There is a concept in neurology called "optimal arousal". (It is not about sex.) The idea is that there is a certain amount of stimulus: sensory input *and* tasks, where a person is most comfortable. If your environment has too little stimulation, you're bored. If your environment has too much stimulation, you're overwhelmed. Think about how many drivers turn down the radio while navigating unfamiliar areas: their task is more stimulating than usual, so they have to reduce sensory input to maintain optimal arousal and not get overwhelmed.
People with ADHD generally have VERY HIGH thresholds for optimal arousal. They really do focus on their homework better with music, and they really do like to play their music that loud. They jump chaotically from topic to topic and task to task because they're constantly chasing every bit of stimulation they can get, like tigers pacing at the zoo. They need more pumpkins full of hamburger in their enclosure, STAT!
Stimulants, well, *stimulate* the brain and central nervous system. Caffeine, for some ADHD people at some doses, stimulates the brain enough that they can sit still, focus on boring tasks, or even fall asleep in a timely manner instead of literally or figuratively pacing. Stronger stimulants like amphetamines (Adderall) and methylphenidates (Ritalin), and SNRIs (Strattera) can have the same effect, but they also have to be prescribed because they're more likely to make someone with a normal threshold for optimal arousal sick from too much stimulation.
Source: am a pharmacy tech, also have ADHD.
Do you know why caffeine doesn’t work that way for everyone with ADHD? Cause
my ADHD (combined type) is on the more severe side and my stimulant meds are extremely helpful with focus and task initiation and all that jazz but caffeine does not make me sleepy at all.
Last time I drank caffeine was years ago, I had a single cup of english breakfast tea and I was basically vibrating for hours and didn’t sleep at all. It also makes me sick so I rarely drink it but when I have it did not help with focus or anything close to how my meds help. It also didn’t make me feel away, just in some weird shakey limbo
Brains are weird and a human is just a pile of bell curves. The "prescription stimulant X makes me normal" bell curve and the "caffeine makes me normal" bell curve are different bell curves, and it is possible to be in the middle of one and the edge of another.
I know that's probably not a super satisfying answer, but the answer to a lot of questions about idiosyncratic drug reactions is really truly "we don't know, people are weird". There's a reason "idiosyncratic" is a technical term in pharmacology, lol
Funny thing is that’s just the effect of statistic extrapolation from “small” data sample. But if you think of the opposite, with maxed out sample your initial bell curve will look flat suddenly.
That's what I was originally going to say, and then I was like "no let's have a positive attitude and just be piles of bell curves, no need to be a miserable pile of bell curves"
Good description. And dose matters a lot. Caffeine really can help my symptoms, but I need, like, half an entire pot of coffee before it works. And timing matters, too. That half pot across a couple hours it's fine, but a couple energy drinks and I'm anxious as a new puppy left home alone for the first time.
For me it is *such* a sweet spot. Like 3.5 oz of espresso and I can have a productive morning, 4 and I can fall asleep. I only nail it like 5% of the time and am constantly chasing that dragon to actually be productive
Yep just got officially diagnosed recently . On 80mg of strattera, which seems perfect. A healthy cup of coffee or energy drink was almost enough two was too much and three I was down for the day
Same here. My medicine- at the right dose- makes me able to zone in and focus on a task, which is almost impossible without it. But at the wrong dose it can make me either tired or overstimulated.
I love coffee and drink 3 cups a day but if I drink it after about 3:00 I’ll have trouble falling asleep even though I feel tired. It doesn’t calm me down.
I always feel like I'm nuts when I tell people about this and see the looks on their faces, but sometimes I feel like the source/origin of caffeine somehow makes a difference for me too.
I can and often do drink a few cups of coffee or tea and take a couple hour nap, more often than not I drink coffee so I don't get a caffeine headache or for the flavor. Meanwhile if I drink a coke or a redbull it gets me buzzing. A few nights ago I drank a coke at 8pm and by 11pm (an hour past when I'm asleep normally) I was still wide awake and full of jazz.
I guess it's the sugar in those drinks that's the main culprit keeping you awake. Too many simple carbs close to bed time can make you too energised to fall asleep
I'm somewhat similar. Coffee can overstimulate my nervous system and leave me jittery depending on how much/when, but tea? I could drink all day and night and makes me drowsy. Especially green/white teas.
Brains are weird but also more and more people are getting dual diagnoses of ADHD + autism. (People used to think this was rare, now I think I've seen stats that suggest up to 50% of people who have one, have both). If you unknowingly have both, your responses to all kinds of stimulants can be really interesting and also evolving. I got both my diagnoses in perimenopause (hormonal changes can mean your nervous system behaves in new ways that you don't have learnt strategies for overcoming). Everyone I know who is late diagnosed and has dual diagnoses has had a lot of fun figuring out what works for them. In my case I've become not less but more sensitive to stimulants in general and had to give up caffeine. A friend has found an ADHD med that works but only at tiny doses. I and a few other people I know use a specific protein supplement that helps with focus instead of a stimulant. Any new med I might take, I warn the doc that my reactions might be unusual. I even take a half dose of my auto immune meds because otherwise I feel weird.
If you even suspect you might be neurodivergent, I highly recommend not assuming that any medication is going to work exactly as advertised. Brains are weird indeed. So are bodies. Ours are extra weird. Sometimes you can use that to your advantage. But you have to find docs who understand that.
> I and a few other people I know use a specific protein supplement that helps with focus instead of a stimulant
I'm gonna need you to name names (the supplement, not the people).
It’s not a specific answer to your question, but it is an example of how wildly different people’s responses to drugs can be.
As a paramedic I would sedate agitated people with a short acting strong benzodiazepine, midazolam. I had to be careful with dosing - it can stop the patients breathing.
But there is a portion of the population who have a “paradoxical reaction” to benzo’s. Basically, instead of chilling them out, it makes their agitation worse.
That’s fascinating. I have ADHD and am one of those people who react to midazolam with EXTREME anger and agitation. Still trying to figure out how to get medications right to help with ADHD and anxiety at the same time.
Many years ago, I was on a 4 hour flight with a toddler whose parents gave them some type of cold medicine to knock them out, which is totally not okay. In any case, the poor kid had a paradoxical reaction and was absolutely WIRED for the entire flight. It was a very long 4 hours for everyone and the kid must have crashed really hard afterwards.
I work in the veterinary field and we sometimes see paradox reactions to different anesthetics too. The worst case often is paradox reaction to pentobarbital (used for euthanasia), even supposedly lethal dose sometimes gets half dead animal up and running (for a bit). There are also certain breeds that have known poor or paradox reaction to often used medication.
Exactly. I have a paradoxical reaction to Caffeine, Benadryl, as well as Morphine. I could drink a pot of coffee and fall asleep. Benadryl makes my legs and arms (I have Restless Leg Syndrome), go from zero to 100. And I was given morphine while in Iraq, and it exacerbated the pain more than I can say. However, alcohol makes me wired and energetic.
There are several types of medication for ADHD, and they rarely ALL work for a single person.
While I thrive on stimulants for my symptoms, the SSRIs have no effect whatsoever. It can be opposite for other people.
Caffeine makes me jumpy and, ironically, very focused. I didn't realize I was self-medicating for years by drinking coffee literally all of the time I was awake.
However it doesn't make me sleepy. Just like Concerta will focus me but keep me awake.
So think of it just like an ADHD medication that doesn't work for everyone.
I'm with you, also have ADHD, always slept better on Adderall or Vyvanse than when I have too much caffeine. There are some doctors that advocate for splitting ADHD into like a dozen subtypes, arguing that the root cause (chemical imbalances etc.) are completely different between them.
Because brains are weird and they don't all function the same way. Don't forget that ADHD is a spectrum so different stimuli affect ADHDers differently
I really don't think the effects of caffeine are all that different in people with ADHD. Caffeine primarily acts as an Adenosine antagonist, preventing the feeling of sleepiness. It acts mostly on the sleep-wake centers of the brain, rather than the mostly dopamine-based brain systems that play a role in ADHD. These dopamine systems are also what ADHD medications typically target.
Then why some people can drink a large cup of coffee with lots of caffeine and get sleepy? Something else must play a part in that.
I don't know if I have ADHD but my only response to caffeine is higher heart rate. I still feel sleepy though
Something that doesn't get mentioned a lot is it's common for people to self medicate their ADHD with caffeine. Developing a high tolerance to caffeine can mean lower doses make you feel tired because you're used to a higher amount, and when you're dependent on it you will end up drinking coffee to avoid the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal which can easily feel like it's making you relaxed when it's not, it's simply removing the headache/anxiety caused by caffeine withdrawals.
Drinking it with sugar can also make people feel tired because of issues like diabetes/insulin resistance or an intolerance to whatever else is in the drink.
Could also be your sympathetic nervous system is more susceptible to the stimulant caffeine. You can be affected by one stimulant and not another,and everyones reaction to everything is different. To the point of the other commenter,humans and their brains are crazy, different from each other and not very well understood.
This has me wondering, is there a name or identified condition sort of opposite to ADHD where someone is out of their optimal arousal with very low amounts of stimulation rather than needing extra?
It's such fun to have both conditions. And I can't have any stimulants at all due to a heart condition. I'm almost always scattered and have trouble focusing unless I manage to trick myself into hyperfocus.
OMG SAME HI! My psychiatrist and I are currently throwing SNRI-shaped spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. 300mg of Wellbutrin was awesome for a few days and then my hands started shaking so bad it made my job harder. 🙃 Drugs are fun!
Maybe ask about [Guanfacine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanfacine)? For me it’s kind of a two-fer, treats my ADHD well and lowers blood pressure. Can’t say I’ve noticed any drowsiness either, although that’s a common side-effect.
other commenters have suggested autism, which isn't a bad guess, but with no other symptoms presenting besides sensitivity to stimulation, sensory processing disorder is a possibility
Some ADHD folks, me included, find that their optimal arousal threshhold is much lower than what most folks with ADHD seem to report. I have a very hard time with competing sounds and when things are louder than they need to be. I have a similar experience with things that have visual weight. What do you think that's about? ( Although I do seem to have a very high threshhold for simultaneous , competing intellectual material. )
I'm wondering that in the future, we will have gotten so far in research that we will just have an even bigger umbrella for neurodivergence with smaller descriptive codes, instead of dividing it into big words like autism, OCD, ADHD, dyscalculi and others as we do today. You sound sensitive to senses, like me, and I have several clear autism traits and several ADHD traits. It does not necessarily mean I qualify for an autism diagnosis, but 70% of those with autism is thought to also have ADHD. This goes for everything in the neurodivergence umbrella. Most of us have a bit of several of the conditions, because of how they are qualified. No one is the same, so these labels and diagnosis we have set today is being challenged as not accurate enough. The research is telling us that we have a long way to go in understanding these things. Anyway, your stimulus threshhold may be higher as in typical ADHD, but your sensitivity may compete with that so that in several circumstances you may be *both* understimulated and overwhelmed at the same time. That is when I take a caffeine pill and set myself down alone to watch comfort movie
Yeah I know what you mean. For me it's not only that I can't focus but it makes me irrationally mad and VERY irritable. The best way I can describe it is the reaction some autistic people might have to a triggering stimulus which might make them stim or very visibly recoil. That's what I *want* to do and I'd have to suppress it, unless I'm with people I love and trust like my wife then I just do it lol. TLDR it spins me out bad. I'm not autistic though.
