The effects of caffeine on the autistic mind

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I have noticed that over the past few weeks, if I drink caffeinated beverages, the ability to interact socially becomes much easier. Now, I have not found any information on this yet outside of my own experience, so forming a hypothesis isn't very easy. Here are a few of my thoughts on this:

It could simply be a coincidence. I am working with insufficient data right now, so it's hard to tell.

Faking neurotypical traits requires a lot of energy. Since caffeine is a stimulant, it increases attention and memory, making the difficult task quite a bit less daunting.

Since caffeine changes brain chemistry, it does make sense that this could have some sort of effect. I know I have read somewhere on the internet (maybe here somewhere) that the autistic mind contains less dopamine (although, keep in mind, I have no citation for this). I'm thinking that maybe caffeine can act in the same way as dopamine, allowing for a temporary reduction in autistic traits.

I could just be crazy, but I could also be on to something here.

And note that I am not suggesting that we all start drinking twice as much coffee. That doesn't help in the long run, as the brain becomes immune (and addicted) to caffeine over time.

Ritalin turns me into a talk show host.

It got nothing to do worth faking NT traits because it's just automatic. Sometimes I struggle to stop myself from being so chatty. I'm still talking at people than to, but there are rare moments where I actually do show a genuine interest in people.

I will agree with it being a dopamine thing. Before I was medicated it was hard to make my own bed and I used to say I didn't have the energy to be nice to people. I would always be procrastinating about doing things and be dragging myself around to get anything done.
That's the inattentive side of ADHD. MY hyperactive side back then was to have bursts of energy and restlessness.

ADHD medicines are basically stimulants.

I thought Ritalin was a depressant. Isn't it used to counteract the effects of the hyperactivity?

I will try this out for myself. This gives me an excuse to drink more coffee...I mean...this gives me a motivation to interact with more people.

I work better in every way with coffee.

I've got a high drug tolerance. I have to drink more alcohol than the average person to get drunk, and I have to take five tylenol, aspirin, or ibuprofin for them to have any affect on a headache. Same with caffeine. I've heard of people getting caffeine "jitters" after drinking too much coffee or soda, and I even remember hearing something on the news about a woman being hospitalized after drinking too many espressos. Me? I once drank four 2-liter bottles of diet soda in a day, in addition to the coffee I had been drinking, and didn't feel affected at all. No jitters, no shakes, no hyperactivity, no crash. My current habit is two pots of coffee per day along with one 2-liter bottle of diet soda, but some days it's three pots and two bottles. I've gone without caffeine for several days at a time and never felt any withdrawal symptoms.

Caffeine allows you to concentrate better and generally lifts your mood. Increased happy mood = increased confidence. For me it allows me to focus on otherwise boring tasks aka essays, into something fun. Do stupid things faster

Caffeine is hit-or-miss for me.

Sometimes, it will simply provide that as-advertised mood lift, concentration enhancement, and energy boost.
Other times, it sends me into spirals of agitated paranoid anxiety.
I've yet to discover the pattern that specifically creates one condition or the other.
But I have found some potentially useful correlations regarding the source of the caffeine:

1. coffee is not a morning drink for me. it works most positively for me in the late afternoons and evenings. it generally makes me more talkative and efficient with the things I do, but can very easily become too much for me.
2. black tea is my preferred morning drink. it helps wake me up without the intensity of coffee.
3. Yerba maté is my favorite caffeinated drink. It is good anytime, and stimulates with basically no side-affects or drawbacks. This is apparently due to a different molecular structure in the caffeine and related compounds found in the plant. It acts predominantly upon muscle tissue and secondarily on the central nervous system. In practice, I've found that this means an increase in physical energy and an acceptable, lower boost of mental "brain" energy.

Caffeine seems to be something of a mixed blessing when it comes to AS traits.

How Ritalin and other ADHD meds (other than Strattera, which started out as an antidepressant) are presumed to work:

People with ADHD have underactive frontal lobes (at least on brain scans). This is the part of the brain that acts as kind of a traffic-control center, determining what you pay attention to and how well you can concentrate, stick to one task, and filter out irrelevant information. It also assists in organization, planning, and self-inhibition.

So, when someone with ADHD takes a stimulant that targets the brain, that traffic-control center gets sped up, so that it's more effective at letting the person control what they pay attention to. So, rather than compensating with hyperactivity, the person can control better what they pay attention to, control how they do things, and think about impulses (like "get out of your seat and check out that cool-looking cloud out the window") before obeying them.

Caffeine works in a very similar way, but it has a more systemic effect: Rather than just targeting the brain, it will target your whole body. That's why your heartbeat speeds up a little and you get the jitters if you've had too much caffeine. For me, extended-release stimulant medication feels a lot like coffee, but without the jitters.

I've also had the "zombie" effect, though. It usually happens when you've had too high a dose of stimulant medication; you just kind of sit there because you're now too inhibited and too controlled. Sometimes if you get that effect you have to start out with a toddler-size dose.

Caffeine is a reasonable substitute for stimulant medication in mild cases of ADHD, but unlike Ritalin and similar medications, addiction is probable (and likely inevitable). If you want to use caffeine to treat ADHD, you won't be able to use it continuously--you have to go off it on weekends or some similar schedule to avoid building up a tolerance. But it is still useful for many people who either can't tolerate stimulants or don't want to use them, or for people who are on stimulants and need a kick-start in the morning before their normal stimulant medication starts being effective.