My experience using Different types of stimulants to maintain and manage ADHD (from someone who has it)
Josh Campbell
Introduction
Having ADHD can be extremely challenging at times. From Losing things — to being frequently featherheaded on a daily basis; struggling to focus; being extremely hyperactive; then having energy crashes with severe brain fog. For those with ADHD, like myself — stimulants are indispensable. With a large number of individuals — including myself — experimenting with drugs, cigarettes, copious amounts of caffeine; black coffees, sugary food, and artificial energy drinks.
I am from the UK; where tea is, or at least was, in previous generations — the nation’s treasured, stereotypically, best-loved drink. until fairly recently; I was a high-octane caffeine nut. Dismissing tea as a drink for Pinky flickers, grandmothers’ and grandads’. Instead consuming black coffees, energy drinks, and cigarettes. Even after cutting out the latter, I still engaged in the former — drinking incessant quantities of black coffee.
before I speak about the benefits tea has brought to my health and fitness regime, and I believe, can bring to yours. We will be journeying on the tracks of caffeine in pertinence to ADHD. Speaking of journeying on the tracks — for a long time I was off the rails. Thinking I needed prescription medication to fuel the train on my day-to-day journey’s — however, I have since learned that this is not the case. And in this blog I will detail my struggles and triumphs experimenting with different stimulants to manage my ADHD.
Nicotine and ADHD
with regards to nicotine and ADHD, There has been a multitude of studies done showing that, people with ADHD are more likely to get addicted to nicotine. I concur with this — from my own anecdotal point of view — as ADHD most likely eventuated in me getting addicted to nicotine; even though I hated smoking from a young age, due to most of my family doing it.
Trust me being in rooms with a constant miasma of smoke was no fun ordeal. I hated how cranky it made my peers too. Even with the aforementioned contempt for the habit as a youth, up-until my late teen year; I still ended up becoming addicted to the substance — where all my initial contempt for the pastime time blew up in a haze of smoke — pun most definitely intended.
I myself, have my own posits as to why individuals with ADHD are more susceptible to nicotine addiction. When you have — at least from my perspective — ADHD, you tend to use up lots of neurological energy in order to complete seemingly simple tasks and day-to-day duties. In my opinion from having bouts of introspection; Individuals with ADHD — diagnosed and undiagnosed — have more exposure to dopamine than the non-neurodivergent mind. What this does is — in my opinion — results in ADHDers’; due to higher levels of stimulation, having a proclivity for stimulants. The purpose being — maintaining sufficient energy levels after disposing profuse amounts in our day-to-day activities. This is In comparison to the mean individual.
I also postulate impulse control being an ascription as to why ADHD and Nicotine addiction are so closely intertwined. To paraphrase an article written on verywellmind.com — individuals with ADHD have a higher tolerance to risk than most. Making Individuals with ADHD more prone to being at the mercy of substance abuse and addictions.
My personal experience using nicotine to aid ADHD
Back when I was studying financial services at college, I was a smoker. Smoking would give me moderate incremental surges of energy. Plus it gave me a way of oscillating my hands; an excuse to fidget. I went from never touching cigarettes for 18 years of my life — to becoming a chain smoker in a flash. For me smoking is not a good way to boost your energy. It’s needless to say it’s extremely pernicious to your health. in a paradoxical sense; lots of individuals — not just people with ADHD — use it to energise their internal battery, aka — the brain.
Yes smoking and nicotine gives you an energy boost. However, not surprisingly; smoking had negative impact on my attention span in the long-run. I became reliant on the substance. And in this self-perpetuating cycle of smoking to feel energised. This eventuated in the imperceptible augmentation of the number cigarettes I’d smoke To my own heedlessness. Done due to desperately attempting to break past the lethargic cell that the substance was confining me in, in the first place. My routine would consist of smoking whenever I needed to perform a task. And on top of that, I was occupying the anatomical real estate of my body; with stupendous amounts of caffeinated tenants in the form of the above mentioned.
It has been just under two years since I quit smoking, and consumption of nicotine in any capacity. I would advise anyone; not just people with ADHD, to avoid smoking full stop. Especially for the purpose of increasing your energy levels, or for any purpose for that matter. Focus on getting sufficient sleep, eating well, and becoming the best version of yourself. This should be done be neurologically homogenous individuals — Never mind individuals with a neurologically divergent structure like ADHD. It’s also extremely expensive, injurious to your health. Moreover, the crankiness and obsession for nicotine actually has adverse effects to your focus. Need I say more as to why you shouldn’t smoke?
