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Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”

191 points by cbarnsdale 14y ago

sillysaurus 14y ago
[Taking stimulants] can, over time, permanently impair your mental faculties. Does anyone have citations for that claim? (Any non-anecdotal evidence.)
- maxerickson 14y ago
  It isn't an obscure claim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis
  - sillysaurus 14y ago
    Hey, thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Stimulant psychosis is unrelated to long-term permanent cognitive impairment; it's temporary, for example. I was hoping to find out more about the medical basis for the "permanent gradual decline of mental abilities" assertion, because it seems hard to believe that our current knowledge of the human brain is sufficient to make such a broad claim with any degree of accuracy.
    - maxerickson 14y ago
      Well, the page does say "However it has been suggested that about 5–15% of users fail to make a complete recovery from the psychosis in the long term." And there are other statements suggesting that people that have suffered from acute psychosis are prone to relapses (if a chronic user has more problems than a dabbler, that at least suggests accumulated damage).
mthreat 14y ago
Someone should do an "Ask PG: Have you ever used "smart drugs"?
Symmetry 14y ago
I think that the /r/nootropics FAQ has a lot of good related information, including links to scientific papers. http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/nootropics http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/nootropics
- powermeat 14y ago
  And affiliate links where you can buy.
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    I see no such thing.
ImJasonH 14y ago
I can't believe we're calling them "smart drugs" if they don't even take the opportunity to overuse the ümlaut...
plantain 14y ago
There may be places out there to find reliable information on the efficacy and safety of prescription medication taken off-label, but a guest post from a seller of them certainly is not one.
- matznerd 14y ago
  Unfortunately, companies are not legally allowed to discuss or mention in their marketing materials the "Nootropic" effects of these substances due to the FDA. This pushes a lot of the reliable information regarding Nootropics into forums and other areas on the internet. It is pretty interesting to see the communities that thrive around Nootropics. Just trying to learn the basics and build a stack, I have spent hundreds of hours researching.
- Alex3917 14y ago
  Actually the good news is that it should actually be easier to find research on these drugs than your standard drugs because they're not being tested by big pharma, which means there should be much less of a file drawer effect. That said, you'd have to be kind of dumb to think that you can improve your brain function by taking the same cocktail of drugs every day. Taking low doses of different stuff on an intermittent basis, maybe, but hammering the same receptors day in and day out and expecting some sort of longterm benefit is extremely naive.
  - forensic 14y ago
    why does it work with caffeine?
    - Alex3917 14y ago
      There are a number of different possible answers to that question. One answer is that it doesn't, it just feels like it does. And if you look at studies of people who are caffeine dependent, they're not actually are more alert after drinking a cup of coffee than people who aren't caffeine dependent and don't drink coffee. The other answer is that if you're using caffeine from plants then you're getting a different dose each day, and if you're not taking a lot and you're not doing it every day then tolerance will be less of an issue. Also, caffeine breaks down into multiple separate drugs when digested so that may also have some impact on tolerance.
kilian 14y ago
As someone whose diet is already high in eggs, meat etc. (paleo) I wonder how much effect this has. I am asking this because both fish oil supplements and magnesium supplements don't seem to have any additional beneficial effect on me. Anyone have experience with that?
- billswift 14y ago
  As the post admitted, few supplements have benefit once you are eating a well-balanced diet. As he put it, "these are best used to fill any deficiencies." Though it is sad to see what amounts to an infomercial voted up to the number 2 spot on HN. Added: Now it's made the top post.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    The claim that "90% of people are deficient" is certainly suspect, considering that admission.
- _feda_ 14y ago
  I've been taking cod liver oil, ginseng, and multivitamin (vitamin A through D, thiamin etc.) for the past month or so along with a pretty healthy and substantial vegetarian diet. I couldn't say if it's benefited me or not because the effect seems so slight that it could only be measured with some pretty detailed self-tracking. I'll be trying Neurozan (http://www.vitabiotics.com/Neurozan/ http://www.vitabiotics.com/Neurozan/) in the next few weeks.
  - driverdan 14y ago
    It contains iron which immediately flags it as garbage. Males should not supplement iron unless directed to do so by a doctor. Unless you donate blood regularly it can build up in your body.
