Coffee?
 

I know alcohol is a really bad idea dealing with PCS, but is coffee a bad idea too? It seems like a caffeine buzz is something you'd want to avoid, but I'm having a hard time going without it but I'm scared to have any. Does anyone else have trouble with coffee or received advice not to have any?

From the reading I've done, experts recommend that people recovering from or dealing with tbi stay away from a lot of caffeine. Although one cup of something caffeinated is considered to be ok.

I drink a cup of tea in the morning. Whenever I've tried to drink a cup after 12p or so, or had more than one cup, it really messed with my sleep in a bad way. I tend to get much worse cognitively when I'm tired so I've learned the hard way to not have more than one cup a day and to not drink it past noon.

What is the 'hard time' you are having going without coffee?

Is it just a habit or do you rely on the caffeine to wake up?

I drink one cup of coffee every morning. No problems for me.

Drinking it all day long or even multiple cups a day might be a problem - too much stimulation for our PCS brains.

Just lack of focus, before PCS made EVERYTHING 100x times it's importance and supremely distracting. I don't know if that makes sense. :/ But I have ADD too and coffee was usually a simple stimulus to help me perk up and focus on achieving my goals through the day. And I have a really hard time getting motivated in the morning. So both. I know it SEEMED like once I had too much espresso and hard a pretty bad dizzy spell for a couple of days. But I'm trying to figure out if this is my imagination or if I'm blaming the wrong thing.

Talk to your doctor. Many treatments for ADD involve the use of stimulants. Coffee is a stimulant. It may be that you still need the stimulant for the ADD. A doctor who knows something about both conditions should be able to help you find something that is right for you.

I had an overall bad experience with caffeine.

Everyone is different though - you can try a cup a day and see how you feel.

I've read that more than a cup a day is not good for PCS, since it excites the brain. I just stay away from it.

When you drink a cup of coffee you can clearly feel the effect it has on your brain. I figure that my brain has enough to deal with right now without me artificially stimulating it like that, so I've completely cut out caffeine. I even drink decaf tea.

I've had years in my life where I abstained completely from caffeine and you might like to know that decaf tea actually has some caffeine in it, as does decaf coffee, and the percentage of caffeine actually depends on the method of decaffeination that they use to take the caffeine out, even though it is still much less than fully caffeinated. When I completely abstain from caffeine, I don't eat any chocolate and I drink caffeine-free beverages instead of decaf because it can make a noticeable difference.