Image not quite for ADHPeeps but I feel this sort of thing happens regularly for us as well.
Extreme anxiety.
For the longest time, I couldn’t recruit enough concentration to get homework or big projects done until it was this huge looming threat. Frequently, that would involve an all-nighter since it was something due the next day. Other times, it meant cranking out last night’s math assignment in home room mere minutes before it was due. It turns out that adrenaline and other stress hormones are great at shoving all the ADHD noise out of the way, however temporarily.
I’m a heavy tea drinker. When I got diagnosed with ADD at 40 I realized I was probably (lol) self-medicating with the copious amounts of tea.
Still better (and tastier) than meds IMHO. Of course don’t take my advice always, ALWAYS, talk to your doctor.
You should know that there is data that backs you up: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8875377/#sec5-nutrients-14-00739
And also on the self-medicated front: nicotine is effective too. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8741955/
What this makes me wonder is how much of the population is self-medicated in this way but doesn’t know it?
Started with caffeine as a child and never really stopped. School was a problem and I sought solace in cannabis as a teen. Eventually cannabis became toxic to my mental health and I quit it in my twenties, and alcohol somewhat filled the void. A ten year hiatus from all substances ensued but I hated my job and went back to education to retrain and this is where I really got into it with drugs.
Motivating long and boring tasks is ADHD kryptonite, as I’m sure many here are familiar. This particular motivational mountain was a PhD thesis and my weapons of choice were opioids, cocaine, amphetamine and benzodiazepines. Opioids are great for motivation, stimulants sharpen the concentration and benzos let me sleep. I was unaware of ADHD at this time but I knew something was wrong and that this cocktail was completely unsustainable.
Fast forward three years and I finally learn why I seek these things, it’s ADHD, duh. Now I have the correct medication and therapy I never think about drugs. I’m happy and productive, I can work on undoing forty years of pretending to be someone without an attention deficit.
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.
So much fucking coffee. My god it was too much.
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.
I remember one time I randomly had a really bad reaction to caffeine. Normally I have no real physical reaction to caffeine, but this time my body went crazy, hands shaking, dry mouth, I was kinda panicking honestly.
It made me completely bomb a game of tf2 6v6 and my maincaller got really mad at me :c
My dad still swears it was the red bull and snickers and not the medical …
Wild that someone would think the Red Bull and Snickers are doing it directly without going through the some-ingredients-in-these-products-are-affecting-your-body route.
When I start having a feeling of getting a cold I drink Bayer’s Aspirin Plus C. It’s literally just aspirin and vitamin C but I swear it works. Not drinking aspirin and vitamin C but only this overpriced combination. When it is dissolved in water, grossly enough. Nothing else works. If I don’t drink it, I get a cold.
I literally worked in pharmaceutical science and I know this is complete bullshit borderlining homeopathy but I still swear by it. I wrote a whole academic work on vitamin C supplementation having no effect on getting a cold. And I still do it 😭
placebo is one hell of a uh not drug!
i noticed that sometimes when i have something important coming up, and i start feeling ill, i can just, force myself to stop? Literally tell myself “nuhuh, we’re not getting ill right now, that’s not the time” and it works? well not always, but more than it should
That might actually be cortisol released by a stress response. Do you tend to get sick a couple of days later when “there’s time”?
sometimes! other times it goes away entirely. I vividly remember the first time it happened, it was the first day of vacation at my great grandmother’s place. i started feeling ill but got so mad at that fact i woke up the next day feeling healthy again, and got to enjoy my vacation fully :)
Nice! That’s a great sign of how our mind can control our body. Something that we biomedics sometimes struggle with, in our eternal search for pathways.
I often had this when I had to study for exams. I was so stressed that I didn’t allow myself to get sick, and once the last exam was done, the stress level fell and I got so sick.
I learned about Linus Pauling’s ideas on Vitamin C supplementation. Pretty interesting stuff, especially wrt heart disease. I’m paraphrasing but if I remember correctly he theorized that our appendix used to produce vitamin C and that it somehow mutated away from that, and the lack of the vital nutrient causes heart disease problems with humans and all the great apes. Apparently we all get heart disease like cats have bad kidneys. He thought huge doses of vitamin C were the answer.
Yes, he is usually (and anecdotally) used in every introduction to works that cover vitamins and supplementation 😅 but unfortunately his ideas weren’t really backed by science. If you eat more vitamin c than you can absorb, you just pee it out. We actually did that in university (control group, breakfast group, breakfast + 1g of vitamin c group, testing the pee and I think capillary blood). Now, I think there are some findings with intravenous vitamin c acting like an oxidizing agent and killing cancer (?) cells, but macrodosing orally just doesn’t give you any effect.
Also, fun fact, your RDA can be met by eating one frozen pizza because vitamin c is used as a food additive everywhere.
macrodosing vitamin c gives my awful stomach cramps :(
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.
Ditto. I’ve tried “coffee naps” but with tea. I just end up sleeping through it.
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
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).
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.
Snap
ADHD, self-medicating behaviour from childhood in the form of candy seeking. Impossible impulse to control and occurs when experiencing a dip in concentration/boredom. It helped me focus for very brief moments.
Ooooh man as a kid I didn’t really like stuff that was strongly sweet or sour. But as an adult sour candy were my thing to the point that I burnt out them even tasting sour. I’d eat a family size bag of sour Skittles on long drives to help me concentrate.
Only sour candy though.
Sour candy still has a lot of sugar in it. Plus, acid can make us feel awake. Works well against nausea too.
Oh yeah for sure it has a ton of sugar. It’s just well masked by the sour.
Alcohol. Before getting formally diagnosed and medicated, drinking was the only thing that would quiet the inner restlessness. It worked but it’s not a healthy lifestyle at all.
