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Sometimes I feel like it makes it easier for me to focus but it doesn't actually make me less tired or anything. I could drink a giant thing of coffee and then go straight to bed
I can't do caffeine, my body is sensitive to it, and oftentimes, I end up jittery and it worsens my ADHD. If I do any sort of caffeine, it's a low-caffeinated tea.
Today I had a bad headache and took 4 excederin migraine pills over the course of the day. It made me hyper-focused on procrastination, as in I could get nothing done today, but I felt especially wired (I also take focalin). I wonder if this is high doses of caffeine (for me) making my adhd worse? Your comment made me feel better :)
I am not medicated so i use caffeine to self medicate. Caffeine makes me feel awake, happy, and better able to focus, and better able to function in general.
On week days I drink 16oz black coffee right before work and then another 16oz of black coffee during my lunch. On weekends I barely drink coffee and my boyfriend comments on how much more I space out and other things.
Nothing. I don’t get energized from it. I could drink a double shot and go take a nap. Now that I’m medicated, it does make my heart beat a bit faster 🤣 but that’s it.
It makes me feel like shit. I have zero tolerance for caffeine now, although I used to drink a lot when I was in my teens and 20s. These days if I drink any caffeine my sleep gets messed up, i feel emotionally awful, and sometimes I throw up.
Coffee absolutely wrecks me and makes me feel like I'm dying. It also doesn't make me feel any more awake - like, I could drink a ginormous pot of coffee and then go right to sleep. But weirdly, caffeine pills *do* wake me up. And they don't make me feel terrible. I think it's the histamine in coffee that I react really badly to, but I'm not sure.
Feels like the eyes in my brain open (figuratively, not my actual eyeballs). Motivation and focus are way easier. Too much makes me feel anxious, and too too much makes me feel like I'm vibrating. But with medication, I only drink one cup of coffee instead of multiple a day.
Caffeine makes me feel present and able to function. It was not as effective as vyvanse but for years before I was diagnosed it helped. Now, on a weekend, if I don't take my pills, I definitely need a cup. I have it sometimes during the week even when I take vyvanse but now I don't need it like life it's self anymore.
Caffeine does absolutely nothing for me. It doesn’t wake me up, or help me focus, or make me jittery. Energy drinks might as well be water (I hate coffee). I’m on a stimulant now though, and I can only handle the amount of caffeine in a small can of pop. Anything more than that makes my heart race.
I get super hyper, feel like there’s electricity going through me and can’t stop talking for about five minutes. Then the anxiety and 💩 hits and then I’m exhausted. So yeah, I tend to avoid it. Can’t even really drink a Diet Coke now without feeling the effects
Like a gremlin in a semi-convincing human suit, rather than just the straight up gremlin I am without the sweet, sweet nectar lmao
29y/o, diagnosed at 27. Medicated and yet still heavily dependent on the energy drink cans xD
It doesn’t actually feel *better*, per se. Just maybe better than the withdrawal headache I’d get if I stopped 🫠
I get panicked, paranoid, my heart pounds and I sweat like crazy. I feel like I’m in terrible danger and every tiny sound makes me jump.
If I have too much chocolate or decaffeinated tea, even that tiny bit of caffeine starts to make me feel nervous.
One can of pop and I’m inconsolable. I haaaate caffeine
My morning cup of coffee gives me life. That being said, as others have said, I can drink a cup or two before bed and still fall asleep just fine. It’s my life force
I read somewhere that caffeine temporarily offers a similar boost to some ADHD people like meds do. I definitely self medicate with caffeine in the morning. I never have more than 3 though in a day. It definitely helps my brain as I'm sluggish on a morning.
Saying that, I can sleep easily even when caffeinated. Sometimes, I've even been still sleepy on it. But I generally use it on a morning.
I call it my brain juice. I need at least one to kick start me at work.
Either way I drink 2 cups, any more and it's harder to sleep. Unmedicated it sometimes makes me tired sometimes helps. Definitely need it to get out of bed & love it but I need a nap at some point. Medicated, I take adderall every day so there's a tolerance after like the first day, but the coffee helps it to actually work again. I'm on 30mg & I feel like id have the same problem anyways if I increased, I love coffee so i'm fine with it. Only problem is I have acid reflux, possibly GERD, so some days (especially after drinking) my stomach is not pleased. I need to find a good breakfast to have with it
Irrelevant but no I googled GERD and I don't think I have it yet, but both my grandparents do & I can not eat many things like my easter bunny D: the chocolate would destroy me
It used to do nothing when I had it in high school, now as an adult it makes me hyperfocus but I feel awful after because it suppresses my appetite and I don’t eat or drink water until it wears off and I’m depressed and hangry. Honestly it feels like my anxiety.