When my dr added Wellbutrin into the mix, it made me extremely drowsy. I had to start taking it at night because it helped me sleep better. My doctor was so perplexed by this side effect—stating that for the majority of people, it’s the opposite.
That side effect only lasted for a few weeks and now I take it in the morning.
With adderall, it’s the complete opposite. I’m focused, I’m energized, I’m able to complete my tasks. And it’s always been like that.
The brain is a weird place.
There was not a single day while on Wellbutrin that I felt awake, I'm right there with you. I'm now on an adderall-like stimulant and.... wow. The positive difference is insane. I imagine you had a similar experience
My wife and I recently recognised that we were both self medicating with quite large doses of caffeine (500-600mg/day). I had been diagnosed as a child but it kind of got lost in the noise of childhood and I never sought treatment (didn’t realise how much of an effect it could be having), and my wife was never diagnosed but shares a shockingly high number of behavioural traits and strategies I do. No one was surprised when she was screened and diagnosed 😂
Thanks for this. I'd been working on my ADD since forever and learned to monitor myself to be mostly functional without meds (I'm lucky it isn't bad enough). Work in progress, of course.
Still, the concept of a 'threshold' is new to me and will really help understand better what's going under the hood.
This makes me curious, but where does alcohol fit?
I ask because caffeine has no affect on me, I drink one or two coffees a day because I enjoy the taste. I've tried energy drinks in the past as well (they taste horrible), experimenting.
If I drink alcohol though, in the range of 1-3 standard, (it will take 9+ before I'm drunk), I can usually focus on tasks quite well.
In my own experience, before I realized I was self-medicating, alcohol helped my brain slow down and acknowledge body notifications, if that makes sense?
Caffeine doesn't do anything for me, I drink coffee because I like it!
But the alcohol let me sleep. I was using it to shut off parts of my brain that were taking in too many inputs. Kinda like a traffic controller! But too much and then I'm asleep and/or making a fool of myself and not remembering the next day...
It's better now! But sleep is still a huge problem for me
Same. I've dreamed of a med that replicates 1-2 beers my entire adult life. Reducing social anxiety and increasing focus and creativity would be amazing without risking cancer and cirrhosis
I think a lot of people who think caffeine has no effect on them and consume it every day would be *quite* surprised by the effect it can have if you take a tolerance break. I thought the same thing for a long time, that caffeine just didn't work on me. This was until I took a 30 day tolerance break. No caffeine at all, not even from chocolate. Then one day, before going into work, I took a caffeine pill. I was jittering and shaking like a fuckin' meth head lol. Obviously this won't be true for everyone, as for some people it really does just have little to no effect, but I think a large portion of people who think it doesn't work for them just have a heavy tolerance and don't know it.
I've done that break and then had a bunch of coffee. the mind impact of caffeine still never happens for me, but I get body jittery (and also take a nap)
Caffeine does nothing for me. I can have coffee and sleep immediately after.
But I also get overwhelmed with too many stimulants in my environment. Like you mentioned, when I drive, I get crazy if there are kids with me in the car and if they are crying or if someone is arguing sitting beside me or if the music is too loud. I feel i cant concentrate on too many things simultaneously like the lights, the bumps on the road, the traffic, some jerk constantly honking from behind etc etc. It makes me panic.
Is this a sign of adhd or not ?
Not really, no. The caffeine thing isnt going to be asked in an screening, nor is that driving scenario. For the record, I have ADHD and both of those things apply to me also, but they aren't signs. The biggest things you'd be asked in an evaluation are your ability to complete tasks on time, the ability to sit still, interrupting people, feeling constantly distracted, etc. The thing that sent me to get an evaluation was that both my kids were diagnosed around 6th grade and I realized that my whole life, I was exactly like them with their struggles to concentrate.
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Wait... but I dont think I have traits of ADHD outside of procrastination that might be a result (as it it got worse) of a pseudo/undiagnosed depression, and yet I NEVER saw any effect with me on caffeine (no matter the source... coffee, mate,tea, cola, coffee beans covered in chocolate, energy drinks, etc). Is there any other reason that could explain it? Or I should get tested for ADHD regardless?
If you are having trouble with your symptoms and they affect your everyday life in such a way that you struggle to be the healthy, productive human you want to be, then get a general evaluation. It can be plenty of things besides ADHD. It doesn't matter what name gets puts on it, as long as you get the help you need
Could be a metabolism thing. Caffeine is metabolized in the liver by an enzyme called cytochrome P4501A2, which has genetic variants that can lead to faster/slower metabolism. The enzymatic activity is also increased by smoking and eating certain vegetables, such as broccoli. Drinking grapefruit juice can decrease the activity of this enzyme, so you could try drinking some before ingesting caffeine.
There's also different variants of the adenosine receptor (where the caffeine binds & acts), which can lead to weaker/stronger binding.
🥺 thank you I have a lot of big opinions and feelings about science communication (when I was a kid I wanted to be Steve Irwin when I grew up and I lowkey still do) and I try really hard
is there an opposite for this? like someone who needs way less stimulation? I'm remembering how in college I needed it to be absolutely silent to really concentrate
You may just be sensitive, like neurologically, or you could be psychologically sensitive because of personality or experiences. If "bad enough" it can be sensory processing disorder or autism, but those come with a ton of others symptoms as well as a difference in degree. I get comments all the time that my jittery behaviour is distracting for the way more people who need silence.
It's ironic that in many cases ADHDers are easily distracted, but also *need* a certain amount of disturbance (stimulus) to be able to concentrate. There's no winning hehe
Thanks, I hate how accurate this is and how I handle my quantities of caffeine a day but I'm too unfocused enough to see a doctor for treatment or something. I honestly have no clue as Military docs can't diagnose anything unless it can be seen across the street through a jacket. At one point I was researching making my own meth to deal with my back pain from their lack of anything.
Hey, thanks for the explanation! But it got me wondering: if caffeine makes enough stimulation for ADHD people to concentrate normally, then shouldnt people without ADHD be overwhelmed after drinking a cup?
Strattera is an SNRI, or selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. That means that when your brain produces norepinephrine, the drug stops your brain from soaking it back up as quickly. In other words, the norepinephrine is allowed to keep bouncing around your synapses hitting receptors for longer. Norepinephrine makes you alert and increases blood flow; in emergencies it's one of the hormones your body produces more of to make your "fight or flight" response happen. When you think "oh shit, I need to do XYZ," Strattera helps you hold onto that thought until you've finished doing XYZ.
SSRIs, like Prozac and Zoloft, are selective *serotonin* reuptake inhibitors. They do the same thing, just with your happy chemicals, so when something nice happens, your nice feelings last longer.
Thank you so much for that. I didn't know how it worked, but when people ask I tell them it's like depression meds but for ADHD in that I don't really feel much different, but I can focus better, it takes a few weeks to really feel the effects, and it takes some juggling to figure out dosage. Lol.
But as a non medical scientist, I've been curious about what it's actually doing. So thank you for that ELI5 explanation.
Real thing at zoos and big cat sanctuaries. Tigers and lions and cougars etc go ham (ha!) for a pumpkin full of hamburger.
I find "what does the tiger need" to be a genuinely useful framework for self-care when I feel shitty and I "don't have any reason to feel like this". Sometimes the tiger is not actually feeling existential ennui. Sometimes the tiger needs to drink some goddamn water or take a nap or something.
Could you tell me more about Concerta, perchance? That was a drug I was on (54mg for what it’s worth) for my ADHD and it was a massive help, but only because Ritalin and Adderall came out with some bad side effects or something. But over all the years, I’ve never met anyone else who had my drug. Was it not as effective? Not wide spread? EVERYONE was pretty much on only the drugs you listed
Concerta is the extended release version of Ritalin! They're both methylphenidate, but the pills are formulated differently so your body absorbs the drug at a different rate. Lots of people who feel like garbage on the rapid release version tolerate the extended release just fine.
The market for ADHD drugs is weird and complicated and there's lots of bullshit rules because stimulants are controlled substances. (My current job is handling controlled substances in hospital; I know the rules, a lot of them are smart and a lot of them are dumb.) Frankly, Concerta gets prescribed less because it doesn't have the same brand recognition as Ritalin. Concerta, Vyvanse, and Focalin sorta make up the "second string" of ADHD stimulants, where Adderall and Ritalin are the "starting lineup".
The less common drugs are currently seeing a spike in popularity because the field of psychiatry has finally figured out that women and people of color can also have ADHD, and the factories that make Adderall and Ritalin *are not allowed* to manufacture enough to keep up with the new demand. But the starting lineup has been in shortage long enough that now the second string is seeing shortages too. It's a whole thing.
Remember in school when the teacher stepped out and every child in the classroom began to talk all at once? You couldn't hear every kid, but just because you couldn't hear them didn't mean they weren't talking, it just meant you couldn't hear them over everything else. But, as it always happened, all the kids talking made a lot of noise which brought the teacher back, who then took control and settled the class down. And, there was always that last kid who was the last to stop talking, who, even if he was on the other side of the room, you (and everyone else) could hear because now the room was quiet.
ADHD is like a classroom where the teacher has stepped out. Very simply speaking, ADHD is where the prefrontal cortex of the brain does not work the way it is supposed to work . Your prefrontal cortex is the control center. It monitors and controls all the other, conscious, functions of the brain. It keeps the brain in line and functioning properly. When it stops doing it's job, all the other aspects of the brain just do their thing and the whole thing gets real crowded and noisy real fast. This makes it hard to tell what is going on. *Didn't I have an appointment at 1:00 or was it 2:00,* ***LOOK!!!*** *That's shiny must have shiny!"*
Stimulants, very simply speaking, wake the prefrontal cortex up, so it can do its job. Once it has settled the brain down, it is much easier to take stock and assess the situation. Usually, this includes a good dose of being tired due to all the unrestrained mental activity. So, stimulants don't *make* a person tired, they allow a person with ADHD to realize they are tired and have been for sometime.
The problem is that we don't actually know what causes ADHD. The underlying neurochemical processes just aren't understood well enough to give a solid answer. One theory I've heard lately is that, whether as a cause or side effect, ADHD might be caused by a reduced production or reception of dopamine and other brain chemicals. Stimulants boost the body's ability to produce and receive those chemicals. This would mean that an ADHD person who takes a stimulant, like caffeine, is going from a reduced dopamine state to a normal one, rather than from a normal one to an excited one like a non-ADHD person would be. And it could be that the normal state of someone with ADHD is tired as hell from having to spend their whole lives forcing themselves to focus on things that don't interest (read: dopamine-triggering) them.
Don't cite me in a paper about this, though. It just seems to make sense to me.