Energy drinks and ADHD
Energy drinks are ever-popular in the modernist age we reside in. Most individuals consume one brand, or another, of the highly caffeinated beverage — No matter the structure of their neurology. In particular though; individuals with ADHD sway towards overusing such source of caffeine. The most popular energy drinks according to statista.com’s survey on the top energy drinks UK wide by brand recognition are synthetic, to my eye at least.
Now I am no chemist, but it’s conspicuous to see, Looking at most of the drinks in the graph; they are highly chemical and synthetic, as previously mentioned. Most in the graph have a very high sugar & caffeine content. Anyway, I digress — it is however, important to note the above; as it pertains to ADHD. As — in me opinion — it’s counter-productive; in terms of aiding your internal clarity and concentration, as far as fixity is concerned.
Bear with me as I am now going To get a little metaphorical. A caffeine source, for example — tea, is comparable to a subtle breeze; where as an energy drink is like a high-speed car chase — destined to chaotically crash as a result of recklessly driving the car. As appose to driving it with assiduity — the act of being careful — utilizing the engine of the car infrequently; Only when one is required to do so. This is how energy drinks should be consumed from my perspective. And trust me I have been the reckless driver many a times. Almost becoming a human Chernobyl with the amount of sugary energy drinks I was assimilating into my body.
My personal experience using Energy drinks to aid ADHD
Personally, I found that consuming energy drinks is a venture into the land of futility; where you can find little droplets of gold along the way. However, for every few hours of gold you extract on your voyage by consuming said drink; you have to climb through hours of mud — just to get back up to surface level. firstly, this is not conducive to a healthy lifestyle. Secondly, it sets in motion the degradation of your concentration over time — in my opinion. And Thirdly it makes you dependent on the drinks to function.
If you reading this, have ADHD yourself; you may pertain to being extreme — having a high risk tolerance; having high levels of impulsivity and having a high tolerance for caffeine like myself. Prompting the guzzling of exorbitant amounts of energy drinks’ like a deserted nomad with an absence of hydration — who’s stumbled upon a well in the dry heat of the Sahara. And this was Just so I could function in normative state.
At peak, I was drinking 3 cans of monster per day; with black coffees on top of that — superfluous amounts of caffeine to say the least. All this did was cause me to feel like a cheap battery. having life for an hour or two; needing constant recharges; Instead of being a top quality batter that last. The energy drinks being the recharges in the metaphor of the anatomical battery, being my ADHD brain. Once I finally quit cigarettes; I never abandoned the dependency for caffeine — eventuating in the transference of such dependency to black coffee. An adjunct kindly parlaying us onto the next point of discussion.
Coffee and ADHD
Now, coffee is the first stimulant in this blog that I’d say consistent consumption of — depending on the type of coffee you drink — most certainly, is not anywhere near as detrimental to your health as cigarettes, or — this is more dependent on the type of coffee you consume and how much of it — continuous consumption of highly-concentrated energy drinks. I must note that this is my own personal opinion and perspective on the matter. You may have diverse experiences to myself.
Caffeine and ADHD in general, is an interesting subject. Coffee and caffeine pertaining to ADHD, and how it affects individuals with and without ADHD; is quite the perplexing noetic subject. It has been said that ADHD and caffeine have an inverse relationship, in terms of how the brain chemistry is affected by the substance.
As mentioned earlier — to use getintheflow.io’s term — ADHDers’ brain chemistry is diverse from the mean individual; hence the term neurodivergent. I have made my own postulations regarding this issue — which is that, ADHDers’ have access to higher levels of dopamine than what is normative.
A reason for this could be that individuals with ADHD have lot’s of different thoughts, ideas, impulses at once. according to Andrew Huberman in an interview with Chris Williamson; speaking on the subject of dopamine — stated that you get dopamine hits with the pursuit of things. This got me thinking; prompting me to analyse my own pathology. After doing so, I pondered around the fact that I am constantly in the pursuit of new endeavours — having an innumerable amount of such endeavours crop up into my brain like water to an ocean.
to me it makes sense that the dopamine individuals with ADHD have access to is actually higher than individuals without ADHD; due to this constant pursuit of new ideas. This could play a huge role in our augmented creative cognition, and all-round outside the box thinking.