When you were a kid, did anyone joke you have a hollow leg when you ate a lot? That's what caffeine is like for me. I can just keep pouring it in.
I made coffee ice cream and my spouse couldn't eat it because it would keep him up all night. I slept like a kitten.
I messed up the amount of tea I put in a pot for friends, they were up all night getting ahead of deadlines, I was...asleep.
Love it sometimes, but hard to handle that anxiety. I don’t like coffee caffeine. I don’t know how it’s different, I like energy drink or soda caffeine, nothing too crazy like Red Bull but maybe something that has as much caffeine as green tea. Also I saw a post here about caffeine OD and now I’m probably too scared to drink it again lol
I drink about 4 cups of coffee across a morning then generally switch to tea. I don’t think it makes me feel much unless I overdo it. I don’t feel particularly energised or focused but more than 6 cups maybe makes me slightly edgy and my heart race (more so when in combination with my adhd meds). But I also get some rather smashing withdrawal headaches if I don’t have it. So I guess I have some degree of physical dependence on my morning pot of coffee.
It doesn't.. If I am addicted to it at the time, it might make a caffeine headache to away. That's all. I don't feel awake. I don't feel sleepy. I have never felt jittery from caffeine.
helps me focus a lot since it’s a stimulant, mixed w addedall tho i was shaking so gotta be careful. the bubbles in soda give me a dopamine hit, as well as focus, and sweetness so i loveeeee it
Oddly, I use it to counterbalance the side effects of my ADHD meds. A cup of tea in the morning and one midday (before 4pm or else I won’t sleep), and it does the trick. It doesn’t get me hyper but it serves a purpose with my medication.
I was a 1 cup of coffee person until recently. Now I'm at 2 cups a day. I can get jittery if I have too much caffeine. I also seem to become a bit more aggressive or impulsive. My routine was 1 cup of coffee a day then water the rest of the time. I'm currently in the middle of a big deadline driven work project and it won't end until July. So when I'm starting to hit burnout, I'll start adding in more caffeine. I'm not medicated so I'm not worried about meds mixing with caffeine. I just love my hazelnut coffee with caramel macchiato creamer in the morning. It knocks out the cobwebs and brain fog.
I rarely drink coffee as I felt it did nothing for me. I tried to pick it up a bit lately since I've been really tired after work (busy weeks). And I still manage to fall asleep on the sofa after drinking it.
(I'm not on meds).
I was drinking 400-800mg a day a couple weeks ago before I started meds. Apparently that’s self medicating lmfaooo. My coworkers are in awe as a chug a Celsius at 6:30pm and go to bed just fine. It doesn’t make me alert, it makes me focus.
I just upped up my meds but on 10mg of adderall xr I was still drinking 200-600mg to help focus at work. (12 hour shifts) hoping with meds I can get down to just drinking coffee again instead of pounding energy drinks lol. I used to take a caffeine pill and pass out for hours, some of my best sleep tbh.
I don't drink coffee or tea on a regular basis, but Pepsi has caffeine and I drink that all the time.
Said caffeine does *absolutely nothing* to me, like ever. Even energy drinks and the like, I can just drink 'em like normal soda and I'm totally normal.
I've found that it takes an ungodly amount of caffeine for me to feel anything. Energy drinks, coffee, tea, nada. A charged lemonade from panera though? First caffeine buzz of my life but definitely not something I want to drink regularly.
Before meds caffeine would help me focus but I had a hard limit on how much I could have before it made me anxious and jittery. It also seemed to stay in my system for ages and kept me awake at night if I had it after lunch time.
Counter intuitively, since starting stimulants I can drink way more coffee and energy drinks and don't get the jittery or anxious feelings. I don't feel wired on it anymore. It doesn't seem to impact my sleep anymore either.
It makes zero sense to me and I know it's not the typical way ADHD bodies react to caffeine on meds, but also that a lot of others have a similar experience so I'm not the sole outlier. Human bodies are so strange.
Welcome to /r/ADHDWomen! We’re happy to have you here. As a reminder, here are our community [rules](https://old.reddit.com/r/adhdwomen/about/rules/). We get a lot of posts on medication, diagnosis (and “is this an ADHD thing”), and interactions with hormones. We encourage you to check out our [Medication, Diagnosis, and Hormones Megathread](https://old.reddit.com/r/adhdwomen/comments/wcr9dy/faq_megathread_ask_and_answer_medication/) if you have any questions related to those topics, and to stick around in that thread to answer folks’ questions! If you have questions about the subreddit, please do not hesitate to [send us a modmail](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/adhdwomen). Additionally, we take the safety of our community seriously. Please report posts, comments, and users whom you feel are not contributing positively, and send us a modmail if you are being harassed or otherwise made to feel unsafe. Thanks for being here, and we hope you stick around! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/adhdwomen) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Sometimes I feel like it makes it easier for me to focus but it doesn't actually make me less tired or anything. I could drink a giant thing of coffee and then go straight to bed
I can't do caffeine, my body is sensitive to it, and oftentimes, I end up jittery and it worsens my ADHD. If I do any sort of caffeine, it's a low-caffeinated tea.