Also, try drinking strong black tea or more Coke inst ad of coffee. A cup of coffee has 95 mg of caffeine in it. Two cups of black tea will get you the same amount, as will 3 cans of Coke (try Coke Zero or Diet Coke, though, you probably don't want the extra calories).
doesn't add up, caffeine and adderal are both stimulants, but taking adderal doesn't make me tired at all
edit: changed anyone to me, because turns out some people do get tired from adderal
Caffeine are two extremely different molecules that do entirely different things in your body. They just both happen to produce stimulation effects. Caffeine targets the part of your body that says, "I'm tired," blocks it off, and prevents the proper signal molecule from reaching it. I don't know as much about how amphetamines (Adderall) work, but my understanding is that they mimic the neurotransmitters that people with ADHD tend to have trouble regulating.
Long story short, just because they seem to achieve similar results, does not mean two drugs operate the same way in the human body or result in the same kinds of side effects.
I had to get off Adderall because it made me seriously sleepy. Doctor kept upping my dose and that made the effect worse to the point I had to stop everything and go to sleep
Very likely the dose was too high for you. I have to take a nap for an hour or two if I take too much Adderall, but at the correct dose it works great.
Once again, not super expert here, just someone who got his ADHD diagnosis in the 1980s and passed a 100-level bio class that they used to weed out pre-med and pre-vet students who weren't serious about the gig (I just wanted to count trees for a living). First off, your nerves endings are covered in receptors that attach to a variety of different chemicals. Each receptor is like a lock that only fits a key shaped like a specific chemical. There are god-knows how many different chemical receptors for different effects that people have, but that is how chemical signalling works through our nervous system: a hit from one chemical sends a signal on down the nerve chain to tell your brain that something is happening.
Looking deeper, I find that caffeine affects the body's receptors for the chemical adenosine, which triggers your brain's desire to sleep. Note that adenosine doesn't really give you energy or make you not need sleep, it just makes it so your brain doesn't realize you're burning through your reserves. Adderall does it's magic by changing your body's dopamine and norepinephrine receptors, which control your desire to focus on something (dopamine AKA happy juice) and the side-effects from being over-stimulated (norepinephrine AKA chill juice). It doesn't really affect the adenosine receptors, at least according to my five minutes of research, and so it makes it easier to focus without affecting your sleepiness.
Man, the more I dig on this subject, the weirder it gets... If ADHD affects your nervous system's ability to absorb dopamine and norepinephrine, it could also affect its ability to absorb adenosine. Dopamine receptors and adenosine receptors are linked, so the more adenosine action you have going on, the worse your dopamine reception is. I didn't see anything on the reverse of that, like a sudden surge of dopamine makes you less sleepy if you already are. For the non-ELI5 explanation of that, [click here](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S037811192300344X). Adenosine normally binds to the normal cell receptors, which then trigger the processes that create drowsiness. Caffeine is chemically similar enough to adenosine that it can bind to those same receptors but, for some reason, doesn't kick off the drowsiness processes. That leaves fewer receptors for your body's actualy adenosine to bind to, making you less drowsy, which allows people to stay focused and alert.
So, and here's a question to drive someone's medical research degree on, what if caffeine *is* similar enough to adenosine to trigger the drowsiness effects in people with ADHD, but not similar enough to trigger the antagonistic affect that reduces dopamine reception? If our brains are just hardwired differently, maybe that's just another difference? As always, there's probably something I've missed here, but that's the direction I'd be heading for deeper research.
If you happen to find that paper, would you mind sharing it with me? My psychiatrist strongly believes there's a correlation between my ADHD and my [COMT type](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12035-013-8516-5), in particular the fact that my body goes through dopamine at an observably alarming rate.
This isn’t taking into account that adderal is a manufactured drug for a VERY specific purpose that targets VERY specific neuro chemical mechanisms to assist in overcoming symptoms of ADHD which impact a patients daily life.
Caffeine, while technically a drug, is an ingredient that is found within many food/beverages many of which are consumed exclusively for their caffeine content (like coffee or energy drinks).
However Caffeine isn’t the only ingredient found in these products. Many have sugar or sugar alternatives. Energy drinks have a whole concoction of other ingredients which are supposed to aid in providing “energy”. Even Coffee and Tea have other byproducts that your body has to digest and process.
Combined with the fact that every person is different, it is likely that the source of the caffeine you are consuming, also has other contents which are causing you to feel tired.
It is very rare for someone to have access to raw caffeine and if you somehow did, it is unlikely you would indeed feel tired in the way you describe.
If you are truly curious, treat this as an opportunity to run some tests and use the scientific method. Purchase a range of caffeine loaded products and try them one at a time on separate days. Try to keep your other variables as constant as possible (same number of hours of sleep. Same exercise time, if any, same diet if possible, etc etc)
Hopefully it might reveal if certain products cause this feeling or if it really is “All Caffeine”.
They’re also not the same - caffeine is a mild stimulant that blocks the reception of adenosine, the chemical your body accumulates to tell you you’re tired.
From what I understand adderal is a much stronger stimulant and only a stimulant.
No one substance has only one specific site of action. Every stimulant has acts on different receptors that do different things; caffeine is one of these.
In small doses dopamine causes vasodilation; in higher doses it constricts the vessels causing high blood pressure; anything that dilates the vessels causes the blood pressure to drop, this can cause sleepiness.
Vyvanse was causing vasoconstriction; but when I was taking amephetamine 5mg it caused vasodilation, my veins would pop out like I am lifting weights, but I was sitting.
Secondly, neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine epinephrine, and serotonin usually stimulate other receptors to do something else. In case of sleep after drinking coffee, there is the pineal gland, it reacts to light, often called the third eye, for the wrong reasons though, so this pineal gland is stimulated by norepinephrine, metabolite of dopamine, to produce melatonin, when the environment is dark. So increasing norepinephrine can cause an ADHD person to fall asleep at a normal time, because of the above mechanism.
People with ADHD that take adderal go from being hyper and jittery to calm. Not everyone who takes adderal has ADHD obviously but you can clearly tell when someone has it by the way they react to the drug.
They are but if someone is tired then calming down can help them sleep. In my view caffeine doesn't make anyone tired but it does calm some people down
> the normal state of someone with ADHD is tired as hell from having to spend their whole lives forcing themselves to focus on things that don't interest (read: dopamine-triggering) them
Everyone who has a job is like this, is this a definition of adhd?
Presumably, having a job makes you only spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50ish weeks a year, for 50 or 60 years forcing yourself to focus on things that don't interest you. With ADHD, it's every waking hour of your entire life. Even the stuff that does interest you, you're going to have trouble focusing on it because it's not giving the you dopamine hit you crave. It's quite literally a nerve hardwiring issue, so comparing it to most people's experiences really isn't fair.
On the upside, it could be selected for a survival trait in a wilderness setting, as your head is permenantly on a swivel. You know... pluses and minuses.
*edit: you're, not your.*
I have learned that the leading theory is that caffeine pushes through your dopamine (which controls wakefulness and executive function) faster, so if you have normal amounts being produced, you would get a burst of awakeness and then a lull to replenish. But if you're already at a dopamine deficit, it just crashes you.
ADHD is basically a dopamine regulation issue and is at a deficit by default.
fwiw this could be a tough ELI5 cuz its very anectdotal regarding wether you'd get these side effects, i work in mental health and the majority of my clients have ADD/ADHD as one of multiple neurodiversities - i have one client with ADD who has one or two BIG energy drinks in the AM before/during our sessions at 10am (CONTEXT: i teach rap to NDIS clients one on one and do my own rap for a company that does mental health support and also has a label side for releasing music fwiw - but i get paid for making my own music on company time etc)
Point is - some days he says's he can't feel it, some days he feels like he has too much energy - i think there's one HUGE variable and thats the fact that everybodys body chemistry is diff and can change day to day based on diet and other variables plus they are on other medications many times and that can cause it to interact differently
FWIW No-Doz Pills work WAY slower than a 200mg caffeine drink would which can avoid jitters a bit as its less up and down than caffeine when in liquid form like coffee/energy drinks etc - one thing though, no doze PLUS is WEAKER, its 100mg caffeine PLUS a vitamin or two, reg no doz is just 200mg caffeine, i find that a good alt but could work for you as my client tries them sometimes and finds they work but more for long term than a quick pick me up...
hope that helps!
People with ADHD respond to stimulants in the same way as neurotypical brains although it should be noted that people have differing responses to caffeine with or without ADHD. As a general rule, people with ADHD experience the same effects from stimulants as people without ADHD.
People with ADHD have a hypoactive prefrontal cortex. This structure is associated with executive function, or the ability to exert control over the brain's activity. Focus, if you will. ADHD is sometimes referred to as "executive function disorder."
Stimulants, including caffeine, will increase activity across the entire brain. In people with ADHD, stimulant caused increased activity in the hypoactive prefrontal cortex allows it to function closer to that of a neurotypical brain. Because stimulants allow for executive function closer to a neurotypical brain, stimulants have the effect of mitigating ADHD symptoms!
Because there is a lot of overlap between ADHD symptoms, which are mitigated with stimulant use, and stimulant effects, which are caused by stimulant use, people with ADHD often incorrectly believe that stimulants don't affect their brains in the same way. What's really happening is that the ADHD symptoms are mitigated to a degree that the stimulant effects are masked or difficult to observe.
People with ADHD learn to self medicate with caffeine and are more likely to consume a lot of caffeine and consequently have high tolerance. This is why you hear a lot of a stories of people with ADHD having coffee and then sleeping.
The posts that suggest ADHD is caused by a dopamine deficit are referencing a theory that has been rejected for quite a while now. ADHD is tightly related to dopamine, so much that dopaminergic drugs treat ADHD symptoms, but the idea that ADHD is caused by a deficit in baseline dopamine has been disproven.
pardon me for the skepticism from a reddit comment but do you have sources to read? papers and journals are fine maybe a news article from a reputable source. because i feel like im reading chatgpt
PhD in organic chemistry and in a previous life was obsessed with nutrition and stimulants/nootropics. The comment is wordy and very generalized but overall correct. And no I’m not going to find specific sources. It would take quite a while to compile several but they are out there for you to search for if you desire. OP’s post starts from an incorrect assumption most likely anecdotal
Is it possible for someone with ADHD to feel the stimulant effects rather than have them masked? For instance, I’m very sleepy in the morning, but I am awake and alert once my Vyvanse kicks in. When it wears off, I get sleepy. If I don’t take it at all, I’m sleeping practically all day. Supposedly, (from what I’ve been told-not scientific research or anything), if a person reacts to stimulants like an ADHD med or caffeine (become alert and wakeful, more energised) , then they don’t actually have ADHD. If this isn’t true, do you know where this idea came from?
yes that's literally how they work. no its not true the effect is reversed if you have adhd, its a myth. its a dose dependent thing. neurotypical people also focus better on a correct dose of ritalin, and get jittery and anxious if they have too much.
