I tried caffeine before bed the other night because I read in my ADHD book that that stimulants could have the opposite effect in some people with ADHD, and help the specific problem of racing thoughts before bed(understimulation) which I get pretty often. Slept the best I had in a long time for 4 hours, then got woke up by pets and lost 4 hours because I couldn’t sleep again funnily enough; I did tea for my first test but it definitely ran short, may try a caffeinated something else next time
ibuprofen.Edit: Caffeinated ibuprofen doesn’t exist to my knowledge and probably for the best not to test it, I got mixed up making comments too early for my brain to wake up.
Yeah caffeine is a siren song for a select few. It’s not necessarily an ‘everyone and every form of ADHD thing’, but it seems to present together often enough.
In my case it’s tricksy because the line between “this much coffee will help sleep” and “this much coffee will make you feel like it re-activated the magic conversion machine the actual ADHD meds just shut down” is about 1 oz one way or another from a 5oz cup (a real small amount in sane units, I didn’t convert).
The sleep thing highlights how little we know about the brain. We have no treatment whatsoever which can safely induce sleep. This cliché advice, which is meant exclusively for acute insomnia of those who typically don’t experience it, is the cutting edge of sleep medicine. Humanity and the most advanced scientific research currently available is totally ignorant of everything not covered by these tips.
When I finally accepted that I have absolutely no control whatsoever of my sleep latency and there is currently nothing in all of medicine that can be done about it, my nights became a lot less stressful and a lot more enjoyable.
If I don’t put on a decent to good movie I’ve already seen several times AND brown noise (not to be confused with the theorized Brown Note), odds are I don’t fall asleep for several hours if at all.
Sleep advice and other such “lifehacks” are seldom very ADHD-friendly and can be borderline ableist at times.
Yes, I usually watch tv or a movie in bed and it also has to be something I’ve seen before so I’m not kept awake wanting to see what happens next. Also it has to be not too funny, not too sad, or make me just too happy to see, etc. Interesting enough for me to want to watch it at all, boring enough for me to fall asleep quickly. It can be tricky sometimes.