stephengillie 14y ago
Unlike in athletics, academics isn’t necessarily a zero sum game. While in a race there is necessarily a winner and a loser, nobody in academics is held back if another student is better able to retain their information. No, but the doped student's advantage could cause her to be selected over another (undoped) student in college entrance exams, program entrance exams, and other educational competitions. Does this mean we'll soon see articles about how the Ivy League and most hacker dens dope more than the Tour de France?
- matznerd 14y ago
  There are already many students who are prescribed Ritalin, Concerta, Adderal etc, and these drugs give those students an unfair edge. How are normal students supposed to compete with their peers who are on amphetamines?
  - trafnar 14y ago
    Why should learning be a competition?
    - forensic 14y ago
      I didn't create the world, I just have to live in it.
- makmanalp 14y ago
  > A study in Nature found that an average of 7% (with a range up to 25%) of US college students have used a nootropic at some point in their careers. http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/06/should-students-be-tested-for-brain-enhancing-drugs/ http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/06/should-students-be-test... What would you bet that ivys have a higher rate than average too? :)
  - ConceptJunkie 14y ago
    Seeing as how the article considers (and rightly so) caffeine as a nootropic, I'd say the numbers are probably more like 70% rather than 7%.
peteretep 14y ago
[citation needed]
crntaylor 14y ago
Potentially relevant - Johann Hari's article in HuffPost about his experiment with Provigil (aka Modafinil). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/my-experiment-with-smart_b_156954.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/my-experiment-with...
- logn 14y ago
  Some poker players have been talking about this one too to boost their performance. http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/20/science/sci-braindoping20 http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/20/science/sci-braindop... http://groanblog.livejournal.com/865.html http://groanblog.livejournal.com/865.html I've read elsewhere that it can be addictive. Also, the LA Time article discusses Inderal, a beta-blocker which could be considered a smart drug since it eases nerves by reducing adrenaline rushes (no more shaky hands or pounding heart). Might be helpful to the hacker community if you're stricken by nerves working on a tight deadline.
  - elemeno 14y ago
    Everything I've read about Modafinil suggests that it's not addictive - for everything being Wikipedia along with some other sites which I don't recall off the top of my head (it was about six months ago when I did any research about it). It's a lovely little thing though, very nice clean focused sensation coupled with a lack of tiredness.
    - acuozzo 14y ago
      > Everything I've read about Modafinil suggests that it's not addictive - for everything being Wikipedia along with some other sites which I don't recall off the top of my head (it was about six months ago when I did any research about it). It's probably not addictive, but what if you become addicted to the lifestyle it makes possible?
      - dedward 14y ago
        Well, there's a difference between things you don't want to give up, and things you can't give up because you'll get sick as a dog, and/or require hospitalization and maybe die.
crisnoble 14y ago
I only have one question, can I get some links to buy these?
- crisnoble 14y ago
  Reddit pulled through on this one: http://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/search?q=buy&restrict_sr=on http://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/search?q=buy&restrict...
ScottAS 14y ago
It's too bad that this reads like spam. Anyone care to share links to legitimate research?
- ggwicz 14y ago
  There are a lot of shitty survey-type studies, but there is some good mechanistic research you can turn up just by searching the specific chemical names on Pubmed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed)
jonnathanson 14y ago
A word of caution about vasodilators: I've seen them touted more and more frequently by nootropics enthusiasts, as though they're completely harmless. This is not necessarily true. Blood pressure is a very meticulously regulated process in the body, with countless chemicals, hormones, and other endogenous signals in the mix. It's entirely possible, if uncommon, to overdose when self-administering vasodilating drugs. A lot of vasodilators work by ionically tweaking the fluid retention of the kidneys, which, if thrown out of whack, can lead to all sorts of not-so-fun problems. In general, be careful when messing with your blood vessels, or with any drugs that change the ionic balance of your bloodstream. The other thing I'd say is TANSTAAFL. Generally speaking, when you're upregulating one process or chemical in the body, you're downregulating another process or chemical. If you're not sure what's being ramped up, and what's being ramped down -- or, even scarier, if science doesn't quite know yet -- then proceed with a tiny bit of caution. I don't mean to dump cold water on the idea of nootropics. Some of them seem pretty harmless. Some of them may indeed have a net benefit. Others...perhaps, but the jury's still out. In the meantime, I guess I am hesitant to treat my body like a lab experiment. Especially when there are so many proven, healthy, effective ways to enhance cognition. Such as exercise and study.