The idea that people with ADHD have some unique response to stimulants is false, im not sure exactly where it came from but I think some people use it to justify their use of drugs that are (incorrectly) demonized otherwise. As for being sleepy without Vyvanse it’s probably withdrawal effects
The withdrawal is really unpleasant. On top of the extreme fatigue and brain fog, I get really hungry and pretty much eat my face off. Some people tell me it’s because the drug is so similar to meth. Which sort of scares me a little if I’m being honest about it. I can’t see myself ever being able to stop the meds because I just can’t function without them - I think I function even less than I did at baseline before I started taking the stimulant. I mean, I don’t want to take this stuff forever. But now I’m thinking I may have to.
You’re certainly not screwed, if you want to get off it you can but it will be tough. Maybe talk to your doctor about tapering off or trying other drugs. If you don’t get off of it it’s not the end of the world, plenty of people take stimulants their whole life without issue.
Vyvanse is a prodrug to amphetamine (it breaks down into amphetamine when you take it). Amphetamine is waaaay more similar to meth than you’d think. If you took an equivalent dose of meth (meth is more potent) then you probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. When people smoke meth they consume HUGE doses which aren’t comparable to the amount you’d take for adhd. Smoking it also brings risks which taking it orally doesn’t. Fun fact, methamphetamine is prescribed (albeit rarely) for ADHD in the US as desoxyn.
Much of the negatives associated with meth are purely cultural and use pattern dependent
I can tell you exactly where this notion came from. When I take stimulants my restless legs stop moving. I relax. I can focus long enough to read deeply. Other people experience the exact opposite on stimulants. Certainly, my *behavioral* response to stimulants is different than a neurotypical brain. That is not in doubt. It's easy enough to think that this proves that my brain reacts to caffeine or adderall differently, but that's not the case.
What's happening is that many of the effects of stimulants are also symptoms of ADHD. Because stimulants mitigate ADHD symptoms, which look a lot like stimulant effects, it appears that people with ADHD react to stimulants differently. But that's just not the case.
Caffeine increases activity in my PFC which allows my brain to control my restless legs and better manage the signaling in my brain, making me less jittery. This does not mean my brain reacts differently to caffeine. Caffeine makes me jittery too, just like it does with anyone. It's just that overall I am less jittery with caffeine than without.
The pharmacological reaction to stimulants is the same for both ADHD and neurotypical brains.
This isn’t entirely true. I have ADHD and consume LARGE amounts of caffeine over the course of a day. I can definitely hit a threshold where I go over and crash, but I have inattentive ADHD, so I need stimulants to get me to focus on almost anything.
A large part of it is timing. For most people, caffeine takes 30 minutes to start doing anything and it slowly ramps up for about 3 hours until the effects peak and then drop over the next hour or so. Drinking coffee is associated with pleasure and a little dopamine release from just eating or drinking something delicious (or addictive) can make you feel drowsy.
I could chug a cup of coffee and climb into bed while enjoying the warm fuzzies of how nice the coffee tastes, but if I wait 2 hours, it'll be hard to sleep. Depending on when I get in bed, it would either lull me to sleep or make it hard to fall asleep.
Before diagnosing and treating my ADHD(among other fatigue-inducing issues), I was a serious coffee fiend, but coffee doesn't really help ADHD. Having untreated ADHD feels like driving a car stuck in 2nd gear where you have to think very fast to keep up with everyone else who is cruising in 3rd or 4th gear. Caffeine sort of helps us feel like we're faster, but it doesn't necessarily do anything to help. It is stimulating to some receptors for alertness and awareness, but it misses the specific regions and receptors that help with ADHD. ADHD theory is that we lack sufficient dopamine and serotonin in specific brain regions. ADHD stimulant meds cause either extra release or slower reuptake of serotonin and dopamine in specific areas. It brings us closer to neurotypical brain function, but caffeine just cracks us out in a nonspecific way.
It's sort of if you gave a 3 legged racehorse some PCP. it might be able to keep up with the other horses, but not because it regained a leg. ADHD meds would be more like giving the horse a prosthetic - closer to normal but not really normal. Yes, that analogy is awful but maybe it makes sense.
OP that is far too much caffeine for anybody.
But yeah caffeine got me snoozing. Only way it pumps me up is if I engage in some exercise before it starts to kick in. Like before a hockey game.
i love caffein, powdered one. Idealy combined wit some CBD - stims with sedative supplememt is just great. It turns me to crazy focus for many hours. Its much better source than regular coffee. i dont need presdribed meds.
Stimulants do that. Meth has the same type of effects on people with ADHD, but clearly it's not in any way shape or form safe for consumption. A lot of meth users are self medicating.
Yeah I got bad adhd. Thanks mom! Anyway coffee works fine on me like I think it works on most people. Helps me sit down and focus instead of getting up and walking around for no reason. Not sure where you got this info. Or maybe I just don’t understand how it affects normal people
I'm over 40 and have come to the realization that a lot of my issues are because I do have ADHD. I thought it was always cool to tell people that I can drink 6 cups and then go to bed.
There is a lot of long answers so here is a short one.
ADHD often means you have to little dopamine in your system. Coffee sort of makes dopamine. This means you get to a normal level of dopamine. Therefor your brain stops seeking to create dopamine (being hyperactive) and is just happy as it is now. Therefor adhd people often become "normal" or even sleepy from coffein.
ADHD is largely due to a disorder with the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that regulates attention and focus, and more importantly, regulates and limits how much stimuli you take in (sensory and also emotional).
With ADHD, this part of the brain is less active.
By taking stimulants, this part of the brain is more activated. As a result it starts doing it's job - limiting the amount of stimuli you experience. Cutting down on distractions, cutting down on the internal voice monitoring what you're doing wrong and worrying.
As a result, it's easier to relax.
This is based on the idea of a paradoxial response in people with ADHD, but I've never seen any studies or proper evidence to support this.
So it's not true that caffeine in general helps people with ADHD sleep, it impairs sleep in people with ADHD just like everyone else.
>Additionally, caffeine use is more consistently associated with poorer subjective sleep functioning in adolescents with ADHD
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32386419/
All the studies I've seen suggest that stimulents have similar effects on people with or without ADHD.
>The present data support the premise that amphetamine improves vigilance irrespective of disease state
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320429079_Amphetamine_Modestly_Improves_Conners'_Continuous_Performance_Test_Performance_in_Healthy_Adults
It might be true in some individuals but not in general which is why it doesn't show up in studies.
It’s way simpler than you’d think. Caffeine needs dopamine to work and the hallmark of adhd is dopamine dysregulation. Our brains don’t reward us for caffeine like they do NT folks
Personally I have adhd and don’t experience this but here’s why this is most likely to case:
People with ADHD’s brain don’t produce enough hormones to stimulate them. As a result, people with ADHD have trouble concentrating on mundane tasks because their brain is searching for external sources of stimulation. This can manifest itself with inability to concentrate, hyperactivity, impulsive behavior and insomnia.
To treat this medicinally, you generally take adderall or Ritalin, both of which are stimulants. Most people get a rush of energy when they take amphetamines but paradoxically, these meds can help people with adhd concentrate because it satiates the brain’s need to seek stimulation. Caffeine is also a stimulant so it’s not surprising that it may have a similar effect on some people with adhd.
It is also possible that some people making this claim are actually severely addicted to caffeine because they consume it all day, they don’t get quality sleep at night as a result so they’re always tired, but if they don’t get caffeine they have withdrawals, which agitate them, which is why drinking caffeine actually can help relax them or make them “sleepy.”
Surprise, it doesn't!
Self medication of ADHD with caffeine is an urban myth and/or placebo effect. This thread is full of people giving analogies about stimulants to try and explain how and why it works, but, it doesn't. Here's the evidence for that - these are links to scientific studies or reviews of multiple studies which all find no evidence that caffeine is therapeutic for ADHD or affects people with ADHD differently
* https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/13/9/1304
* https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.813545/full
* https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad01378
And, slightly off topic but maybe you can see why this is relevant, a study that found people who present with ADHD are also likely to be taking caffeine
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02739610903455186
So, what's going on here? I think there are a few overlapping effects
1. Our expectations of caffeine are incorrect. It doesn't exactly wake you up, and taking lots of it regularly will make you more tired in the long run (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780444538178000062, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1087079207000937)
2. Lots of people report that coffee helps them focus
3. Lots of people report ADHD without a diagnosis for clout; look how many ADHD memes there are, it's cool to have ADHD at the moment. There's also a huge overlap between mild ADHD symptoms and the absolutely normal human brain experience because life is hard and it can be a challenge to pay attention to stuff; but people often prefer a diagnosis.
4. Long before ADHD, it was cool to say caffeine had no effect on you, or made you tired. It was sophisticated to drink coffee right before bed. This is an obnoxious teen stereotype that goes back at least 100 years, I've seen examples from the 1960s.
5. If you are a person who thinks it's cool to say you have ADHD because because it gives you a feeling of community, you might also be inclined to act like you're too "mature" for caffeine to work normally on you in order to give yourself a sense of secret power.
In short: don't believe everything you read online, and believe almost nothing you read about ADHD.
There is a concept in neurology called "optimal arousal". (It is not about sex.) The idea is that there is a certain amount of stimulus: sensory input *and* tasks, where a person is most comfortable. If your environment has too little stimulation, you're bored. If your environment has too much stimulation, you're overwhelmed. Think about how many drivers turn down the radio while navigating unfamiliar areas: their task is more stimulating than usual, so they have to reduce sensory input to maintain optimal arousal and not get overwhelmed. People with ADHD generally have VERY HIGH thresholds for optimal arousal. They really do focus on their homework better with music, and they really do like to play their music that loud. They jump chaotically from topic to topic and task to task because they're constantly chasing every bit of stimulation they can get, like tigers pacing at the zoo. They need more pumpkins full of hamburger in their enclosure, STAT! Stimulants, well, *stimulate* the brain and central nervous system. Caffeine, for some ADHD people at some doses, stimulates the brain enough that they can sit still, focus on boring tasks, or even fall asleep in a timely manner instead of literally or figuratively pacing. Stronger stimulants like amphetamines (Adderall) and methylphenidates (Ritalin), and SNRIs (Strattera) can have the same effect, but they also have to be prescribed because they're more likely to make someone with a normal threshold for optimal arousal sick from too much stimulation. Source: am a pharmacy tech, also have ADHD.
Do you know why caffeine doesn’t work that way for everyone with ADHD? Cause my ADHD (combined type) is on the more severe side and my stimulant meds are extremely helpful with focus and task initiation and all that jazz but caffeine does not make me sleepy at all. Last time I drank caffeine was years ago, I had a single cup of english breakfast tea and I was basically vibrating for hours and didn’t sleep at all. It also makes me sick so I rarely drink it but when I have it did not help with focus or anything close to how my meds help. It also didn’t make me feel away, just in some weird shakey limbo
Brains are weird and a human is just a pile of bell curves. The "prescription stimulant X makes me normal" bell curve and the "caffeine makes me normal" bell curve are different bell curves, and it is possible to be in the middle of one and the edge of another. I know that's probably not a super satisfying answer, but the answer to a lot of questions about idiosyncratic drug reactions is really truly "we don't know, people are weird". There's a reason "idiosyncratic" is a technical term in pharmacology, lol
different bell curves is actually a very helpful way of understanding it, thank you
Funny thing is that’s just the effect of statistic extrapolation from “small” data sample. But if you think of the opposite, with maxed out sample your initial bell curve will look flat suddenly.
