I’m hoping someone could link me to a site about using caffeine pills that will have some credibility with a 14 year old. The stuff I’m finding would bore me to tears if I was a teenager.
There’s a problem with em? I only use them ocasionally, when I’ve stayed up all night, or don’t think I can stay awake at work. What makes em worse than coffee?
I’m not too sure what you’re looking for, but this seems pretty short and to the point about the effects of caffeine pill usage.
There’s also this high school newspaper article which might carry a little more weight with a 14 year old.
As you said, a lot of the stuff out there is pretty dry; hopefully those two will help some.
Goodness, that first site seems a bit alarmist. It says you need help if you feel like you need caffeine in the morning, or if you drink more than two cups of coffee a day!
In my experience, caffeine pills are pretty self-limiting. I’ll use them if I need to be up all night to write a paper- drinking coffee makes me too jittery and wierd. But too much caffeine in any form is really really unpleasent and it only takes a couple times of having too much caffeine to realize that it’s something that you never want to repeat.
Although the second link refers to Gatorade as an energy drink…:rolleyes:
Some experence with caffine and ADD:
I know someone who has (slight) adult ADD which came from childhood ADD but was never diagnosed in childhood. Neither was ADHD (H being hyperactivity).
This person (lets call him Joe) had been told by a Dr. that caffine could help ADD and people with ADD might ‘naturally’ find their way to caffine. The Dr said that Joe should not worry about a cup or 2 of coffee, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
Joe experimented with nodoz in his teenage years. He found if he took one during school he was much more alert. Problem was the addictive nature that Joe couldn’t break himself of it w/o falling asleep in class.
Eventually Joe figured out how to use caffeine responsibiliby, would 1/2 and 1/4 the pills and would have breaks in usage to ‘reset’ his system.
So as pointed out, it is somewhat self limiting, you can only go so far into this drug (at least for Joe) before you know that you must control it. It could be helpful for some ADD cases. (IANA Dr.)