- Alex3917 14y ago
  "The other thing I'd say is TANSTAAFL. Generally speaking, when you're upregulating one process or chemical in the body, you're downregulating another process or chemical. If you're not sure what's being ramped up, and what's being ramped down -- or, even scarier, if science doesn't quite know yet -- then proceed with a tiny bit of caution." This is why the first rule of drug use is 'rotate your receptors'. In general, the most important thing to know about longterm use of any psychoactive substance is that you can never win. At best, if you're really well educated, you can break even in a way that's slightly preferable to you. But most people can't even manage that.
- possibilistic 14y ago
  As someone hoping to enter a systems metabolomics program next year, let me simplify your statement: If you do this, you're messing with high-order, nonlinear dynamics. Does anyone really trust themselves to dose that properly? They had better be a trained medicinal chemist with great skill at solving PDEs. I also doubt the average enthusiast is set up to run HPLC to measure and model various critical metabolite concentrations and their change over time.
aelaguiz 14y ago
The article is really interesting, but I can't help but be suspicious of the data (opinion) contained within. The expert used in the article is John Holcomb, who owns a supplement e-commerce site. I can't find anything on his site that talks about his qualifications or any hard facts to back up most of this. I'm really interested in nootropics and increasing mental efficacy - but there is no shortage of snake-oil vendors out there, some of whom are undoubtedly taking advantage of the boom in interest for these drugs. This makes me very leery about accepting this information. Particularly the section on Racetams and how there are so many of them that can be tried safely in combination or by themselves. With this awesome line: "The one caveat with racetams: from a wealth of anecdotes about a third of the population is non-responsive or only mildly responsive to one or more types, and about a third are high responders that can experience spectacular results. " Which sounds awesome to me, if I make money by selling these supplements. Basically - you may not experience any effects until you hit the right combination so keep buying them and trying them until you do and eventually you too could be a genius. Is it like some sort of intelligence enhancing slot machine? I wish I could believe this stuff was effective. Someone please tell me I'm crazy and that he's right and for $20/bottle I can be slightly less dumb?
- matznerd 14y ago
  Most of what John Holcomb says is pretty true. He is involved in a company that sells supplements. Brainpower Nutriceuticals is a new company that comes from his former company, Cerebral Health. Cerebral Health is well known in the Nootropic community as a good, honest, and safe supplier of many different substances. I have used them as a piracetam source before. He really does little to sell his products in his article and discusses what is already common knowledge to even beginners interested in Nootropics. Being an outsider on the topic, I can see how this may come off as sketchy, but the truth is that the Racetams, as well as any drug, have different effects on different people. If you want to get into Nootropics, you will need to do a little experimenting and a lot of research. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all stack or supplement regiment, but when you hit it right, you will notice a difference. You won't be a genius, but you can remove what is called "mental fog," a condition that you rarely known you have until it is gone.
- 14y ago
gubatron 14y ago
"it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!" fail. I hope you can code in something else than javascript. We have to DEAL with Javascript on the browser because browser vendors haven't bothered supporting other more superior languages, wouldn't it be nice to have type="text/python", type="text/ruby" as options, have threads, native datatypes, real OO, logical variable scoping, better numeric precision and all the things that javascript was not meant for? I hope more big time CEOs come out and say that not everything is meant to be written with HTML5. It's like we're raising a generation of moronic programmers with all this HTML5 hype.
- ConceptJunkie 14y ago
  Is this generation any different than the generation of moronic programmers raised on Java?
Tooluka 14y ago
> No one talks about this stuff! Yeah, right. Probably in some other internet. You can't find a site today where there they weren't discussed at least once. Personally I won't take them without prescription from a doctor. Yes, downsides are pretty obscure and rare but the same are benefits. Based on reviews they are not some magic pills like in Limitless. Closer to placebo actually.
- matznerd 14y ago