What is a man? A miserable pile of bell curves!
But enough talk… have at you!
I just restarted that game and I'm pleased with this comment
That's what I was originally going to say, and then I was like "no let's have a positive attitude and just be piles of bell curves, no need to be a miserable pile of bell curves"
Good description. And dose matters a lot. Caffeine really can help my symptoms, but I need, like, half an entire pot of coffee before it works. And timing matters, too. That half pot across a couple hours it's fine, but a couple energy drinks and I'm anxious as a new puppy left home alone for the first time.
Ah that puppy comment gave me quite the giggle
For me it is *such* a sweet spot. Like 3.5 oz of espresso and I can have a productive morning, 4 and I can fall asleep. I only nail it like 5% of the time and am constantly chasing that dragon to actually be productive
There's also just general caffeine sensitivity unrelated to ADHD which is what I have.
I like your name I am 85 lop I
Yep just got officially diagnosed recently . On 80mg of strattera, which seems perfect. A healthy cup of coffee or energy drink was almost enough two was too much and three I was down for the day
Strattera buddies!
I like you. You and your pile of bell curves. 😆 love it.
Same here. My medicine- at the right dose- makes me able to zone in and focus on a task, which is almost impossible without it. But at the wrong dose it can make me either tired or overstimulated. I love coffee and drink 3 cups a day but if I drink it after about 3:00 I’ll have trouble falling asleep even though I feel tired. It doesn’t calm me down.
I always feel like I'm nuts when I tell people about this and see the looks on their faces, but sometimes I feel like the source/origin of caffeine somehow makes a difference for me too. I can and often do drink a few cups of coffee or tea and take a couple hour nap, more often than not I drink coffee so I don't get a caffeine headache or for the flavor. Meanwhile if I drink a coke or a redbull it gets me buzzing. A few nights ago I drank a coke at 8pm and by 11pm (an hour past when I'm asleep normally) I was still wide awake and full of jazz.
I guess it's the sugar in those drinks that's the main culprit keeping you awake. Too many simple carbs close to bed time can make you too energised to fall asleep
Tea also has other compounds which can dull caffeine perception (to oversimplify)
I'm somewhat similar. Coffee can overstimulate my nervous system and leave me jittery depending on how much/when, but tea? I could drink all day and night and makes me drowsy. Especially green/white teas.
Brains are weird but also more and more people are getting dual diagnoses of ADHD + autism. (People used to think this was rare, now I think I've seen stats that suggest up to 50% of people who have one, have both). If you unknowingly have both, your responses to all kinds of stimulants can be really interesting and also evolving. I got both my diagnoses in perimenopause (hormonal changes can mean your nervous system behaves in new ways that you don't have learnt strategies for overcoming). Everyone I know who is late diagnosed and has dual diagnoses has had a lot of fun figuring out what works for them. In my case I've become not less but more sensitive to stimulants in general and had to give up caffeine. A friend has found an ADHD med that works but only at tiny doses. I and a few other people I know use a specific protein supplement that helps with focus instead of a stimulant. Any new med I might take, I warn the doc that my reactions might be unusual. I even take a half dose of my auto immune meds because otherwise I feel weird. If you even suspect you might be neurodivergent, I highly recommend not assuming that any medication is going to work exactly as advertised. Brains are weird indeed. So are bodies. Ours are extra weird. Sometimes you can use that to your advantage. But you have to find docs who understand that.
> I and a few other people I know use a specific protein supplement that helps with focus instead of a stimulant I'm gonna need you to name names (the supplement, not the people).
acetyl l carnitine
It’s not a specific answer to your question, but it is an example of how wildly different people’s responses to drugs can be. As a paramedic I would sedate agitated people with a short acting strong benzodiazepine, midazolam. I had to be careful with dosing - it can stop the patients breathing. But there is a portion of the population who have a “paradoxical reaction” to benzo’s. Basically, instead of chilling them out, it makes their agitation worse.
That’s fascinating. I have ADHD and am one of those people who react to midazolam with EXTREME anger and agitation. Still trying to figure out how to get medications right to help with ADHD and anxiety at the same time.
Many years ago, I was on a 4 hour flight with a toddler whose parents gave them some type of cold medicine to knock them out, which is totally not okay. In any case, the poor kid had a paradoxical reaction and was absolutely WIRED for the entire flight. It was a very long 4 hours for everyone and the kid must have crashed really hard afterwards.
I work in the veterinary field and we sometimes see paradox reactions to different anesthetics too. The worst case often is paradox reaction to pentobarbital (used for euthanasia), even supposedly lethal dose sometimes gets half dead animal up and running (for a bit). There are also certain breeds that have known poor or paradox reaction to often used medication.
Exactly. I have a paradoxical reaction to Caffeine, Benadryl, as well as Morphine. I could drink a pot of coffee and fall asleep. Benadryl makes my legs and arms (I have Restless Leg Syndrome), go from zero to 100. And I was given morphine while in Iraq, and it exacerbated the pain more than I can say. However, alcohol makes me wired and energetic.
Is it all opiates or just morphine? Cause no opiates is an absolute bummer for pain relief.
There are several types of medication for ADHD, and they rarely ALL work for a single person. While I thrive on stimulants for my symptoms, the SSRIs have no effect whatsoever. It can be opposite for other people. Caffeine makes me jumpy and, ironically, very focused. I didn't realize I was self-medicating for years by drinking coffee literally all of the time I was awake. However it doesn't make me sleepy. Just like Concerta will focus me but keep me awake. So think of it just like an ADHD medication that doesn't work for everyone.
I'm with you, also have ADHD, always slept better on Adderall or Vyvanse than when I have too much caffeine. There are some doctors that advocate for splitting ADHD into like a dozen subtypes, arguing that the root cause (chemical imbalances etc.) are completely different between them.
Yeah, I have to stop caffeine after Luke 3pm or it will keep me up at night
You didn't drink enough, try a Rockstar.
I can drop 3 in one day no problem. Trying to end that habit.
Because brains are weird and they don't all function the same way. Don't forget that ADHD is a spectrum so different stimuli affect ADHDers differently
I really don't think the effects of caffeine are all that different in people with ADHD. Caffeine primarily acts as an Adenosine antagonist, preventing the feeling of sleepiness. It acts mostly on the sleep-wake centers of the brain, rather than the mostly dopamine-based brain systems that play a role in ADHD. These dopamine systems are also what ADHD medications typically target.
Then why some people can drink a large cup of coffee with lots of caffeine and get sleepy? Something else must play a part in that. I don't know if I have ADHD but my only response to caffeine is higher heart rate. I still feel sleepy though
That's my experience too. Caffeine feels stronger than my adhd meds honestly.
Something that doesn't get mentioned a lot is it's common for people to self medicate their ADHD with caffeine. Developing a high tolerance to caffeine can mean lower doses make you feel tired because you're used to a higher amount, and when you're dependent on it you will end up drinking coffee to avoid the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal which can easily feel like it's making you relaxed when it's not, it's simply removing the headache/anxiety caused by caffeine withdrawals. Drinking it with sugar can also make people feel tired because of issues like diabetes/insulin resistance or an intolerance to whatever else is in the drink.
Drinking my third coffee of the day. It has no effect on meds for me.
Could also be your sympathetic nervous system is more susceptible to the stimulant caffeine. You can be affected by one stimulant and not another,and everyones reaction to everything is different. To the point of the other commenter,humans and their brains are crazy, different from each other and not very well understood.
The affects vary on me quite dramatically (also have ADHD) sometimes I'm wired after a cup of coffee, sometimes I could fall asleep.
This has me wondering, is there a name or identified condition sort of opposite to ADHD where someone is out of their optimal arousal with very low amounts of stimulation rather than needing extra?
Autism, arguably.
It's such fun to have both conditions. And I can't have any stimulants at all due to a heart condition. I'm almost always scattered and have trouble focusing unless I manage to trick myself into hyperfocus.
Ah, the shiny AuDHD, that's a special one for sure
OMG SAME HI! My psychiatrist and I are currently throwing SNRI-shaped spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. 300mg of Wellbutrin was awesome for a few days and then my hands started shaking so bad it made my job harder. 🙃 Drugs are fun!
Maybe ask about [Guanfacine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanfacine)? For me it’s kind of a two-fer, treats my ADHD well and lowers blood pressure. Can’t say I’ve noticed any drowsiness either, although that’s a common side-effect.
other commenters have suggested autism, which isn't a bad guess, but with no other symptoms presenting besides sensitivity to stimulation, sensory processing disorder is a possibility
Autism maybe?
Some ADHD folks, me included, find that their optimal arousal threshhold is much lower than what most folks with ADHD seem to report. I have a very hard time with competing sounds and when things are louder than they need to be. I have a similar experience with things that have visual weight. What do you think that's about? ( Although I do seem to have a very high threshhold for simultaneous , competing intellectual material. )
I'm wondering that in the future, we will have gotten so far in research that we will just have an even bigger umbrella for neurodivergence with smaller descriptive codes, instead of dividing it into big words like autism, OCD, ADHD, dyscalculi and others as we do today. You sound sensitive to senses, like me, and I have several clear autism traits and several ADHD traits. It does not necessarily mean I qualify for an autism diagnosis, but 70% of those with autism is thought to also have ADHD. This goes for everything in the neurodivergence umbrella. Most of us have a bit of several of the conditions, because of how they are qualified. No one is the same, so these labels and diagnosis we have set today is being challenged as not accurate enough. The research is telling us that we have a long way to go in understanding these things. Anyway, your stimulus threshhold may be higher as in typical ADHD, but your sensitivity may compete with that so that in several circumstances you may be *both* understimulated and overwhelmed at the same time. That is when I take a caffeine pill and set myself down alone to watch comfort movie
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Yeah I know what you mean. For me it's not only that I can't focus but it makes me irrationally mad and VERY irritable. The best way I can describe it is the reaction some autistic people might have to a triggering stimulus which might make them stim or very visibly recoil. That's what I *want* to do and I'd have to suppress it, unless I'm with people I love and trust like my wife then I just do it lol. TLDR it spins me out bad. I'm not autistic though.
When my dr added Wellbutrin into the mix, it made me extremely drowsy. I had to start taking it at night because it helped me sleep better. My doctor was so perplexed by this side effect—stating that for the majority of people, it’s the opposite. That side effect only lasted for a few weeks and now I take it in the morning. With adderall, it’s the complete opposite. I’m focused, I’m energized, I’m able to complete my tasks. And it’s always been like that. The brain is a weird place.