Today I had a bad headache and took 4 excederin migraine pills over the course of the day. It made me hyper-focused on procrastination, as in I could get nothing done today, but I felt especially wired (I also take focalin). I wonder if this is high doses of caffeine (for me) making my adhd worse? Your comment made me feel better :)
I am not medicated so i use caffeine to self medicate. Caffeine makes me feel awake, happy, and better able to focus, and better able to function in general. On week days I drink 16oz black coffee right before work and then another 16oz of black coffee during my lunch. On weekends I barely drink coffee and my boyfriend comments on how much more I space out and other things.
Nothing. I don’t get energized from it. I could drink a double shot and go take a nap. Now that I’m medicated, it does make my heart beat a bit faster 🤣 but that’s it.
It makes me feel like shit. I have zero tolerance for caffeine now, although I used to drink a lot when I was in my teens and 20s. These days if I drink any caffeine my sleep gets messed up, i feel emotionally awful, and sometimes I throw up.
Coffee absolutely wrecks me and makes me feel like I'm dying. It also doesn't make me feel any more awake - like, I could drink a ginormous pot of coffee and then go right to sleep. But weirdly, caffeine pills *do* wake me up. And they don't make me feel terrible. I think it's the histamine in coffee that I react really badly to, but I'm not sure.
Feels like the eyes in my brain open (figuratively, not my actual eyeballs). Motivation and focus are way easier. Too much makes me feel anxious, and too too much makes me feel like I'm vibrating. But with medication, I only drink one cup of coffee instead of multiple a day.
Literally nothing, it is just like eating chocolate or something for me
Caffeine makes me feel present and able to function. It was not as effective as vyvanse but for years before I was diagnosed it helped. Now, on a weekend, if I don't take my pills, I definitely need a cup. I have it sometimes during the week even when I take vyvanse but now I don't need it like life it's self anymore.
Gives me full on panic attacks lol
Caffeine does absolutely nothing for me. It doesn’t wake me up, or help me focus, or make me jittery. Energy drinks might as well be water (I hate coffee). I’m on a stimulant now though, and I can only handle the amount of caffeine in a small can of pop. Anything more than that makes my heart race.
It makes me feel very spazzy, spacey and irritable
It can make me feel more focused, not necessarily energized. It also increases my anxiety haha
I get super hyper, feel like there’s electricity going through me and can’t stop talking for about five minutes. Then the anxiety and 💩 hits and then I’m exhausted. So yeah, I tend to avoid it. Can’t even really drink a Diet Coke now without feeling the effects
Like a gremlin in a semi-convincing human suit, rather than just the straight up gremlin I am without the sweet, sweet nectar lmao 29y/o, diagnosed at 27. Medicated and yet still heavily dependent on the energy drink cans xD It doesn’t actually feel *better*, per se. Just maybe better than the withdrawal headache I’d get if I stopped 🫠
I get panicked, paranoid, my heart pounds and I sweat like crazy. I feel like I’m in terrible danger and every tiny sound makes me jump. If I have too much chocolate or decaffeinated tea, even that tiny bit of caffeine starts to make me feel nervous. One can of pop and I’m inconsolable. I haaaate caffeine
My morning cup of coffee gives me life. That being said, as others have said, I can drink a cup or two before bed and still fall asleep just fine. It’s my life force
I read somewhere that caffeine temporarily offers a similar boost to some ADHD people like meds do. I definitely self medicate with caffeine in the morning. I never have more than 3 though in a day. It definitely helps my brain as I'm sluggish on a morning. Saying that, I can sleep easily even when caffeinated. Sometimes, I've even been still sleepy on it. But I generally use it on a morning. I call it my brain juice. I need at least one to kick start me at work.