  They are not some magic drug like Limitless, but they are closer to that than to placebos. Do you not notice a difference in your mental and physical state when you take caffeine? Caffeine is a Nootropic and it works, but Caffeine is just the tip of the iceberg.
  - Tooluka 14y ago
    For me caffeine is also closer to a placebo (I do know that it works, just weakly and randomly for different people). The major positive effect of it I think is drinking 100-200ml of hot drink. I feel the same after drinking coffee or any tea or some cacao mix by nestle. Drinking water a lot is very helpful for human brain, especially in cold and arid offices where we mostly sit without moving.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- KVFinn 14y ago
  >No one talks about this stuff! I literally LOL'd at that. You can't throw a stick without hitting a bunch of college students obsessing about this stuff. Is this guy even on the internet?
ryeguy 14y ago
Some helpful links: http://examine.com http://examine.com is an excellent, unbiased, citation-oriented database of supplements and nutrition information. Reddit also has a nootropics subreddit: http://reddit.com/r/nootropics http://reddit.com/r/nootropics.
gaunab 14y ago
Here's a thread on Bluelight on Nootropics, usage, dose and reports on their effects that I found quite informative: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/206147-Aniracetam-holy-crap-does-it-work http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/206147-Aniracetam-holy-cr...!
paborden 14y ago
Please, please, please ... Be careful with Nootropics. I'm a bit of a consciousness-naut and self-experimenter who's obsessed about increasing productivity. I've experimented a lot with Nootropics. My thoughts? Modafinil. Stay away from it. The stuff is wickedly addictive and many people have experienced significant long-term side effects, especially if they try to go off it. Piracetam. Does a lot to reduce ADD and has strong anti-anxiety properties. That said, I found the benefits (minimally increased focus and less anxiety) to be far outweighed by the fact that you have to keep taking the stuff obsessively lest you go into withdrawal (coming off the stuff is horrible once you've been on it for a couple weeks). If you want to increase productivity and focus there are a ton of other things you can do, starting with the basics of exercise, proper nutrition, and meditation.
- acuozzo 14y ago
  > If you want to increase productivity and focus there are a ton of other things you can do, starting with the basics of exercise, proper nutrition, and meditation. ... and what do you do when all of that's already taken care of?
  - mahyarm 14y ago
    Get 8 hours of sleep a day. I bet that can be somewhat difficult for a typical HN reader.
- driverdan 14y ago
  AFAIK there hasn't been any research into this but from the many anecdotes I've read it seems Modafinil may be addictive for people with a certain brain chemistry, the same type of people who are highly susceptible to cocaine abuse. The vast majority of users don't report addiction.
- mistercow 14y ago
  >Modafinil. Stay away from it. The stuff is wickedly addictive and many people have experienced significant long-term side effects, especially if they try to go off it. I have known quite a number of people who have taken modafinil, and none of them experienced more than minor side effects. I have several friends who stopped using it for long periods because they built a tolerance (tolerance != addiction), but none experienced withdrawal symptoms. I used adrafinil for a while because it has the advantage of being unscheduled in the US, and I noticed weak tolerance building, but the only side effects I had were insomnia (while it was in effect) and mild headaches which went away with aspirin. The only reason I stopped taking it was that they revoked its approval in France, and none of the generics from other countries that I've found seem to work.
tokenadult 14y ago
The article begins with "It’s a lengthy read, but don’t let the wall of text dissuade you." That's scary right there. Anyone who is scared off by this short, popular fluff piece needs a lot of help in reading (or is not a native speaker of English). To learn to read a piece like this thoughtfully and critically mostly takes practice in reading, not the latest "smart drug." I've been hearing people tout smart drugs for as long as I have been involved in online discussions (since 1992), and I have never seen any evidence of regular users of smart drugs doing anything smart. Let's learn from how an indisputably smart person (LISP hacker and genuine NASA rocket scientist Peter Norvig, now Google's director of research) approaches claims of a new wonder drug. He writes of "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html in a free online article that is also a wall of text, but which any Hacker News reader could read and apply to become more smart in day-by-day life. We can learn together by comparing the popular article kindly submitted here to the checklist of warning signs provided by Peter Norvig. Warning Sign D1: Lack of a Randomized Controlled Trial The article about "smart drugs" submitted here doesn't cite any scientific literature from any country and makes no reference to results from randomized, controlled trials. As another