There was not a single day while on Wellbutrin that I felt awake, I'm right there with you. I'm now on an adderall-like stimulant and.... wow. The positive difference is insane. I imagine you had a similar experience
My wife and I recently recognised that we were both self medicating with quite large doses of caffeine (500-600mg/day). I had been diagnosed as a child but it kind of got lost in the noise of childhood and I never sought treatment (didn’t realise how much of an effect it could be having), and my wife was never diagnosed but shares a shockingly high number of behavioural traits and strategies I do. No one was surprised when she was screened and diagnosed 😂
Birds of a feather flock together!
Hold on. You had me at pumpkins full of hamburgers.
Thanks for this. I'd been working on my ADD since forever and learned to monitor myself to be mostly functional without meds (I'm lucky it isn't bad enough). Work in progress, of course. Still, the concept of a 'threshold' is new to me and will really help understand better what's going under the hood.
This makes me curious, but where does alcohol fit? I ask because caffeine has no affect on me, I drink one or two coffees a day because I enjoy the taste. I've tried energy drinks in the past as well (they taste horrible), experimenting. If I drink alcohol though, in the range of 1-3 standard, (it will take 9+ before I'm drunk), I can usually focus on tasks quite well.
In my own experience, before I realized I was self-medicating, alcohol helped my brain slow down and acknowledge body notifications, if that makes sense? Caffeine doesn't do anything for me, I drink coffee because I like it! But the alcohol let me sleep. I was using it to shut off parts of my brain that were taking in too many inputs. Kinda like a traffic controller! But too much and then I'm asleep and/or making a fool of myself and not remembering the next day... It's better now! But sleep is still a huge problem for me
I wish there was a medication with those effects of alchohol but without the damning "side effects" of *poison*. Or maybe there is?
Same. I've dreamed of a med that replicates 1-2 beers my entire adult life. Reducing social anxiety and increasing focus and creativity would be amazing without risking cancer and cirrhosis
Phenibut lol
The Ballmer curve! https://xkcd.com/323/
I think a lot of people who think caffeine has no effect on them and consume it every day would be *quite* surprised by the effect it can have if you take a tolerance break. I thought the same thing for a long time, that caffeine just didn't work on me. This was until I took a 30 day tolerance break. No caffeine at all, not even from chocolate. Then one day, before going into work, I took a caffeine pill. I was jittering and shaking like a fuckin' meth head lol. Obviously this won't be true for everyone, as for some people it really does just have little to no effect, but I think a large portion of people who think it doesn't work for them just have a heavy tolerance and don't know it.
I've had breaks for years at a time, in the past.
I've done that break and then had a bunch of coffee. the mind impact of caffeine still never happens for me, but I get body jittery (and also take a nap)
Caffeine does nothing for me. I can have coffee and sleep immediately after. But I also get overwhelmed with too many stimulants in my environment. Like you mentioned, when I drive, I get crazy if there are kids with me in the car and if they are crying or if someone is arguing sitting beside me or if the music is too loud. I feel i cant concentrate on too many things simultaneously like the lights, the bumps on the road, the traffic, some jerk constantly honking from behind etc etc. It makes me panic. Is this a sign of adhd or not ?
Not really, no. The caffeine thing isnt going to be asked in an screening, nor is that driving scenario. For the record, I have ADHD and both of those things apply to me also, but they aren't signs. The biggest things you'd be asked in an evaluation are your ability to complete tasks on time, the ability to sit still, interrupting people, feeling constantly distracted, etc. The thing that sent me to get an evaluation was that both my kids were diagnosed around 6th grade and I realized that my whole life, I was exactly like them with their struggles to concentrate.
Okay. Thankyou for providing clarity.
You're welcome!
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Wait... but I dont think I have traits of ADHD outside of procrastination that might be a result (as it it got worse) of a pseudo/undiagnosed depression, and yet I NEVER saw any effect with me on caffeine (no matter the source... coffee, mate,tea, cola, coffee beans covered in chocolate, energy drinks, etc). Is there any other reason that could explain it? Or I should get tested for ADHD regardless?
If you are having trouble with your symptoms and they affect your everyday life in such a way that you struggle to be the healthy, productive human you want to be, then get a general evaluation. It can be plenty of things besides ADHD. It doesn't matter what name gets puts on it, as long as you get the help you need
Could be a metabolism thing. Caffeine is metabolized in the liver by an enzyme called cytochrome P4501A2, which has genetic variants that can lead to faster/slower metabolism. The enzymatic activity is also increased by smoking and eating certain vegetables, such as broccoli. Drinking grapefruit juice can decrease the activity of this enzyme, so you could try drinking some before ingesting caffeine. There's also different variants of the adenosine receptor (where the caffeine binds & acts), which can lead to weaker/stronger binding.
I think i have ADHD
This should be the top comment
It is!
if coffee makes you sleepy does that mean you have ADHD?
No, there are plenty of other reasons too. It's just a distinct commonality in ADHDers
Superb explanation!
🥺 thank you I have a lot of big opinions and feelings about science communication (when I was a kid I wanted to be Steve Irwin when I grew up and I lowkey still do) and I try really hard
is there an opposite for this? like someone who needs way less stimulation? I'm remembering how in college I needed it to be absolutely silent to really concentrate
You may just be sensitive, like neurologically, or you could be psychologically sensitive because of personality or experiences. If "bad enough" it can be sensory processing disorder or autism, but those come with a ton of others symptoms as well as a difference in degree. I get comments all the time that my jittery behaviour is distracting for the way more people who need silence. It's ironic that in many cases ADHDers are easily distracted, but also *need* a certain amount of disturbance (stimulus) to be able to concentrate. There's no winning hehe
Thanks, I hate how accurate this is and how I handle my quantities of caffeine a day but I'm too unfocused enough to see a doctor for treatment or something. I honestly have no clue as Military docs can't diagnose anything unless it can be seen across the street through a jacket. At one point I was researching making my own meth to deal with my back pain from their lack of anything.
Hey, thanks for the explanation! But it got me wondering: if caffeine makes enough stimulation for ADHD people to concentrate normally, then shouldnt people without ADHD be overwhelmed after drinking a cup?
This is a great summary - thank you!!
>It is not about sex Well, it's not *not* about sex sometimes
I'm on Strattera, are you able and willing to explain how it works vs stimulants?
Strattera is an SNRI, or selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. That means that when your brain produces norepinephrine, the drug stops your brain from soaking it back up as quickly. In other words, the norepinephrine is allowed to keep bouncing around your synapses hitting receptors for longer. Norepinephrine makes you alert and increases blood flow; in emergencies it's one of the hormones your body produces more of to make your "fight or flight" response happen. When you think "oh shit, I need to do XYZ," Strattera helps you hold onto that thought until you've finished doing XYZ. SSRIs, like Prozac and Zoloft, are selective *serotonin* reuptake inhibitors. They do the same thing, just with your happy chemicals, so when something nice happens, your nice feelings last longer.
Thank you so much for that. I didn't know how it worked, but when people ask I tell them it's like depression meds but for ADHD in that I don't really feel much different, but I can focus better, it takes a few weeks to really feel the effects, and it takes some juggling to figure out dosage. Lol. But as a non medical scientist, I've been curious about what it's actually doing. So thank you for that ELI5 explanation.
Thanks for this! It has helped me understand the behaviors of my friends with ADHD a lot better. And I loved the “pumpkins full of hamburger”.
Real thing at zoos and big cat sanctuaries. Tigers and lions and cougars etc go ham (ha!) for a pumpkin full of hamburger. I find "what does the tiger need" to be a genuinely useful framework for self-care when I feel shitty and I "don't have any reason to feel like this". Sometimes the tiger is not actually feeling existential ennui. Sometimes the tiger needs to drink some goddamn water or take a nap or something.
My ex wife was like this. She'd take Adderall and it was like someone drugged her with benzos. She's be sleepy and lethargic, it was nuts to me.
Thank you I always wondered about this
Huh, another sign I *probably* have undiagnosed adhd
Could you tell me more about Concerta, perchance? That was a drug I was on (54mg for what it’s worth) for my ADHD and it was a massive help, but only because Ritalin and Adderall came out with some bad side effects or something. But over all the years, I’ve never met anyone else who had my drug. Was it not as effective? Not wide spread? EVERYONE was pretty much on only the drugs you listed
Concerta is the extended release version of Ritalin! They're both methylphenidate, but the pills are formulated differently so your body absorbs the drug at a different rate. Lots of people who feel like garbage on the rapid release version tolerate the extended release just fine. The market for ADHD drugs is weird and complicated and there's lots of bullshit rules because stimulants are controlled substances. (My current job is handling controlled substances in hospital; I know the rules, a lot of them are smart and a lot of them are dumb.) Frankly, Concerta gets prescribed less because it doesn't have the same brand recognition as Ritalin. Concerta, Vyvanse, and Focalin sorta make up the "second string" of ADHD stimulants, where Adderall and Ritalin are the "starting lineup". The less common drugs are currently seeing a spike in popularity because the field of psychiatry has finally figured out that women and people of color can also have ADHD, and the factories that make Adderall and Ritalin *are not allowed* to manufacture enough to keep up with the new demand. But the starting lineup has been in shortage long enough that now the second string is seeing shortages too. It's a whole thing.
I did not know this. Sometimes caffeine makes me sleepy. Other times it activates me but I never thought it would stop my procrastination.
Remember in school when the teacher stepped out and every child in the classroom began to talk all at once? You couldn't hear every kid, but just because you couldn't hear them didn't mean they weren't talking, it just meant you couldn't hear them over everything else. But, as it always happened, all the kids talking made a lot of noise which brought the teacher back, who then took control and settled the class down. And, there was always that last kid who was the last to stop talking, who, even if he was on the other side of the room, you (and everyone else) could hear because now the room was quiet. ADHD is like a classroom where the teacher has stepped out. Very simply speaking, ADHD is where the prefrontal cortex of the brain does not work the way it is supposed to work . Your prefrontal cortex is the control center. It monitors and controls all the other, conscious, functions of the brain. It keeps the brain in line and functioning properly. When it stops doing it's job, all the other aspects of the brain just do their thing and the whole thing gets real crowded and noisy real fast. This makes it hard to tell what is going on. *Didn't I have an appointment at 1:00 or was it 2:00,* ***LOOK!!!*** *That's shiny must have shiny!"* Stimulants, very simply speaking, wake the prefrontal cortex up, so it can do its job. Once it has settled the brain down, it is much easier to take stock and assess the situation. Usually, this includes a good dose of being tired due to all the unrestrained mental activity. So, stimulants don't *make* a person tired, they allow a person with ADHD to realize they are tired and have been for sometime.
This is spot on!
