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Comment by themodelplumber | Hacker News Reader

It's funny to read about "a caffeinated drink called x" when I just slice & dice Jet Alert tabs into whatever mix I'm having. There are mornings when 30mg is enough to push my intuition to extreme levels, and there are days when 100mg does nothing until I find the right song on the radio. I am using caffeine and ibuprofen as experimental tools to fight depression and keeping logs on how things go. So far it's amazing how well they work. Wish I had known back when I had chronic severe depression. No medical advice here btw, keep your own logs...

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How long have you been doing this? I was drinking a ton of coffee every day (4-6 cups of strong drip coffee) for the last 2-3 years. It helped a lot with my motivation and general energy levels. Recently (in the last year or so) I started getting some pretty significant mood swings, I'd basically feel horrible every week for Monday/Tuesday. I also had some alarming blood pressure measurements (up to 150/110 or something) which finally prompted me to quit the coffee. Not only did that reduce my blood pressure down to 136/90 but the mood swings and general funk have pretty much gone too.

I still think coffee is great for short sprints / crunch time, but I don't think I'll go back to ongoing high levels of use.

> mood swings

Friendly advice: drop the sugar first. It's really really hard, I know...

Caffeine is most likely to mess up your mood when you also consume sugar, or alcohol. That's why green tea for example works much better: it's disgusting to oversweeten it, to mix it with sweets, or to have it immediately before or after a pint or two ;)

Coffee otoh can even be delicious in combo with fries, ice-cream and beer. Hence I only have it in the morning when I'm not tempted to mix it in such disastrous combinations.

I eat very little sugary stuff. Plenty of booze on the weekends, which I'd originally suspected as the cause of the mood problems. Cutting the alcohol didn't change things significantly, though, while cutting the caffeine gave me two weeks of feeling awful (and I mean seriously bad), followed by a significant improvement in both mood and energy.

(Would have posted this last night but I hit the rate limiter, heh.)

To add to this:

I have always felt like caffeine tapped into some kind of energy reserve which could be depleted. In short bursts caffeine works great but you have to take the time to recharge.

I always come back from vacation feeling much more energetic and motivated. I only really drink coffee or consume large amounts of caffeine at work. There are many benefits to time off but I have always suspected one of them was getting off caffeine for a stretch.

> ibuprofen

What source motivated to start using ibuprofen? Aren't you worried about liver and kidney damage on long term. (And the more obviously annoying side effect to becoming habituated enough to a good OTC available antiinflammatory pill that is otherwise great for headaches and works wonders on random joint aches during hikes too, but will stop working for you in these cases :) ?...)

Just genuinely curious about why you ended up with such a seemingly suboptimal combo of substances.

At first glance this seems dangerous.

How do you measure results of your self-medication? How do you identify substances to medicate yourself with?

Have you spoken with a professional about this?

About what, caffeine? There's no difference between drinking a coke or a 30mg caffeine pill except the caffeine pill is better for you.

I think it's more about using caffeine to treat depression. Self-treating severe medical disorders can be... tricky.

No, about self-medicating severe depression.

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