participant here has already pointed out in a smart comment, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4516111 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4516111 the author of the article's main text is in the business of selling smart drugs. He is not a neutral, objective source of information on the subject. He doesn't seem willing to share his evidence base for his claims, perhaps because he has none. Warning Sign D2: Lack of Double-Blind Studies The author refers to people taking various drugs while being aware of what they are taking, which skews their recollection of their performance and very likely results in invalid recollections. Most SCIENTIFIC studies of mental performance interventions are careful to be "double blind" and to have neither the subject nor the experimenter aware of which subject received the studied intervention and which received a sham intervention. And such studies have careful tests of mental performance (working memory, IQ, or the like). The article here is mere advertising puffery by comparison. Warning Sign D3: Too Few Subjects The author advertising smart drugs doesn't describe any careful studies, so of course he doesn't mention the number of subjects in any studies. Most so-called studies of smart drugs have been far too small to have any statistical power. Warning Sign D4: The Wrong Subjects People voluntarily self-administering smart drugs are VERY likely not a representative sample of the general population. If some people self-report that they became smarter after using the drugs (do their friends and relatives agree?), that by no means shows that most people will be better off if they take the drugs. Random assignment to the treatment condition from among a representative sample is necessary to show that the drugs have any general or consistent benefit. Warning Sign D5: The Wrong Questions Most of the supposed tests of smart drugs appear to use mere user self-reports rather than standardized measures of mental performance that show up in the scientific literature on psychology. Simply put, no high-quality treatise on human intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige... has ever reported that smart drugs are good for anything. Warning Sign D6: The Wrong Statistics Again, most statements about smart drugs found online have no statistics at all. In any event, what studies there have been about smart drugs that use the language of statistical analysis have mostly been very amateurish in their statistical approach. Warning Sign D7: Lack of a Specific Hypothesis, or Overzealous Data Mining Before the user begins taking a smart drug, is the expected effect "creativity," or "memory" or cognition, or what? The article, by its incoherence in grouping drugs by their supposed effects, shows that most of the time people who have sunk money into smart drugs are expected to imagine their own benefits, and will, to avoid embarrassment at being snookered. Warning Sign D8: Lack of a Theory The human brain is a very complicated biological system, with many feedback loops, and so far there is no mainstream theory of neurophysiology (a topic with MANY investigators all over the world) that suggests simple chemical interventions to produce long-term improvement in any aspect of mental performance. Warning Sign D9: Lack of controls It's not clear in the smart drug promotional literature even what should be controlled if there were a controlled trial of smart drugs. The smart drug promoters are not making enough effort to contrast taking smart drugs with other interventions (say, learning to read more challenging reading material by practice) that likely have better impact on long-term mental performance. Warning Sign I1: Lacking Repeatability and Reproducibility The author basically acknowledges that many smart drugs have results that are not reproducible reliably. Warning Sign I2: Ignoring Publication Bias Because smart drug trials are not announced in advance in publicly readable databases, every person selling smart drugs gets to announce unverifiable anecdotes while hiding in the file drawer all the cases in which smart drugs failed. Warning Sign I3: Ignoring Other Sources of Bias The smart drug promoters make no effort to subject smart drug claims to the statistical tests that in recent years have revealed many incorrect claims in published scientific literature on other subjects. Because the smart drug claim is an extraordinary claim, smart drug promoters should produce extraordinary evidence to back up the claim. I'll skip Norvig's next warning sign, as the following one Warning Sign I5: Taking p too Seriously is more relevant for the claims here. There is NO indication that smart drugs have any real-world significance (in other words, that people actually live smarter lives after taking them) as contrasted with claimed (but unreported here) instances of the drugs having "statistically significant" effects. The last few checklist items on Norvig's checklist http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html are also worth looking at in connection with claims about smart drugs. To sum up, I am willing to do a mental test (memory, or IQ, as the smart drug promoter chooses) duel with anyone who claims that smart drugs have helped him become smarter. I