine's traditional region are using it wrong.

The past being a different country, I was fortunate in the early Noughts to be able to purchase Bolivian coca tea bags from an early online drug dealer called Amazon dot com.

They were a fantastic addition to the tea shelf. I would favor a cup of the coca tea when energy was low going into an evening with social plans. Even, bright energy, short acting (duration is two hours roughly) barely feel it fading.

How does that compare to refined cocaine taken intranasally? Remarkably, I can't tell you, I don't touch the stuff. Sure wish I could still buy mate de coca though.

> How does that compare to refined cocaine taken intranasally?

Immediate, bright energy, short acting (duration is half hour), feel it fading within minutes (which is why you want more)

Bingo.

Coca tea is awesome.

> intranasally

Should perhaps be insufflation

It should not be insufflation. Intranasal administration is a synonym for nasal administration you'll find in many papers, it's older.

Insufflation is actually a misnomer for nasal administration, insufflation is blowing something into a person for medical reasons, not using vacuum to pull it into the body.

Now, it's a common misnomer, which I generally let pass without correction. But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!

I quit caffeine about 8 years, only having a white tea on occasions. But I love a cup of decaf every so often. One day at work, one of my coworkers swapped the decaf pot with the regular pot and I drank a 16oz mug before I realized what was going on.

I was absolutely lit up and it was an incredible experience. I felt utterly amazing. Like I could take on the world. I had a hard time focusing at work, because I just wanted to be talking to people (not an extrovert) or going for a 10 mile run.

I can't compare it to cocaine, because I've never tried it, but I'm guessing the reason for your perception of it is because of your tolerance to caffeine.

> I felt utterly amazing. Like I could take on the world. I had a hard time focusing at work, because I just wanted to be talking to people (not an extrovert) or going for a 10 mile run.

> I can't compare it to cocaine

Sounds like you just did.

Best part of quitting coffee is that you can start drinking it again.

Fairly accurate comparison to cocaine

Time to mainline it directly into your eyeballs

In all seriousness, taking it sublingually might actually be extremely effective. Sublingual delivery tends to be more effective with lipophillic substances than hydrophilic substances. Caffeine is a bit weird in that it is hydrophilic, but, it is sufficiently lipophyllic to cross cell membranes and penetrate the blood/brain barrier, which is what makes me suspect it would work out well.

Sublingual caffeine is definitely a thing. There is caffeinated gum you can get on Amazon. You can feel it kick in almost immediately.

Huh. Technically, that would probably be considered buccal (via the cheek) delivery, but, close enough, right? I had no idea caffeinated gum kicked in significantly faster than pills or drinks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buccal_administration

Yep, good catch. "buccal administration" is a bit more obscure so I often just refer to sublingual unless I know the audience.

Mucosal absorption is definitely way faster than pills (unless you chew them) or drink.

One time a friend and I tried making caffeine patches with DMSO as a transport, and put it on our arms with a cotton ball and tape...NOT PLEASANT. Extreme pruritus and erythema at the administration site. Hoo boy were we alert though. Nowadays the gum is perhaps a bit too fast even, it's easy to overdue and I get palpitations.

Follow me for more horrible ideas and biohacks. /s. I don't actually have a channel for my misadventures and shenanigans...maybe I should?

I have a friend who can't stand the taste of coffee but of course likes caffeine as do we all, and had to import it via mail drop to Denmark in order to get his espresso-equivalent shot in the morning.

Import what? Caffeine? Where do you live? I just assumed you could buy that anywhere.

I can’t imagine buying caffeine for its own sake. The effects aren’t good enough. If I didn’t drink coffee/tea I just wouldn’t get any caffeine.

As I heard it from him, although I haven't tried anything personally, in Denmark there are some restrictions about importing liquid caffeine, he hates to drink coffee and also soft drinks, but getting caffeine from bubble gum does not provide the same level of caffeine and the water with caffeine drinks you import do not have as high a level of caffeine as soft drinks for some reason so he had to import his own and make his own.

Also as I understand: it is against the rules to import it so it will be stopped if caught but not against the rules to have it so you do not get fines or anything on record. Thus if you buy it abroad you can bring it into country with you unless caught in which case they confiscate it. This used to be the same case with Modafinil / Adrafinil and I suppose it is still the same.

Ah, I misread. I thought you said import from Denmark. Can you not buy caffeine pills in Denmark? A quick search gives conflicting info.

I don’t know what I would even do with liquid caffeine. But again, I don’t want caffeine badly enough to be looking for alternative ways to get it.

well this is second hand from him, so that also makes it about 12 years old, but I figured it seemed like the kind of thing they would keep if not get stricter about.

The problem of course is that they want to make sure you don't take too much caffeine and have a problem, so they want to limit the strength of what you can get and my understanding from him was the strength was limited so that it was hard to get anything into you with the strength of a cup of espresso, as ridiculous as that sounds but nanny-statism is a thing.