Originally Posted by
bluefoxicy
What would happen if you took, say... 8000mg of Modafinil instead of 200mg?
Most likely, someone will publish a paper about you. Last I checked there were no documented cases of fatal modafinil overdose. Since it does not build up tolerance and it does not give you a high, this kind of thing just does not happen very often - only if someone tries to commit suicide or if a child comes across a bottle of pills.
This number is called "therapeutic ratio": toxic dose divided by minimum effective dose. It's about 100 for caffeine or modafinil, 10 for ethanol or tylenol/acetaminophen (normal dose 15 mg/kg, toxic dose 150 mg/kg). Anything significantly greater than 10 is considered generally safe.
Whenever a therapeutic ratio of greater than 1000 is claimed (e.g. piracetam) and it's not a micro/macronutrient (e.g. vitamin C), I start thinking about the placebo effect.