don't believe it, because I don't think there is sufficient evidence to back up that extraordinary claim. If anyone wants to set up the duel, we should each choose "seconds" to negotiate the terms of the mental test duel. I would, of course, insist on a series of STANDARDIZED mental tests administered by a psychologist with a lot of clinical experience. I don't expect any user of smart drugs to win such a duel. AFTER EDIT: Responding to the first two replies received, there are standard methods in statistics for estimating adequate sample sizes based on expected effect size of the intervention. There isn't any one best sample size that fits all experimental studies, but a careful experimenter will calculate what sample size is large enough to maximize likelihood of meaningful results (statistical power) while minimizing the expense of gathering lots of subjects for the experiment. My proposal for a duel is, of course, a sample size of 1 plus the number of smart drug users who come forth to take the duel, and has other problems as a data-gathering measure, but I offer the duel to illustrate that I think that anyone can improve in smarts, for any real-world purpose, in a lot of ways that are better than taking poorly understood drugs pushed by smart drug hucksters.
notJim 14y ago
Very heartening to see the skeptical reaction this article is receiving here.
narrator 14y ago
I think the whole idea of nootropics goes against what I call the "American ideology". The "American Ideology" being that anyone can do anything they just have to try. If you can cognitively enhance yourself and become more successful then that proves that there's some things some people can't do because they are just not smart enough and that realization is enough to activate full blown cognitive dissonance. People think, "this must be cheating!", "this must be dangerous!", "this must be addictive!", "why isn't everybody else doing it?".
31reasons 14y ago
The best smart "drug" you can take is Omega-3. 90% of the population is deficient in it. Its also the #1 supplement to control ADHD.
kgosser 14y ago
At first, I thought this was relating to Lower Dens (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyxzjF8IjE8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyxzjF8IjE8)
Rickasaurus 14y ago
I've been taking piracetam with choline twice daily for about 5 years now. It's not very profound, just lets you think a little harder for a little longer. In R&D that can mean a lot though. The downside is it interacts with stimulants. Too much coffee and you'll be running to the bathroom. Just something to keep in mind.
bshock 14y ago
While I'm suspicious of the unsupported, anecdotal assertions in this article, I'm also confused by the author's use of the phrases "water soluble" and "fat soluble." For instance, he states about Piracetam that "Being water soluble, it has a long half life in the system, but can take up to 6 weeks of daily dosing before full effects are apparent." And about Aniracetam, "A fat soluble racetam, meaning it is fast acting." It's been several decades since I studied biochemistry, but I seem to recall exactly the opposite -- water-soluble substances were filtered out of the body through the kidneys with relative rapidity, while fat-soluble substances needed to be metabolized by the liver and tended to hang around quite a while. I just ran a very superficial web search on this topic, and found that the popular literature on vitamins and supplements seems to agree with my interpretation. I'm a software engineer, not a biochemist, and I've read about some fairly tortuous biochemical pathways that turn what seem to be chemical likelihoods on their heads, so I could very easily be wrong in regard to nootropic substances. But if I'm not, isn't this basic error a warning sign that the author might be mistaken in other basic ways as well?
desireco42 14y ago
I started experimenting with nootropics maybe year ago. There are some interesting effects. I still have to get something that would impress me. Claims that modafinil creates addiction, not true, it seems that same guy is going on forums and spreading those rumors. Anyhow, just wanted to say I am for it, but be reasonable. However, you should also know, that it is much easier to get a lot of effects just by using things that are easily accesible to us: * exercise or even walk (like 45 mins) * coffee (obviously, unfortunately doesn't work for me) * tea, green tea, yerba mate, others (amazing and powerful effects) * music - trance or classical work really well * binaural beats - also work exceptionally well, for focus and for creativity, idea generation * meditation (goes with the one above) So what I am trying to say, there are a lot of ways how we can boost our intellects. Let's not forget really enjoyable ones like green tea for example.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  I find that cutting my soda (and thus my sugar) intake out completely makes a huge difference in my ability to think clearly for extended periods. Dunno why, might even be placebo effect, but I noticed the effect before I made the connection to the cause.
- te0x 14y ago
  Well, I see no reason not to use all of the above in conjunction with nootropics.
  - desireco42 14y ago
    I agree.