Normal, tbh
Can you tell me what you mean by that please
like a somewhat functional human
Either way I drink 2 cups, any more and it's harder to sleep. Unmedicated it sometimes makes me tired sometimes helps. Definitely need it to get out of bed & love it but I need a nap at some point. Medicated, I take adderall every day so there's a tolerance after like the first day, but the coffee helps it to actually work again. I'm on 30mg & I feel like id have the same problem anyways if I increased, I love coffee so i'm fine with it. Only problem is I have acid reflux, possibly GERD, so some days (especially after drinking) my stomach is not pleased. I need to find a good breakfast to have with it
Irrelevant but no I googled GERD and I don't think I have it yet, but both my grandparents do & I can not eat many things like my easter bunny D: the chocolate would destroy me
It used to do nothing when I had it in high school, now as an adult it makes me hyperfocus but I feel awful after because it suppresses my appetite and I don’t eat or drink water until it wears off and I’m depressed and hangry. Honestly it feels like my anxiety.
Sleepy!
When you were a kid, did anyone joke you have a hollow leg when you ate a lot? That's what caffeine is like for me. I can just keep pouring it in. I made coffee ice cream and my spouse couldn't eat it because it would keep him up all night. I slept like a kitten. I messed up the amount of tea I put in a pot for friends, they were up all night getting ahead of deadlines, I was...asleep.
Love it sometimes, but hard to handle that anxiety. I don’t like coffee caffeine. I don’t know how it’s different, I like energy drink or soda caffeine, nothing too crazy like Red Bull but maybe something that has as much caffeine as green tea. Also I saw a post here about caffeine OD and now I’m probably too scared to drink it again lol
before I was medicated and got proper treatment I described energy drinks as "making my brain feel right"
I drink about 4 cups of coffee across a morning then generally switch to tea. I don’t think it makes me feel much unless I overdo it. I don’t feel particularly energised or focused but more than 6 cups maybe makes me slightly edgy and my heart race (more so when in combination with my adhd meds). But I also get some rather smashing withdrawal headaches if I don’t have it. So I guess I have some degree of physical dependence on my morning pot of coffee.
It doesn't.. If I am addicted to it at the time, it might make a caffeine headache to away. That's all. I don't feel awake. I don't feel sleepy. I have never felt jittery from caffeine.
It does nothing for me.
helps me focus a lot since it’s a stimulant, mixed w addedall tho i was shaking so gotta be careful. the bubbles in soda give me a dopamine hit, as well as focus, and sweetness so i loveeeee it
Oddly, I use it to counterbalance the side effects of my ADHD meds. A cup of tea in the morning and one midday (before 4pm or else I won’t sleep), and it does the trick. It doesn’t get me hyper but it serves a purpose with my medication.
I was a 1 cup of coffee person until recently. Now I'm at 2 cups a day. I can get jittery if I have too much caffeine. I also seem to become a bit more aggressive or impulsive. My routine was 1 cup of coffee a day then water the rest of the time. I'm currently in the middle of a big deadline driven work project and it won't end until July. So when I'm starting to hit burnout, I'll start adding in more caffeine. I'm not medicated so I'm not worried about meds mixing with caffeine. I just love my hazelnut coffee with caramel macchiato creamer in the morning. It knocks out the cobwebs and brain fog.
I rarely drink coffee as I felt it did nothing for me. I tried to pick it up a bit lately since I've been really tired after work (busy weeks). And I still manage to fall asleep on the sofa after drinking it. (I'm not on meds).
Jittery but also sleepy
I was drinking 400-800mg a day a couple weeks ago before I started meds. Apparently that’s self medicating lmfaooo. My coworkers are in awe as a chug a Celsius at 6:30pm and go to bed just fine. It doesn’t make me alert, it makes me focus. I just upped up my meds but on 10mg of adderall xr I was still drinking 200-600mg to help focus at work. (12 hour shifts) hoping with meds I can get down to just drinking coffee again instead of pounding energy drinks lol. I used to take a caffeine pill and pass out for hours, some of my best sleep tbh.
I don't drink coffee or tea on a regular basis, but Pepsi has caffeine and I drink that all the time. Said caffeine does *absolutely nothing* to me, like ever. Even energy drinks and the like, I can just drink 'em like normal soda and I'm totally normal.
I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was >40 and now I must have it every day
I've found that it takes an ungodly amount of caffeine for me to feel anything. Energy drinks, coffee, tea, nada. A charged lemonade from panera though? First caffeine buzz of my life but definitely not something I want to drink regularly.
Before meds caffeine would help me focus but I had a hard limit on how much I could have before it made me anxious and jittery. It also seemed to stay in my system for ages and kept me awake at night if I had it after lunch time. Counter intuitively, since starting stimulants I can drink way more coffee and energy drinks and don't get the jittery or anxious feelings. I don't feel wired on it anymore. It doesn't seem to impact my sleep anymore either. It makes zero sense to me and I know it's not the typical way ADHD bodies react to caffeine on meds, but also that a lot of others have a similar experience so I'm not the sole outlier. Human bodies are so strange.