I haven’t been drinking regular coffee in several years, but I saw no choice today-- I had to work 16 hours at the polls. So I drank about 4 cups of coffee. It was astonishing. I achieved Zenlike peace; everything was understandable, I could easily see what was important and was not, there was nothing to be anxious about, and nothing could irritate me. Poll workers around me all but had nervous breakdowns, but my powers of concentation and calm seemed phenomenal.
I don’t understand the mechanism, but it’s well known that since coffee is a stimulant, it can help some people focus–for example, a lot of people with ADHD self-medicate with coffee. You can try googling “ADHD coffee” for pointers to further information.
My guess is that the caffine worked in a similar way in which amphetamines work on someone with ADD.
There’s a million things to understand about people with ADD, but one of the main things is that we have about 19 things going on at once in our head, racing from one thought to the other. Amphetamines, help us to process everything faster thereby calming us down. I think the caffine did the same thing for you. By speeding up your brain, you could get through you’re work faster and more effiently. Doing so helps to calm you down. It’s kinda counter-intuitive, but makes sense when you actually are going thought it…or if you read about it by someone who can put things into words better then I can.
BTW if I got any of that wrong/backwards, you’ll have to excuse me. I DO have ADD, but it’s been a long time since I’ve read all the ins and outs of it.
It’s true; stimulants will do this. Most people probably don’t notice coffee doing this because they’ve developed a tolerance for it.
I’m a narcoleptic, and when I take my dexedrine pills I feel a very similar effect to what you felt from coffee. It definitely helps when multitasking is necessary.
Not to hijack this thread, but I always wondered about caffeine and ADD/ADHD.
Coffee’s been around a damn long time and I think we pretty much understand its effects. So why do we prescribe newer drugs for ADD when caffeine pretty much does the trick? Are the other drugs so much better and less of strain on the cardiovascular system than caffeine?
The cynic in me says “because the Pharmacuetical Companies™ don’t make any money selling coffee”, but I’d be willing to bet the dedicated drugs are designed to do it more effectively/more reliably. Also, some folks just don’t like coffee or tea, or like it so much that they’ve developed a tolerance for it, so the effect is minimal without drinking massive quantities of the stuff.
One day, I hope to drink 300 cups of coffee in one day though, so I can have about 2 seconds of superhuman speed.
With any condition that requires stimulants, it’s easier to control the condition if you can control the exact amount of stimulant received and how it affects the patient.
In ADHD patients and narcolepsy patients, for example, a cup of coffee isn’t likely to do much in terms of helping them. They’ll need a higher dosage of stimulant than a cup or two of coffee can give.
Also, some stimulants work for some people, others don’t. I tried ritalin and other methamphetamines that just made me feel jumpy and irritable. It took some time before I settled with dexedrine span. And even then, I had to fiddle with the dosage before I knew what would work.
Tea and coffee have virtually no effect on my condition. The only thing that wakes me up and makes me feel alert is prescribed methamphetamine, and even then I have to be careful how much I take, because my tolerance and dependency on it grows very quickly.
Furthermore, when you’re dealing with something like stimulants, you want to do so in as controlled a way as possible, as it affects your heart rate, blood pressure, etc. Specific dosages of controlled drugs under the care of a physician are the easiest way to keep an eye on that sort of thing.
Most of all, though, one pill makes me pee a lot less than 5 cups of coffee!
Don’t know if that answers your question, but I hope it helps!
A contractor once came to our place to fix some wiring/carpet/tiles/whatever (it was years ago). He said that he had ADD, and that he was prescribed speed to treat it. He noted my shocked look and then said something like, “But I’m feeling much better now.”
A good analogy I use (that is not representative biologically, but describes a similar principle) is when you have a pudgy kid and an elderly person walkinh to the zoo. The kid is excited and can walk much faster than the grandma and that causes him to behave accordingly, going ahead, then waiting for grandma to catch up, with a lot of inefficiency and chaos. If you give both of them a boost in speed, the kid can now run faster, but he wasn’t running to begin with so his speed won’t change but the elderly person is now capable of keeping up with the kid - so there’s balance.
Stimulants do not make you faster in any regard. Stimulants allow you to go faster in some regards, by releasing more neurotransmitters the essential “bandwidth” of certain aspects of your nervous system is increased. How you use it is largely up to you.