My experience using coffee as a stimulant to manage ADHD
Coffee was a love of mine heretofore (before now). It’s important to note that I was drinking black coffee. I have never had a predisposition for sugary coffee, or cold brews; a contemporary trend. I personally, preferred fruitier drinks, which is why I went down the energy drink road. As mentioned in a prior section, I am an extremist, probably partly by virtue of ADHD. So when I was drinking black coffee, I was consuming elephantine quantities of the beverage. It got to the point where, I was just emptying the jar into my coffee cup — probably consuming cups of at least 6 tablespoons worth of coffee — just plain fatuous amounts. as you can envisage reading that last passage; being silly is one of my fortes.
I did however, cut down on my intake drastically, and even still, the acidity black coffee is comprised of, just wasn’t agreeing with my stomach; causing me issues when while training. I didn’t like the side affects of coffee — the profuse sweating, constant cravings, and the crash. I like being an efficient vehicle; not one that goes 130mph just to crash into a wall at a ferocious speed. But coffee did have a lot of efficacious effects — ridding of brain fog, aiding my focus, enabling me to be creative; In-turn, increasing my overall productivity.
So from experiences; there was positive and negative affects to consuming coffee. It is much more conducive to a clear functioning mind — especially if your drinking black coffee in moderate amounts — than drinking energy drinks, smoking cigarettes, and even taking prescribed stimulants in my opinion. Even though I view coffee making your cognition flow like a river — it was presenting me with a tide of stomach issues, due to the acidity.
Moreover, as well as acidity being an issue; the withdrawals are also not fun a time for the mind. I found black coffee gave me the ability to deliver a power-packed punch, but it would subject me to being served a huge counter punch a few hours later — and no, not by a barista — hitting me bang on the proverbial chin. This cultivated me into channelling my inner Britishness, switching to tea — the point of discussion in the next section.
Tea and ADHD
Ostensibly, caffeinated tea contributes to things like weight-loss, weight-maintenance; heart health, and a lowered risk of heart disease in regular consumption of the beverage. Tea also contains antioxidative properties, aiding your skin in the fighting of rashes, and skin infections.
Now in terms of ADHD and tea, there has been research conducted; suggesting that L-theanine and caffeine — two chemicals featured on the composition of the tea leaf — improve the overall cognitive abilities of individuals who have ADHD.
To return to the use of metaphorical linguistics. Tea is subtle breeze — aiding you to keep cool in the melting chasm of your ADHD mind. Black Coffee, on the other hand; blows a ferocious gust in your brains direction — becoming destructive if it’s not honed. Yes, Tea isn’t as strong as coffee. But Strength isn’t always the answer. Sometimes Being dexterous, swift, quick and light on your feet — or for the sake of the topic of ADHD and cognition — light on your mind; can be much more productive than being heavy and hard hitting. It just depends on the task at hand.
My experience using tea as a stimulant to handle ADHD
It must be noted that black tea contains caffeine. Some herbal teas do not. I currently drink black tea, as I find it isn’t too heavy on my stomach, or my mind. I don’t get bad withdrawals like I did with coffee. Plus it gives me that boost that I require to perform my day-to-day tasks. As with most things I do, permanence is fleeting. Things may change in the future, but as of now, I find tea gives me the boost I need; aiding me in the management of my ADHD.
Summary
In summation, There’s lots of information included here. And it’s mostly from my own perspective — you may well operate much better on the other sources of caffeine mentioned; than the simple quintessentially British tea, me old chap — pardon the awful attempt at humour there. However, you shouldn’t brush past the fact that, the better your diet is and the better quality of the caffeine sources you consume — the more productive you will be.
I’ve tried a variation of stimulants to aid my focus. What I found was; nothing beats a simple cup of tea, a brisk walk outside, limiting the use of technology, and using caffeine at the right times — the morning for me. But hey, you may be fine consuming caffeine at night time; you may even be more productive at night time — do whatever works for you!
You may operate fine on energy drinks, cigarettes, and so on. But is fine enough? You can be a lot more than fine. Or you can be in the fine-dining sense, fine with a shine! The best way is to be self-scientific, experiment; Find what works for you. Try and stay as healthy as possible, and understand that having ADHD is actually an advantage in a roundabout way! A topic of which a will be covering in my future writings.
