<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hachyderm.io/@fasterthanlime" class="u-url mention">@<span>fasterthanlime</span></a></span> caffeine is an adenosine antagonist. literally no other drug, to my knowledge, works like that. all of the effects on dopaminergic, etc, pathways are somewhere downstream of that, apparently through a mechanism that involves changes in how calcium is processed on the cellular level. i can't claim to understand it on any advanced level, but the following paper has an overview and some references that look good: <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8202818/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/</span><span class="invisible">PMC8202818/</span></a></p>
