: Why does coffee make people with adhd sleepy?
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It doesn’t so much make them sleepy, the theory is is levels them out. Basically adhd is a dopamine issue, either from dopamine insensitivity, or from lack of supply of dopamine. When you dont have enough dopamine or you dont have a strong enough response to dopamine your mind will constantly switch tasks to try to find something to provide a large enough amount of dopamine to be sated for a bit, this is the mechanism behind adhd. What coffee does (more specifically caffeine) is it increases dopamine a bit, so now an adhd brain doesn’t need to switch tasks as often.
In reality people with adhd are already in a sort of stimulus low, and caffeine just raises them back to the baseline.
Now then, personal anecdote I have adhd, if i have just pulled an all-nighter or otherwise got little sleep taking a stimulant like caffeine or the normal medication I take for adhd can cause me to be more tired, however a stimulant can make it harder to sleep I suspect the constant switching of tasks can make it easier to ignore lack of sleep, and when you dont have that anymore it gets harder to ignore.
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