googles "does caffeine increase dissociation" hrrmmm yes okay. seems it does. But also it doesn't necessarily make us anxious anymore? Especially if there isn't anything around to be anxious ABOUT.
We've gotten stuff for thai iced tea recently and it's super yummy and easy to make at home. If there's ever a thing that I, bird, need to do, caffeine makes it difficult because my hold to the front gets very...loose. I get "white surprise"'d from the front quite easily. Like today with the. Many thousands of words Halara and I wrote. If there's writing that needs to be done, it's easier for Glory or Shun to slide in and take over.
Or for Aether to do so and be very mean on the internet.
Of course, Glory is very, very, very anxious a lot of the time. So if there is ANYTHING for her to be anxious over, this is not good! And in the past, where I, bird, was terrified of most things at work, caffeine made me so anxious that it made me think Very Not Good Things. And the floaty/not-there-ness of dissociation (and not knowing what it was) was extra scary.
But we have tea at work that has a little bit of caffeine and we'll have a big mug if it's a day Halara needs to get a bunch of stuff done. Or we'll make ourselves tea when we get home if there's a bunch of writing/editing we want to get done (iced tea rn since it's summer). This is stuff we've been doing without making that connection that caffeine = more dissociation/switching.
The brain has ADHD, but I don't think we've ever self-medicated with caffeine. Stimulants just...make us anxious. And dissociate. Which makes it harder to work. We would use the sugar in a soda as brain food to be able to burn more energy working hard instead.
Our anxiety meds "stops" dissociation by removing anxiety, but if we "dissociate" (switch) for not-anxious reasons, that still happens. And cannabis (which is very much NOT a stimulant) makes switching easier, too. As does alcohol, but I think that's more because I, bird, really lose my ability to monopolize the front (and Aether likes finding opportunties to cause trouble).
This is all just talking aloud and making connections and figuring out how our shared brain works better lol It's nice figuring this stuff out! Getting to know the finer details of how ADHD works for us did a ton to help with creativity and productivity. I guess we're at that point now with plurality? Which is cool.
-bird