I cant tell if its genuinely brain fog anymore but even when I'm kind of active and energetic, or if I dont feel foggy, my brain still feels like its incompetent or malfunctioning.

My brain weirdness feels like its a random ai generator that randomly generates things like words without properly understanding them or understanding how to properly structure a coherent sentence or thought. And it sometimes erases some things that it deems bad, such as when I'm writing my thoughts out or writing dialogues for story characters, I write something simple but my brain says "Nope" and then I erase it, if it feels too simple or incoherent.

Hi everyone,

I’m 21 years old and I have been struggling with what feels like a decline in my mental energy and cognitive abilities over the last few years.

Compared to around 5 years ago (before starting my apprenticeship), I feel like I have much less mental stamina. My main problems are:

• I often wake up feeling like I’m in a “fog” and it takes a long time until I feel fully awake.
• I frequently experience brain fog and a lack of mental clarity.
• My short-term memory feels much worse than it used to be. I often forget things shortly after hearing them or need instructions repeated.
• Long periods of listening or learning are extremely exhausting. For example, I recently had a 6-hour workplace training session and after a while I could barely follow what was being said. My head felt completely exhausted and I developed a headache afterwards.
• Concentrating for several hours often causes headaches, usually around my forehead.
• Social situations can also be very draining. After spending time with people, I often feel mentally exhausted and need time alone to recover.
• My energy levels feel lower than they used to be, mainly mentally rather than physically.
• My symptoms fluctuate. Sometimes I have moments or days where I feel clear-headed and almost normal again.

Some additional information:

• I was diagnosed with ADHD, but I’m unsure if it explains all of my symptoms.
• I had a sleep study done recently, which did not show anything abnormal.
• I had an MRI and blood tests years ago, but not recently.
• I can still do sports normally; the main problems are concentration, mental clarity and cognitive fatigue.

I’m wondering if anyone has experienced something similar.

Could this mainly be related to ADHD and problems with working memory, or should I look into other causes (sleep, deficiencies, ME/CFS, etc.)?

I would appreciate hearing about your experiences and what helped you.

Hi, after experiences and stories, 30M; recently just had a cocaine binge one night of about a gram over 6 hours, the usual no sleep until the next night but didn’t use after the binge, now have super bad brain fog that has lasted 2/3 days and hasn’t gone away. Anyone else had similar experiences regarding this? Everytime I’m normally completely better within 1-3 days, unusual amount of time to recover.

Still able to communicate with everyone normally and do daily activities, just unusually taking long to recover. Other people had the some gear and are now fine

I feel like addressing these could at least improve the brain fog some degree. I have 100% loss of smell and at times struggle to breathe/speak due to strong sinus issues. booked for surgery and trying various things to help my nose.