Image not quite for ADHPeeps but I feel this sort of thing happens regularly for us as well.
Tea. Extremely strong tea, the kind russian convicts drink.
W dad
This is caffeine acting on brain and unlikely any change in blood pressure per se. You can try measuring bp a few time before and after chugging red bull to see how much it changes.
Oh it does change, it’s still a stimulant. AFAIK basically all stimulants increase blood pressure. The degree varies of coarse…
it gets very fun with adhd where stimulants calm you down. So you’re sitting there chilling, slightly sleepy, and then you see your hands shaking lmao
Man, very true. I used to be totally in the zone after a coffee, because I rarely drank it, but I hated the physical nerviness that came with it. Bizarre mixture of mental calm and physical anxiety.
Mini thins (gas station speed) and Red Bull. At least that’s what I did in the 90s before I was diagnosed. Oh and pulling all nighters since my tired brain worked more like a normal brain.
I’m also from a family with low blood pressure. And sugar is a great trick when it falls down even further. It also help me to study longer but it is hard to strick the right balance with extra-energy and reduced concentration.
I’ve noticed when I eat mcdonalds my heart races afterward
McDs is packed with sugar. I quit eating mcds out of spite for 2 months and when i finally gave in and had em again i thought i was gonna have a heart attack. Then the stomach ache hit. Shit hardly counts as food. Anyway I think i either was used to their poison before or i never noticed the cramps, cuz it’s happened every (scant) time I’ve eaten em since.
Banger fuckin fries tho
I don’t think McDonald’s is as bad as Burger King. I had a whopper and the bun made it actually taste sweet. Like a burger wrapped in a glazed donut or something. They’re putting a ridiculous amount of sugar in those buns.
I hate MacDonald fries. They are soft and not crispy at all. I buy fries at store because achieving the crisp from scratch required cooking twice and I don’t want to deal with that but I find out that most of stores sell now MacDo style of fries and I hate it.
What’s your favorite type?
Crispy fries. I’m not a complicated man, I just don’t want to eat soft fried potato sticks when I order fries : I want fried-crispy potato sticks.
My exam trick was no coffee for two days before the exam, then a couple cups the morning of. Worked great. In other news, holy crap, do I have ADHD??
I used to be the one weirdo who could shoot an 8 ball of coke and be perfectly calm, at least for a few minutes until it started to wear off. That was a long time ago, and I was just diagnosed a couple years ago.
I think I got this from lemmy?
Look, as long as I can convince myself to go to sleep and not hyperfocus on whatever is in front of me I’ll be fine. Problem is, it’s a 50/50 toss up whether or not I can ignore my brain on any given night.
I had this too, everyone around me went “just close your eyes and sleep” and that had the exact opposite effect on me, now I take meds (seroquel at a low dose) and I finally understand NT people, I get sleepy at about 11 pm and can sleep in 5 minutes from laying down, if you have the chance to talk to some doctor about it, please do, it changed my life
What if caffeine doesnt work on me?
I got 10 hours of sleep last night, drank a coffee at noon. Still crashed at 130 and had to take an afternoon nap like normal.
I believe it’s common for ADHD folks that caffeine doesn’t energize you, but it might help you concentrate better. Or it might not. I don’t know, really. I drink copious amounts of coffee and energy drinks and still have trouble concentrating.
Caffeine’s problem and virtue as a common stimulant is that bodies adapt to it readily and become dependent. Blood pressure doesn’t spike when you’re used to it, sleep is less effected, etc.
Caffeine’s problem as self medication for ADHD is that as a result it’s more of an addiction than a self-medication. The short and long term benefits are minimal and it’s more of a comforting habit than treatment. Maybe ADHD peeps are chasing that initial benefit, or maybe we just use it because it’s legal and we’re tired from staying up late.
I used to drink over two liters of coffee every day. I stopped that a few years ago, now i typically only have it one or twice a week. I dont think I feel any different compared when i was drinking it regularl or when i drink a lone cuppa now, as if my body has become immune to caffeine from using it so heavily for many years.
I dont see how I can concentrate if im passed out in the middle of the day lol.
That’s fair
Ditto. I’ve tried “coffee naps” but with tea. I just end up sleeping through it.
I developed this unique tea leaf / tree bark mix over 20 years ago, and I could swear it changed my life. I studied for 14 hours per day sometimes and absorbed all my training within a few years. Then the effect was gone.
Looking at it objectively, maybe the trick was that it had just the right amount of caffeine, but unlike pure black tea, not too much at once and with a lot of water. Possibly also compensating a micro nutrient deficit. Could also be complex indirect effects, e. g.: ADHD related to gut biome, additional problems due to bad bacteria / yeast overrepresented, medicinal plants in the mix fighting that, to a mild degree.