This is something I like to bring up to people who are hesitant to medicate their kids. Yeah, I know you think Timmy is fine because he’s not completely failing in school, but you should at least show Timmy that he has options and that it’s OK to talk to a doctor and take medication if he needs it. He doesn’t have to rely on Jack Daniels and Folgers to eek his way through life.
This one surprised me, too.
I had a nasty habit of waiting until the evening to do my papers in college, because that was when it was acceptable to have some wine or whiskey while I wrote. But it was amazing just how much easier it was to stay on task after having a drink, and during finals - or after college when i was on deadline - i would alternate between liters of coffee in the morning and several drinks in the evening.
Now that I’m medicated both coffee and alcohol are just occasional indulgences… well, alcohol is at least. But I didn’t expect it to help curb my impulsive consumption habits like it has- it’s been a game-changer.
Neurotypicals think they have this superior discipline and attitude to “get on the task”, and I believed them, too! Now, medicated, I realise that they only work on these constant dopamine micro rewards in their prefrontal cortex. Which I now get, too.
I’ve been cutting back on caffeine finally because I thought it was my medicine giving me anxiety, and I’m pretty sure it’s the caffeine. Now I’m usually at about two cups of coffee in the morning (the mug I have is American large, and I always seem to fill it up).
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.
Reminds me of when people find out I do cocaine and Adderall.
“Oh Michael likes to get high”
No, Michael doesn’t have health insurance and has very severe adhd. I can’t live a normal life without stimulants and drug dealers are cheaper than doctors. welcome to America.
Caffeine is a very good stimulant for treating adhd symptoms as well. It has a very similar wake up affect to cocaine when taken sublingually or snorted. Take this with a grain of salt, as it needs to be carefully dosed still to avoid heart damage, so much more so when taken in those ways. Not recommending it as a substitute for real prescription meds of course, but it is a world better for you long term than cocaine.
Eh, cocaine seems kinda too much. I understand lots of adderall.
BTW, where I am normal ADHD medication is illegal, unless you get it and the recipe in another country. As you might imagine, that is kinda expensive to do every few months.
Damn mate, that’s really rough. I did see recently how US companies are taking advantage of the made-up scarcity to scalp people with ADHD to the point where the black market is more affordable. I only you know what you’re doing vis-a-vis risks from tainted batches.
I do worry about getting a hot batch and dying but that’s just the state of America today. Women will be getting dangerous back ally abortions as well soon.
It’s a problem with the categorization. They’re treated like oxy legally so they aren’t allowed to manufacture over a certain amount.
Cocaine bad for mental health. Even with ADHD cocaine is so cut and stepped on its not reliable enough to get anything done.
It falls into the “better than nothing” category for me. I’m aware it’s absolutely not a good idea.
I’m sorry your government failed you so badly. That’s a tough place to be in.
Thank you Mr poopybutthole
The “bad guys” are bridging the gap!
You nailed it. I fall into the insurance gap in my state. I make too much for free healthcare but not enough to qualify for discounts on healthcare. The Fed thinks I should be helped by my state, my state disagrees.
what state?
I’ll give you a hint with a fake headline…
“Man attempts to marry racoons but refuses to sign the racoons pre-nup”
What state is it?
Free market capitalism… fuck this place
Kind of off topic but when people say “capitalism is evil” it reminds me of the people who say “socialism never works”
The rebuttal is always “well REAL socialism hasn’t been tried. Soviet Russia was a bastardization of the system!”
I feel that way about capitalism. America isn’t a capitalist system. It’s a corrupt oligarchy and that’s the issue. If we had REAL capitalism I wouldn’t be having this problem. Not saying life would be perfect I’m just saying corruption is the reason I can’t afford a doctor, not capitalism.
Option C: capitalism is neither good nor evil, just an economic reactor core that must be properly harnessed to deliver on its promise (market efficiency) and avoid its peril (oligopoly).
The primary means of keeping the reactor core healthy (full-market efficient) is to keep it cool (evenly distributed) by pruning and recirculating capital via taxes. This amounts to redistribution, of course, which many have taken to calling “socialism.” But the reality is both are needed to maintain balance in the people’s economy.
The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can fix the damn reactor core.
Of course it is. Visiting a doctor is cheaper elsewhere. It’s the particular mix of regulation, subsidies and market that makes it so bad.
Why the combination? I have no idea about either.
It’s not a combination. I’d try to buy Adderall which is what a doctor would prescribe but there is an Adderall shortage because… Well because people sell their meds to drug dealers so the FDA clamped down.
So if Adderall isn’t available or too expensive I buy cocaine and use small amounts to combat my condition.
I was put on bupropion for depression and, while it didn’t work perfectly, it worked far better than the other antidepressants I had been on. Then I found out that it’s frequently used off label to treat ADHD and I started to have some suspicions. Long story short, now I’m diagnosed and on a stimulant and it’s amazing.
I’m in the middle of diagnosis. I do have Bipolar and have been medicated for 4 years or so. My shrink and I suspect that ADHD is there. It seems to be a common comorbidity. I was self-medicating with alcohol, until I got to a very bad place.
Both bipolar and ADHD have a frightening percentage of substance abuse, often as a form of self medication.
I went to the shrink around the time when I got sober. Quitting drinking and meds literally saved my life.
BTW, I got sober thanks to SMART Recovery. SMART is science based and behavior oriented, so even if you don’t have an addiction problem (substances and/or behaviors), You can learn a lot of stuff applicable to behavioral problems. Much of the program is based on Cognitive Behavioral therapies, no higher power required. Confidential. Free.
I’ve stopped taking lots of strong tea with sugar, because despite kinda helping with work, it makes me really depressed.
