this like the difference between adding 2 and subtracting negative 2 to me

Nah it’s like

It doesn’t add any energy, it just temporarily stops your brain from being able to process how tired you are. Which is why you crash later! Because your brain’s receptors wake up and are like “BITCH why didn’t my alarm go off look at all this goddamn paperwork??”

It’s such a weird thing. What we call “tired” is the brain creating a small dose of “tired chemical” every hour or so. Once there’s enough tired chemical, the brain goes into sleep mode to clean itself out (we… think) and it gets rid of all the tired chemical.

This is why you can oversleep and feel tired: the brain has started to make the tired chemical again while you were sleeping. But it’s also why caffeine is so bonkers. Caffeine works by blocking the tired receptor in your brain, so you keep making tired chemical but you don’t know you’re making it.

If you don’t have enough tired chemical, you can introduce diphenhydramine. Diphenhydramine - sold in the U.S. as Benadryl - acts by blocking histamine receptors in the same part of the brain as where the wake-sleep cycle is regulated, so this can make the brain think it’s got a bunch of tired chemical on those receptors. And once the sleep cycle is activated, the body dramatically reduces its histamine response, so the whole meme about “Benadryl: You Can’t Sneeze When You’re Dead” is actually pretty accurate as to how diphenhydramine works.

It also means that if you, say, take twice the recommended dose of diphenhydramine and wash it down with a 16 ounce Red Bull because you’ve got to help your parents who have a dog and a cat move out of their dusty house (and you’re allergic to dogs, cats, and dust), you’re going to be very productive for a couple hours and then you are going to pass out for fourteen hours and have some incredible dreams.

^ That right there is the voice of experience