Treating digestion problems with medicinal tea in combination with caffeine and love for black tea started the whole idea, IIRC, so it’s not entirely impossible.
Similar but Pistachios. The mechanics of opening the shells and eating them allowed me to focus on the college professor’s material after an 9-10 hour work shift. If I showed up to class without pistachios or sunflower seeds I was nodding off in class.
When I was younger they gave me Ritalin, mostly to stop me from burning the building down. It worked, because I never burned the school down… can’t say the same for the neighbors shed… plus there was that incident with the bridge, luckily the fire department showed up quickly.
good stuff, keep up the flame! 🔥
Holy shit! This post gave me an epiphany.
I was a cartoonist for the student newspaper, and drawing a funny comic strip every day was grueling. But I did better when I drank a Coca Cola before I started to brainstorm. Later, guess what - diagnosed ADHD.
Anyway, I probably took 2-3 hours on each comic, and was paid $5 per strip. And spent some of that on soda. So, it was a labor of love and foolishness. Also, I was semi-famous on campus for edgy cartoons that were occasionally funny, most of which I am embarrassed about in middle age.
Weed to let me take things slowly. Otherwise thoughts spiral out of control, I want to do 1000 things at the same time and can’t focus on a single thing. Weed gives me focus, and those eye blinders that people used to put on horses so they would have a narrower field of view, whatever they’re called. I’m not english I’m so concentrated I almost forget to eat on days I have an edible,… and I’m a foodie
They’re called blinkers - the horse vision limiters
I became a pothead because it made the cacophony of thoughts in my head stfu. I didn’t realize that my thoughts were like that because of ADHD, since I was only diagnosed in my 30’s (started smoking weed when I was 19).
Snap
people do the same with caffeine and nicotine - both calm us down and allow us to function a little better whilst having pretty much the opposite effect to the expected one (instead of faster we get slower, but being slower makes us faster as the usual speed we go at can easily be too overwhelming)
not such a fan fact: adhd folks are nearly twice as likely to be smokers than non-adhd people
This seems sooo extremely common among software engineers.
Rockstar and pseudoephedrine Claritin with a fresh made breakfast burrito. Discovered I could focus easily for hours as the stimulants with a full stomach of food kept me from being overstimulated. Ironically cost me a lot more than Ritalin does as I didn’t have the time or money to pursue a diagnosis at that time.
pseudoephedrine
my Adderall script is in USA insurance purgatory and pseudoephedrine is probably the only thing keeping me employed tbh
Same, was taking a few Advil Cold and Sinus pills a week which are sold on the shelf in Canada till I recently got a Strattera prescription (which is causing constipation unfortunately)
here in Freedom Land we gotta show ID to get the pseudoephedrine and promise not to be naughty and make meth with it lmao
oof. sorry to hear you got such an unpleasant side effect :[ i can’t recommend psyllium husk enough. i don’t know how ancient humans who didn’t live near psyllium plants managed to survive 💀
I was about to say same!
Accidentally, though.
The story is roughly like this: I had bad allergies and fucked up sinuses - I thought. Got sinus headaches every day during bad periods. Lots of sinus infections. Went on for like 10-15 years through periods of being intense and focused and stressed with sinus issues and periods of checking out, being aloof and dippy without sinus issues.
In 2019, sinus rinses, pseudoephedrine, nose sprays, and pain killers weren’t doing it. Resigned myself to having to get the sinus roto-rooter, where they scrape out your sinuses to make it easier for all that junk to drain off. So I went to my doctor to get that in motion. Doctor sent me to an immunologist, who sent me to an ENT, who sent me to a neurologist, who looked at my records for 30 seconds, declared that I had migraines, and sent me on my way with a preventative script.
I was so fucking mad. Didn’t think he could possibly be right. But he was. And then Covid hit and by the time things got normal again, I realized I wasn’t able to work like I was before. So I got got tested for ADHD, and… here I am, rambling.o/
We got you.
Pseudoephedrine has been my thing lately when I need that extra focus for work. Out of curiosity, what dosage do you take?
started with 30 mg but now need 60 (sometimes 90 on bad days…) but I try my damndest to not take them unless I feel like I’m genuinely going to fuck shit up at work. Taking cold medication off label makes me feel guilty 😞
I also tried the 12 hour extended release (120 mg) but that fucked up my sleep which is already precarious
I fucking hate that half the days at work I’m constantly sniffing from the runny nose it induces. Makes me paranoid that my coworkers will think I’m hiding being sick (or worse, a coke habit…)
