Harms of self medicating?

I was prescribed Adderall XR 20 mg for several years. Prior to that, I know I self medicated with coffee, drinking usually three-five cups and as many shots of espresso a day. While I was on Adderall, I stopped drinking so much coffee, cutting back to one cup a day, if that. It wasn't until years later that I realized I had been self medicating.

Only now I think I'm self medicating again, this time with Diet Mnt Dew Voltage instead of coffee. I still drink one cup a day of coffee, it just doesn't seem to have much of an effect on me anymore, but I've become addicted to Diet Mnt Dew. I don't know why, I never really drank a lot of soda before, but I'm going through three-five cans of it now daily. It's pretty stupid to get worried about it, but it's like a craving and I'm not used to those.

Does anyone else have experience with self medication with caffeine? What should I watch out for as I'm doing this? I was a bit worried about my sleep schedule because I'm used to having terrible insomnia and have for years, but since going off the Adderall, it hasn't been an issue at all. I'm just so tired all the time and the caffeine doesn't even seem to help with that or make a difference. I just want it and can sometimes focus a bit better after having some.

Hi Phin, thank you so much for sharing with us. I used to be very reliant on caffeine and started upping my intake more more and more to the point where I couldn't go without it. I realized that I was drinking caffeine by day to stay awake and increase my energy, and then taking sleeping pills at night to help me sleep. This was a bad habit to continue, so I started to ween myself off of the caffeine. Now, I only allow myself one small latte in the morning and that's it. I usually drink this latte over the course of two hours, so there's no heart racing or any spike in energy level. Also, there are great alternative natural energy boosters that I have been looking into, which I thought to share with you;

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/7-natural-energy-boosters.html

If you can slowly but surely ween yourself off of the caffeine, then your body will become less and less reliant on it for energy. Soon, you will start feeling natural energy.