Is the long term consumption of caffeine really a good idea?

I would expect the tolerance build up to negate the positive effects fairly quickly. Most people that need to have their coffee in the morning are NOT more awake than a non-coffee drinker but need the coffee to just reach their normal baseline.

So you would need higher and higher dosages to see any positive effects and at that point you get nasty side-effects like heart racing and insomnia.

Some of the effects of caffeine are subject to diminishing with tolerance, others are not.

People develop tolerance at different rates, and it depends on dose and usage pattern, etc. It's not hard to use caffeine a lot and never develop a strong tolerance. (Probably not true for everyone, And it's a different story if you've already been drinking multiple cups of coffee every day for decades).

There's some really fascinating research on caffeine use out there, highly recommend that rabbit hole for the interested.

Caffeine isn't heroin: tolerance plateaus after a few weeks of drinking coffee daily.

> nasty side-effects like heart racing and insomnia

I've been drinking coffee daily for two decades now and haven't ever experienced heart racing, nor insomnia if I limit my consumption to the A.M.

People do process caffeine wildly differently through. I apparently have genes that make me not very sensitive to caffeine at all, but I know this isn't true for everyone.

Once upon a time I could drink a full pot of coffee every morning and feel fine. Now a single caffeinated (sugar-free) soda makes me feel terrible: racing heart, anxiety, shakiness. I've tried exposing myself to more caffeine to get used to it again. No dice. Bodies are weird.

What doesn't mix for me is caffeine and Focalin. When I'm not on Focalin, I can drink caffeine in moderation and feel fine. A single cup of coffee when I'm on Focalin, and I'm going to get so much less quality sleep that I feel like a wet dishrag in the morning.

Depends on the person. Caffeine is a mixed bag for people with adhd and related disorders. If wasn't, we'd all just be taking caffeine pills and call it a day, yet we don't. It does work in some cases, specifically if you throttle your intake so you don't build up tolerance and use it intermittently.

And you can learn to focus your adhd traits and exploit them.

If you combine intermittent caffeine use with an intentional time-bound task, yes, very powerful combo.

Using caffeine as part of a routine and the binging youtube for 6 hours, unbounded time is a nightmare, esp if your days are blurred and you do it weeks at a time. You are basically then just shotgunning your mind further.