being completely drug free is a gift that just keeps on giving.

i am starting to be able to organise my work, achieve things, schedule my time better... 100% if you have AD/HD, you need to stay tf away from caffeine, alcohol and nicotine.

all three of them make attention deficit worse. caffeine radically increases anxiety and impulsivity. nicotine shortens your flow period down to about half an hour at best.

i think overall, caffeine is the one that diminishes attention span the most, and the most subtly.

every time i watch people #coffeestr posting i feel sad for them that they think this stuff makes them function better.

maybe, in an emergency, when i have to be awake at normal sleep hours, once in a year, to, for example, help keep someone alive until they can get to acute care at the hospital, but otherwise, the shit just makes you anxious, ruins your concentration and sleep, and long term, lowers your blood pH, which has a net result of reducing oxygen carrying capacity, increasing the chances of embolisms, spider veins, and all the fun stuff like strokes and heart attacks.

fundamental to the swinging sixties, rock and roll, speed and coke memes is the idea that humans, after 300,000 years as a species, and millions of years of animal evolution, has suddenly made a mistake and we need to be hooked up to constant supply of caffeine to do things that we used to be able to do at least 2x as much, 2x as long, and 2x as hard.

you just have to go out and see some of the crazy stuff that people built 400 years ago and ask yourself "did they need coffee for this?" the answer is "there was no coffee you numbskull".

you also have to ask yourself, if the american indians only smoked tobacco when there was a spat going on between two families, or two tribes, or two braves, whether smoking tobacco is going to help your ability to assert yourself.

and alcohol - the only reason they invented beer was as a way to get hydrated while the water supply was terrible. said beer was only like 1-1.5% and you basically can't get drunk on it before you can't put any more in your gut. similarly, wine brewed up to about 3%, owing to how rich in sugars it is, you aren't gonna put away enough of that to get drunk either.

it used to be a sign of poor character, in all of the cultures where these drugs were first consumed, to use them on a daily basis to the point of noticable physical effects.

if you want to have any success in your life, you can gain a good 20-30% more out of yourself just by ditching these drugs.

don't be stupid like me and wait until they are nearly killing you to realise you have to stop.