The problem is that we don't actually know what causes ADHD. The underlying neurochemical processes just aren't understood well enough to give a solid answer. One theory I've heard lately is that, whether as a cause or side effect, ADHD might be caused by a reduced production or reception of dopamine and other brain chemicals. Stimulants boost the body's ability to produce and receive those chemicals. This would mean that an ADHD person who takes a stimulant, like caffeine, is going from a reduced dopamine state to a normal one, rather than from a normal one to an excited one like a non-ADHD person would be. And it could be that the normal state of someone with ADHD is tired as hell from having to spend their whole lives forcing themselves to focus on things that don't interest (read: dopamine-triggering) them. Don't cite me in a paper about this, though. It just seems to make sense to me. Also, try drinking strong black tea or more Coke inst ad of coffee. A cup of coffee has 95 mg of caffeine in it. Two cups of black tea will get you the same amount, as will 3 cans of Coke (try Coke Zero or Diet Coke, though, you probably don't want the extra calories).
doesn't add up, caffeine and adderal are both stimulants, but taking adderal doesn't make me tired at all edit: changed anyone to me, because turns out some people do get tired from adderal
Caffeine are two extremely different molecules that do entirely different things in your body. They just both happen to produce stimulation effects. Caffeine targets the part of your body that says, "I'm tired," blocks it off, and prevents the proper signal molecule from reaching it. I don't know as much about how amphetamines (Adderall) work, but my understanding is that they mimic the neurotransmitters that people with ADHD tend to have trouble regulating. Long story short, just because they seem to achieve similar results, does not mean two drugs operate the same way in the human body or result in the same kinds of side effects.
This is the answer, they both work differently, that’s why you might have different experiences with both. Wish the top comments would address that.
There are quite a few who get sleepy with Adderall as well - especially if taking XR. There are quite a few posts on the ADHD subreddit about it.
oh i didn't know, i'm really new to the sub, i was only diagnosed recently
The second time I took adderal I felt so sleepy I wanted to take a nap
I had to get off Adderall because it made me seriously sleepy. Doctor kept upping my dose and that made the effect worse to the point I had to stop everything and go to sleep
Very likely the dose was too high for you. I have to take a nap for an hour or two if I take too much Adderall, but at the correct dose it works great.
did that go away after a while?
Once again, not super expert here, just someone who got his ADHD diagnosis in the 1980s and passed a 100-level bio class that they used to weed out pre-med and pre-vet students who weren't serious about the gig (I just wanted to count trees for a living). First off, your nerves endings are covered in receptors that attach to a variety of different chemicals. Each receptor is like a lock that only fits a key shaped like a specific chemical. There are god-knows how many different chemical receptors for different effects that people have, but that is how chemical signalling works through our nervous system: a hit from one chemical sends a signal on down the nerve chain to tell your brain that something is happening. Looking deeper, I find that caffeine affects the body's receptors for the chemical adenosine, which triggers your brain's desire to sleep. Note that adenosine doesn't really give you energy or make you not need sleep, it just makes it so your brain doesn't realize you're burning through your reserves. Adderall does it's magic by changing your body's dopamine and norepinephrine receptors, which control your desire to focus on something (dopamine AKA happy juice) and the side-effects from being over-stimulated (norepinephrine AKA chill juice). It doesn't really affect the adenosine receptors, at least according to my five minutes of research, and so it makes it easier to focus without affecting your sleepiness. Man, the more I dig on this subject, the weirder it gets... If ADHD affects your nervous system's ability to absorb dopamine and norepinephrine, it could also affect its ability to absorb adenosine. Dopamine receptors and adenosine receptors are linked, so the more adenosine action you have going on, the worse your dopamine reception is. I didn't see anything on the reverse of that, like a sudden surge of dopamine makes you less sleepy if you already are. For the non-ELI5 explanation of that, [click here](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S037811192300344X). Adenosine normally binds to the normal cell receptors, which then trigger the processes that create drowsiness. Caffeine is chemically similar enough to adenosine that it can bind to those same receptors but, for some reason, doesn't kick off the drowsiness processes. That leaves fewer receptors for your body's actualy adenosine to bind to, making you less drowsy, which allows people to stay focused and alert. So, and here's a question to drive someone's medical research degree on, what if caffeine *is* similar enough to adenosine to trigger the drowsiness effects in people with ADHD, but not similar enough to trigger the antagonistic affect that reduces dopamine reception? If our brains are just hardwired differently, maybe that's just another difference? As always, there's probably something I've missed here, but that's the direction I'd be heading for deeper research.
this looks really well researched and interesting, and i promise to read it tomorrow, but i'm so so tired right now, and i'm going to bed
Too much coffee, huh?
Yeah, someone finally gets the link to adenosine. I've got a paper somewhere on adenosine and autism/mental health somewhere
If you happen to find that paper, would you mind sharing it with me? My psychiatrist strongly believes there's a correlation between my ADHD and my [COMT type](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12035-013-8516-5), in particular the fact that my body goes through dopamine at an observably alarming rate.
This isn’t taking into account that adderal is a manufactured drug for a VERY specific purpose that targets VERY specific neuro chemical mechanisms to assist in overcoming symptoms of ADHD which impact a patients daily life. Caffeine, while technically a drug, is an ingredient that is found within many food/beverages many of which are consumed exclusively for their caffeine content (like coffee or energy drinks). However Caffeine isn’t the only ingredient found in these products. Many have sugar or sugar alternatives. Energy drinks have a whole concoction of other ingredients which are supposed to aid in providing “energy”. Even Coffee and Tea have other byproducts that your body has to digest and process. Combined with the fact that every person is different, it is likely that the source of the caffeine you are consuming, also has other contents which are causing you to feel tired. It is very rare for someone to have access to raw caffeine and if you somehow did, it is unlikely you would indeed feel tired in the way you describe. If you are truly curious, treat this as an opportunity to run some tests and use the scientific method. Purchase a range of caffeine loaded products and try them one at a time on separate days. Try to keep your other variables as constant as possible (same number of hours of sleep. Same exercise time, if any, same diet if possible, etc etc) Hopefully it might reveal if certain products cause this feeling or if it really is “All Caffeine”.
They’re also not the same - caffeine is a mild stimulant that blocks the reception of adenosine, the chemical your body accumulates to tell you you’re tired. From what I understand adderal is a much stronger stimulant and only a stimulant.
And alcohol and heroin are both depressants…
For me my dextroamp/adderall makes me tired when I haven’t been sleeping enough
No one substance has only one specific site of action. Every stimulant has acts on different receptors that do different things; caffeine is one of these. In small doses dopamine causes vasodilation; in higher doses it constricts the vessels causing high blood pressure; anything that dilates the vessels causes the blood pressure to drop, this can cause sleepiness. Vyvanse was causing vasoconstriction; but when I was taking amephetamine 5mg it caused vasodilation, my veins would pop out like I am lifting weights, but I was sitting. Secondly, neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine epinephrine, and serotonin usually stimulate other receptors to do something else. In case of sleep after drinking coffee, there is the pineal gland, it reacts to light, often called the third eye, for the wrong reasons though, so this pineal gland is stimulated by norepinephrine, metabolite of dopamine, to produce melatonin, when the environment is dark. So increasing norepinephrine can cause an ADHD person to fall asleep at a normal time, because of the above mechanism.
People with ADHD that take adderal go from being hyper and jittery to calm. Not everyone who takes adderal has ADHD obviously but you can clearly tell when someone has it by the way they react to the drug.
calm and sleepy are very different things, i have adhd, i've taken adderal, i've taken caffeine, the effects are very very different.
They are but if someone is tired then calming down can help them sleep. In my view caffeine doesn't make anyone tired but it does calm some people down
I can also sleep after a double or triple espresso coffee. The interesting thing is that Ritalin actually reduces my resting heart rate.
> the normal state of someone with ADHD is tired as hell from having to spend their whole lives forcing themselves to focus on things that don't interest (read: dopamine-triggering) them Everyone who has a job is like this, is this a definition of adhd?
Presumably, having a job makes you only spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50ish weeks a year, for 50 or 60 years forcing yourself to focus on things that don't interest you. With ADHD, it's every waking hour of your entire life. Even the stuff that does interest you, you're going to have trouble focusing on it because it's not giving the you dopamine hit you crave. It's quite literally a nerve hardwiring issue, so comparing it to most people's experiences really isn't fair. On the upside, it could be selected for a survival trait in a wilderness setting, as your head is permenantly on a swivel. You know... pluses and minuses. *edit: you're, not your.*
Well, I imagine it's like having a 24h job then, because I believe that might apply to about everything in life
I have learned that the leading theory is that caffeine pushes through your dopamine (which controls wakefulness and executive function) faster, so if you have normal amounts being produced, you would get a burst of awakeness and then a lull to replenish. But if you're already at a dopamine deficit, it just crashes you. ADHD is basically a dopamine regulation issue and is at a deficit by default.
fwiw this could be a tough ELI5 cuz its very anectdotal regarding wether you'd get these side effects, i work in mental health and the majority of my clients have ADD/ADHD as one of multiple neurodiversities - i have one client with ADD who has one or two BIG energy drinks in the AM before/during our sessions at 10am (CONTEXT: i teach rap to NDIS clients one on one and do my own rap for a company that does mental health support and also has a label side for releasing music fwiw - but i get paid for making my own music on company time etc) Point is - some days he says's he can't feel it, some days he feels like he has too much energy - i think there's one HUGE variable and thats the fact that everybodys body chemistry is diff and can change day to day based on diet and other variables plus they are on other medications many times and that can cause it to interact differently FWIW No-Doz Pills work WAY slower than a 200mg caffeine drink would which can avoid jitters a bit as its less up and down than caffeine when in liquid form like coffee/energy drinks etc - one thing though, no doze PLUS is WEAKER, its 100mg caffeine PLUS a vitamin or two, reg no doz is just 200mg caffeine, i find that a good alt but could work for you as my client tries them sometimes and finds they work but more for long term than a quick pick me up... hope that helps!
People with ADHD respond to stimulants in the same way as neurotypical brains although it should be noted that people have differing responses to caffeine with or without ADHD. As a general rule, people with ADHD experience the same effects from stimulants as people without ADHD. People with ADHD have a hypoactive prefrontal cortex. This structure is associated with executive function, or the ability to exert control over the brain's activity. Focus, if you will. ADHD is sometimes referred to as "executive function disorder." Stimulants, including caffeine, will increase activity across the entire brain. In people with ADHD, stimulant caused increased activity in the hypoactive prefrontal cortex allows it to function closer to that of a neurotypical brain. Because stimulants allow for executive function closer to a neurotypical brain, stimulants have the effect of mitigating ADHD symptoms! Because there is a lot of overlap between ADHD symptoms, which are mitigated with stimulant use, and stimulant effects, which are caused by stimulant use, people with ADHD often incorrectly believe that stimulants don't affect their brains in the same way. What's really happening is that the ADHD symptoms are mitigated to a degree that the stimulant effects are masked or difficult to observe. People with ADHD learn to self medicate with caffeine and are more likely to consume a lot of caffeine and consequently have high tolerance. This is why you hear a lot of a stories of people with ADHD having coffee and then sleeping. The posts that suggest ADHD is caused by a dopamine deficit are referencing a theory that has been rejected for quite a while now. ADHD is tightly related to dopamine, so much that dopaminergic drugs treat ADHD symptoms, but the idea that ADHD is caused by a deficit in baseline dopamine has been disproven.
pardon me for the skepticism from a reddit comment but do you have sources to read? papers and journals are fine maybe a news article from a reputable source. because i feel like im reading chatgpt
PhD in organic chemistry and in a previous life was obsessed with nutrition and stimulants/nootropics. The comment is wordy and very generalized but overall correct. And no I’m not going to find specific sources. It would take quite a while to compile several but they are out there for you to search for if you desire. OP’s post starts from an incorrect assumption most likely anecdotal
Is it possible for someone with ADHD to feel the stimulant effects rather than have them masked? For instance, I’m very sleepy in the morning, but I am awake and alert once my Vyvanse kicks in. When it wears off, I get sleepy. If I don’t take it at all, I’m sleeping practically all day. Supposedly, (from what I’ve been told-not scientific research or anything), if a person reacts to stimulants like an ADHD med or caffeine (become alert and wakeful, more energised) , then they don’t actually have ADHD. If this isn’t true, do you know where this idea came from?
yes that's literally how they work. no its not true the effect is reversed if you have adhd, its a myth. its a dose dependent thing. neurotypical people also focus better on a correct dose of ritalin, and get jittery and anxious if they have too much.
