Post: #51

Supposedly, choline on its own can be a pretty potent nootropic. Specifically CDP choline, which also stimulates human growth hormone and dopamine release.

I picked up some piracetam at the pharmacy but I'm waiting on some L-theanine and CDP choline to arrive in the mail before taking it.

There's also not-so rigorous sounding discussion on the web about 'choline dominance' vs 'dopamine dominance'. Meaning if your brain produces a lot of choline naturally then you won't need to take much for a synergistic effect with the racetams. But if you're dopamine dominant (i.e. your brain doesn't produce that much choline naturally) then you'll need higher doses of choline to potentiate your racetam.

Can anybody chime on this? Legit or BS?

A few other nootropics that I keep coming across in searches:

- Creatine

I've taken creatine on and off and I can't say I've noticed a difference in cognitive abilities but it's good for putting on weight. I don't know if it makes a difference but I've always bought creatine with a Creapure certification, which supposedly means it's the highest quality powder. Might be BS?

- Acetyl-L Carnitine (aka ALCAR)

I have no experience with this. Anybody?

- Theobromine

A stimulant found in dark chocolate. I think you'd need to be eating at least 85% cacao otherwise you're getting more sugar than anything else. I eat the hell out of dark chocolate. It's like a caffeine buzz with less edge. I'm hoping L-Theanine will help smooth things out even further.

- Huperzine-A

I heard Tim Ferris talking about this stuff like a year ago. So it must be legit! I was going to buy some but then I read the list of side effects and thought screw it there are safer options.

- Intermittent fasting.

In my experience this definitely makes you noticeably sharper during the day of the fast and it's very healthy in general. I do IF every couple of days. Just feel it out. If I'm not hungry at breakfast then I decide to wait until dinner to eat.

- Dual n-back training.

One of the few brain training regimens proven to increase intelligence across several dimensions. Here's some research and a free online version: http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/

There's also a free iPhone app called IQ Boost I've been using. I hate brain games but I'm forcing myself to do this every day for a month because I think it'll help my jiu jitsu.

Post: #52

^
I've tried different forms of Choline including the one you mentioned, CDP Choline. The only thing I noticed was stiffness in my neck, which I later researched and found out results from having too much choline (I was taking the bare-minimum dose) ... I did not like that feeling at all, and I noticed no change in cognitive performance.

I tried Alcar as well and noticed nothing. The only nootropic that I noticed anything significant with, was Piracetam. I felt more confident, able to grasp ideas better, and thoughts flowed more quickly (verbal fluidity was increased) - this helped my day-game I believe. However, after a month of Piracetam usage, I became what seems like permanently tolerant to it. It's been over a year since I took Piracetam for a month straight, and I can take virtually any dose of it and not feel a thing.

I'm all for trying nootropics and other well-researched chemicals that may boost cognitive performance...it just sucks that so few of them actually do anything noticeable.

Post: #53

They work very well for certain things.

I use them to ace engineering. They are amazing for staying sharp.

But if you're doing things that don't require a lot of brainpower in the first place they're pretty useless. In that case stick to things that give you more energy and reduce anxiety like modafinil, l-theanine, and aniracetam. More brainpower when more brainpower won't help (sales or an accounting job for example) won't do much.

My personal favorite is nicotine actually. Extremely similar to acetylcholine and for that reason seems to increase memory recall a lot for me. It is addictive though.

Post: #54

Just bought a pack of rhodiola rosea from amazon after reading some amazing reviews about it. Hopefully it'll make me concentrate better in school, and raise my mood.
Ill post results after testing it out

Post: #55

(08-21-2014 12:36 AM)Spider Wrote:  The only nootropic that I noticed anything significant with, was Piracetam. I felt more confident, able to grasp ideas better, and thoughts flowed more quickly (verbal fluidity was increased) - this helped my day-game I believe. However, after a month of Piracetam usage, I became what seems like permanently tolerant to it. It's been over a year since I took Piracetam for a month straight, and I can take virtually any dose of it and not feel a thing.

Were you taking piracteam with choline? Did you experiment with choline to piracetam ratio?

I've read anecdotal reports all over the web of piracetam not working worth a shit and then suddenly working once you got the choline dose right.

Post: #56

All that stuff about choline is fluff. The only ones who really NEED choline are those who are defficient in it. Sure it helps it a bit, but honestly coffee/ltheanine/aniracetam works better at increasing Piracetam's effectiveness.

I still take some CDP just not every day.

Post: #57

I'm familiar with Modafinil and it works as advertised. That shot is great for knocking out papers, repetitive work, or for work that requires creativity or deep thinking. I cant count the number of all nighters my friends did on it, acing too many papers and tests to count. If you are in good physical shape as well, that helps a ton.

Problem with things like adderall is they give a tremendous high and are highly addictive... they may work for repetitive tasks and keep you awake, but that's it... tremendous potential for addiction too.

Post: #58

I would personally be very careful with these things, and would counsel anyone who would listen against them.

They do affect your behaviour, and your judgement. They also become a crutch. There is something pretty ugly about someone who is old enough to be considered an adult repetitively popping these things just to perform.

Beyond this, they also encourage you to ignore the essentials of health, happiness and good judgement, which are sound sleep and proper nutrition. As soon as fatigue sets in, or something seems pressing, from what I've seen very few people are able to resist the temptation to pop just one more to get them through just a couple more hours.

