Fresh chillies and chilli powder

[Jonny69]

I have a question about chilli powder hotness. A lot of recipes suggest using a lot more chilli than I am comfortable with. I like my food pretty damn hot and I have quite a high tolerance of hot food but...

Take Lozza's lime pickle recipe. If I used 5 teaspoons of my chilli powder it would be inedible so I've used 1 teaspoon and it's blow your head off hot. I wouldn't even put that much in a curry or chilli con carne to feed 6 because I know it would be way too hot. Jamie Oliver recipes often say to stick a few chillies in pasta, but it would be so hot it would obliterate all other flavours if I did that. Some of the curry recipes I have say to use 10-20 whole chillies plus dried but it's on the point of unbearable with a killer ring of fire if I use one whole fresh chilli and less than a teaspoon of dried.

Am I getting much hotter chilli than they are or am I just actually a weed with a sensitive sphincter?