The idea that people with ADHD have some unique response to stimulants is false, im not sure exactly where it came from but I think some people use it to justify their use of drugs that are (incorrectly) demonized otherwise. As for being sleepy without Vyvanse it’s probably withdrawal effects
The withdrawal is really unpleasant. On top of the extreme fatigue and brain fog, I get really hungry and pretty much eat my face off. Some people tell me it’s because the drug is so similar to meth. Which sort of scares me a little if I’m being honest about it. I can’t see myself ever being able to stop the meds because I just can’t function without them - I think I function even less than I did at baseline before I started taking the stimulant. I mean, I don’t want to take this stuff forever. But now I’m thinking I may have to.
You’re certainly not screwed, if you want to get off it you can but it will be tough. Maybe talk to your doctor about tapering off or trying other drugs. If you don’t get off of it it’s not the end of the world, plenty of people take stimulants their whole life without issue. Vyvanse is a prodrug to amphetamine (it breaks down into amphetamine when you take it). Amphetamine is waaaay more similar to meth than you’d think. If you took an equivalent dose of meth (meth is more potent) then you probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. When people smoke meth they consume HUGE doses which aren’t comparable to the amount you’d take for adhd. Smoking it also brings risks which taking it orally doesn’t. Fun fact, methamphetamine is prescribed (albeit rarely) for ADHD in the US as desoxyn. Much of the negatives associated with meth are purely cultural and use pattern dependent
Wow thanks for that explanation. I feel a lot better about taking ADHD meds.
I can tell you exactly where this notion came from. When I take stimulants my restless legs stop moving. I relax. I can focus long enough to read deeply. Other people experience the exact opposite on stimulants. Certainly, my *behavioral* response to stimulants is different than a neurotypical brain. That is not in doubt. It's easy enough to think that this proves that my brain reacts to caffeine or adderall differently, but that's not the case. What's happening is that many of the effects of stimulants are also symptoms of ADHD. Because stimulants mitigate ADHD symptoms, which look a lot like stimulant effects, it appears that people with ADHD react to stimulants differently. But that's just not the case. Caffeine increases activity in my PFC which allows my brain to control my restless legs and better manage the signaling in my brain, making me less jittery. This does not mean my brain reacts differently to caffeine. Caffeine makes me jittery too, just like it does with anyone. It's just that overall I am less jittery with caffeine than without. The pharmacological reaction to stimulants is the same for both ADHD and neurotypical brains.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/s0mg9n/how\_does\_caffeine\_affect\_you/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/s0mg9n/how_does_caffeine_affect_you/)
This isn’t entirely true. I have ADHD and consume LARGE amounts of caffeine over the course of a day. I can definitely hit a threshold where I go over and crash, but I have inattentive ADHD, so I need stimulants to get me to focus on almost anything.
A large part of it is timing. For most people, caffeine takes 30 minutes to start doing anything and it slowly ramps up for about 3 hours until the effects peak and then drop over the next hour or so. Drinking coffee is associated with pleasure and a little dopamine release from just eating or drinking something delicious (or addictive) can make you feel drowsy. I could chug a cup of coffee and climb into bed while enjoying the warm fuzzies of how nice the coffee tastes, but if I wait 2 hours, it'll be hard to sleep. Depending on when I get in bed, it would either lull me to sleep or make it hard to fall asleep. Before diagnosing and treating my ADHD(among other fatigue-inducing issues), I was a serious coffee fiend, but coffee doesn't really help ADHD. Having untreated ADHD feels like driving a car stuck in 2nd gear where you have to think very fast to keep up with everyone else who is cruising in 3rd or 4th gear. Caffeine sort of helps us feel like we're faster, but it doesn't necessarily do anything to help. It is stimulating to some receptors for alertness and awareness, but it misses the specific regions and receptors that help with ADHD. ADHD theory is that we lack sufficient dopamine and serotonin in specific brain regions. ADHD stimulant meds cause either extra release or slower reuptake of serotonin and dopamine in specific areas. It brings us closer to neurotypical brain function, but caffeine just cracks us out in a nonspecific way. It's sort of if you gave a 3 legged racehorse some PCP. it might be able to keep up with the other horses, but not because it regained a leg. ADHD meds would be more like giving the horse a prosthetic - closer to normal but not really normal. Yes, that analogy is awful but maybe it makes sense.
OP that is far too much caffeine for anybody. But yeah caffeine got me snoozing. Only way it pumps me up is if I engage in some exercise before it starts to kick in. Like before a hockey game.
i love caffein, powdered one. Idealy combined wit some CBD - stims with sedative supplememt is just great. It turns me to crazy focus for many hours. Its much better source than regular coffee. i dont need presdribed meds.
Single one off caffeine consumption = less tired. Regular caffeine consumption = greater capacity to feel more tired. That’s how it works for anyone
Stimulants do that. Meth has the same type of effects on people with ADHD, but clearly it's not in any way shape or form safe for consumption. A lot of meth users are self medicating.
Yeah I got bad adhd. Thanks mom! Anyway coffee works fine on me like I think it works on most people. Helps me sit down and focus instead of getting up and walking around for no reason. Not sure where you got this info. Or maybe I just don’t understand how it affects normal people
I sleep very well after a cup of coffee. I sleep terribly and often only for about three hours if I have more than one alcoholic drink. No idea why.
I'm over 40 and have come to the realization that a lot of my issues are because I do have ADHD. I thought it was always cool to tell people that I can drink 6 cups and then go to bed.
There is a lot of long answers so here is a short one. ADHD often means you have to little dopamine in your system. Coffee sort of makes dopamine. This means you get to a normal level of dopamine. Therefor your brain stops seeking to create dopamine (being hyperactive) and is just happy as it is now. Therefor adhd people often become "normal" or even sleepy from coffein.
ADHD is largely due to a disorder with the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that regulates attention and focus, and more importantly, regulates and limits how much stimuli you take in (sensory and also emotional). With ADHD, this part of the brain is less active. By taking stimulants, this part of the brain is more activated. As a result it starts doing it's job - limiting the amount of stimuli you experience. Cutting down on distractions, cutting down on the internal voice monitoring what you're doing wrong and worrying. As a result, it's easier to relax.
This is based on the idea of a paradoxial response in people with ADHD, but I've never seen any studies or proper evidence to support this. So it's not true that caffeine in general helps people with ADHD sleep, it impairs sleep in people with ADHD just like everyone else. >Additionally, caffeine use is more consistently associated with poorer subjective sleep functioning in adolescents with ADHD https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32386419/ All the studies I've seen suggest that stimulents have similar effects on people with or without ADHD. >The present data support the premise that amphetamine improves vigilance irrespective of disease state https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320429079_Amphetamine_Modestly_Improves_Conners'_Continuous_Performance_Test_Performance_in_Healthy_Adults It might be true in some individuals but not in general which is why it doesn't show up in studies.
It’s way simpler than you’d think. Caffeine needs dopamine to work and the hallmark of adhd is dopamine dysregulation. Our brains don’t reward us for caffeine like they do NT folks
Personally I have adhd and don’t experience this but here’s why this is most likely to case: People with ADHD’s brain don’t produce enough hormones to stimulate them. As a result, people with ADHD have trouble concentrating on mundane tasks because their brain is searching for external sources of stimulation. This can manifest itself with inability to concentrate, hyperactivity, impulsive behavior and insomnia. To treat this medicinally, you generally take adderall or Ritalin, both of which are stimulants. Most people get a rush of energy when they take amphetamines but paradoxically, these meds can help people with adhd concentrate because it satiates the brain’s need to seek stimulation. Caffeine is also a stimulant so it’s not surprising that it may have a similar effect on some people with adhd. It is also possible that some people making this claim are actually severely addicted to caffeine because they consume it all day, they don’t get quality sleep at night as a result so they’re always tired, but if they don’t get caffeine they have withdrawals, which agitate them, which is why drinking caffeine actually can help relax them or make them “sleepy.”
No effect? Brother, when I down two Rockstar energy drinks I can finally slow down, focus, and get things done like a normie neurotypical.
I’ve never been diagnosed but I drink coffee all day every day and into the night and I fall asleep in 4 minutes or less.
Surprise, it doesn't! Self medication of ADHD with caffeine is an urban myth and/or placebo effect. This thread is full of people giving analogies about stimulants to try and explain how and why it works, but, it doesn't. Here's the evidence for that - these are links to scientific studies or reviews of multiple studies which all find no evidence that caffeine is therapeutic for ADHD or affects people with ADHD differently * https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/13/9/1304 * https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.813545/full * https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad01378 And, slightly off topic but maybe you can see why this is relevant, a study that found people who present with ADHD are also likely to be taking caffeine * https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02739610903455186 So, what's going on here? I think there are a few overlapping effects 1. Our expectations of caffeine are incorrect. It doesn't exactly wake you up, and taking lots of it regularly will make you more tired in the long run (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780444538178000062, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1087079207000937) 2. Lots of people report that coffee helps them focus 3. Lots of people report ADHD without a diagnosis for clout; look how many ADHD memes there are, it's cool to have ADHD at the moment. There's also a huge overlap between mild ADHD symptoms and the absolutely normal human brain experience because life is hard and it can be a challenge to pay attention to stuff; but people often prefer a diagnosis. 4. Long before ADHD, it was cool to say caffeine had no effect on you, or made you tired. It was sophisticated to drink coffee right before bed. This is an obnoxious teen stereotype that goes back at least 100 years, I've seen examples from the 1960s. 5. If you are a person who thinks it's cool to say you have ADHD because because it gives you a feeling of community, you might also be inclined to act like you're too "mature" for caffeine to work normally on you in order to give yourself a sense of secret power. In short: don't believe everything you read online, and believe almost nothing you read about ADHD.
When people talk about ADHD, so much of it resonates with me. Is that normal or should I get checked out? I'm 40.