It is an interesting and frequently frustrating fact that most people are simply not designed to be that efficient, certainly on a sustained basis. With the advent of the technological age I think the efficiency demands outstrip most people's ability to execute. If that is the case for you, personally I would advocate accepting a little inefficiency as the price for an otherwise healthy life - inefficiency being commonplace, you will at least be in good company.

It's a seemingly relatively harmless practice on the surface, but like most drug dependencies, it pretty quickly becomes quite a negative.

Post: #59

For concentration piracetam and noopept are the best ones I’ve found. Noopept is interesting in that only 5-10 minutes after you take it, you can actually notice the difference in clarity of thought as well as actually enhancing colors, similar to low doses of mushrooms.

For relaxation I like a few other nootropics- melatonin for sleep, l-theanine with coffee and phenibut as an alcohol replacement or anti anxiety before interviews or presentations.

One really good supplement I found for relaxation has phenibut as well as high doses of l-theanine, nac, and some adaptogenic herbs and is at a decent price compared to other blends which don’t work nearly as well, heres the link to it http://www.somavitasupplements.com

I will say that nootropics aren’t necessary they’re more of a fun thing to experiment with, and obviously healthy eating, sleep and exercise is vastly more important.

I’ve also tried modafinil and adderall but I don’t like messing with stuff like that because of the cns damage it may cause long term.

Post: #60

I use phenibut from time to time... great for calming the mind/anxiety.

Post: #61

Where are people finding Piracetam these days? The supplier I used in the UK went under and I'd like to find another. Maybe some laws recently changed or something? Never had a problem ordering from overseas suppliers before.

Post: #62

Been thinking about copping some Modafinil. It was made for airforce pilots during long duration flights and it is still issued to them apparently. The wikipedia page has interesting notes... such as the fact that it has a very low addictive liability and no evidence of tolerance (over time) to the substance. It basically removes all the cognitive defects of a lack of sleep. I know for most of us grinding we rarely get the necessary 8 hours, could be useful in terms of performance, pop one early in the morning after a restless night. I want to use it towards my academic goals. It's not easy finding a US based source so I say be careful with ordering outside the US coz customs will probably send you a love letter. However PM me if you have good sources or advice

Read for your self.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil

Post: #63

(02-13-2019 12:29 AM)Matrixdude Wrote:  Been thinking about copping some Modafinil. It was made for airforce pilots during long duration flights and it is still issued to them apparently. The wikipedia page has interesting notes... such as the fact that it has a very low addictive liability and no evidence of tolerance (over time) to the substance. It basically removes all the cognitive defects of a lack of sleep. I know for most of us grinding we rarely get the necessary 8 hours, could be useful in terms of performance, pop one early in the morning after a restless night. I want to use it towards my academic goals. It's not easy finding a US based source so I say be careful with ordering outside the US coz customs will probably send you a love letter. However PM me if you have good sources or advice

Read for your self.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil

A love letter from US Customs usually doesn't mean much unless the cargo isn't declared or reaches quantities that hit the line for trafficking, with the caveat that one import trashed by customs could make importing anything else to the US difficult. (The differs from Uruguay where it appears just about every import gets inspected and gray area thing either invite a paperwork contest or a write off)

If you goal is academic I recommend maxing out diet, exercise, and sleep hygiene before picking up a chemical crutch stronger than caffeine and vitamins. At some point you are going to move from having academic goals to having bigger work and life goals. Your present academic goals are going to be in the past, but you are still going to want to bring your best to these new goals.

That a chemical is given to air force pilots is not a reflection of its long term safety. From the Airforce's point of view a pilot is a sort of racehorse adapted to operating a particular machine very well, and apparently modafinil is less likely to induce psychosis while the pilot is in the air than the amphetamines they would rather use. The reason they use these drugs is there are operational conditions where they want to race their horses, but can't logistically work out a way to do so with all their horses being well rested. The fact it can't be sustained forever for any particular pilot doesn't much matter to the Air Force.

If you are a young person looking for an edge, the fundamentals are materially different. You are stuck with one body, one fat gray sack of mush in your skullcase, and one stringy network of fatty fibers holding the whole orchestra together. This collection of wetware is adaptable, yes but the adaptability doesn't always work out in the way best suited to your long term prospects.

Some genetic freaks excepted, this system will happily adapt to repeated episodes of mild nicotine poisoning by deciding to spam "low nicotine level" alerts on the same channel and with the same priority it issues alerts for low water or increasing hunger warnings. It can take some work to get the orchestra to adapt to nicotine this way. Then you can quit smoking and by the third week the surplus number of nicotinic type acetycholine receptors that were both triggering the cravings and keeping the nicotine from killing you will have returned to baseline non-smoking levels, but there's a catch! Your brain and body have a template for respawning those receptors should it get flooded with nicotine again.

I use the nicotine example because it is highly addictive to the tune of 90% of users and the mechanism that makes it addictive is well documented. Even for less addicting substances... ~1/5 of cannabis users become "psychologically dependent" and stone themselves out of living their life without actually dying. When marketing tells you "non-addictive" remember the 1/5 of cannabis users compulsively undermining their quality of life without being "addicted" (Part of the CBD hype is likely genuine problem stoners who are amazed how much more functional they are when this second chemical competes for receptors with THC and limits how high they can get at the biochemical level).

Adapting your grind to get enough healthy, natural sleep most days is going to give you a bigger long term edge than turning yourself into a drug fueled race horse.

Post: #64

FYI. If nootropics are not working for you, then it might be wise to investigate. Especially if you have signs of depression. These things need balanced brain chemistry to fuel them... this is true for me. They do not work.