191 points by cbarnsdale 14y ago

[Taking stimulants] can, over time, permanently impair your mental faculties. Does anyone have citations for that claim? (Any non-anecdotal evidence.)

maxerickson 14y ago
It isn't an obscure claim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis
- sillysaurus 14y ago
  Hey, thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Stimulant psychosis is unrelated to long-term permanent cognitive impairment; it's temporary, for example. I was hoping to find out more about the medical basis for the "permanent gradual decline of mental abilities" assertion, because it seems hard to believe that our current knowledge of the human brain is sufficient to make such a broad claim with any degree of accuracy.
  - maxerickson 14y ago
    Well, the page does say "However it has been suggested that about 5–15% of users fail to make a complete recovery from the psychosis in the long term." And there are other statements suggesting that people that have suffered from acute psychosis are prone to relapses (if a chronic user has more problems than a dabbler, that at least suggests accumulated damage).

mthreat 14y ago

Someone should do an "Ask PG: Have you ever used "smart drugs"?

Symmetry 14y ago

I think that the /r/nootropics FAQ has a lot of good related information, including links to scientific papers. http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/nootropics http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/nootropics

powermeat 14y ago
And affiliate links where you can buy.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  I see no such thing.

ImJasonH 14y ago

I can't believe we're calling them "smart drugs" if they don't even take the opportunity to overuse the ümlaut...

plantain 14y ago

There may be places out there to find reliable information on the efficacy and safety of prescription medication taken off-label, but a guest post from a seller of them certainly is not one.

matznerd 14y ago
Unfortunately, companies are not legally allowed to discuss or mention in their marketing materials the "Nootropic" effects of these substances due to the FDA. This pushes a lot of the reliable information regarding Nootropics into forums and other areas on the internet. It is pretty interesting to see the communities that thrive around Nootropics. Just trying to learn the basics and build a stack, I have spent hundreds of hours researching.
Alex3917 14y ago
Actually the good news is that it should actually be easier to find research on these drugs than your standard drugs because they're not being tested by big pharma, which means there should be much less of a file drawer effect. That said, you'd have to be kind of dumb to think that you can improve your brain function by taking the same cocktail of drugs every day. Taking low doses of different stuff on an intermittent basis, maybe, but hammering the same receptors day in and day out and expecting some sort of longterm benefit is extremely naive.
- forensic 14y ago
  why does it work with caffeine?
  - Alex3917 14y ago
    There are a number of different possible answers to that question. One answer is that it doesn't, it just feels like it does. And if you look at studies of people who are caffeine dependent, they're not actually are more alert after drinking a cup of coffee than people who aren't caffeine dependent and don't drink coffee. The other answer is that if you're using caffeine from plants then you're getting a different dose each day, and if you're not taking a lot and you're not doing it every day then tolerance will be less of an issue. Also, caffeine breaks down into multiple separate drugs when digested so that may also have some impact on tolerance.

kilian 14y ago

As someone whose diet is already high in eggs, meat etc. (paleo) I wonder how much effect this has. I am asking this because both fish oil supplements and magnesium supplements don't seem to have any additional beneficial effect on me. Anyone have experience with that?

billswift 14y ago
As the post admitted, few supplements have benefit once you are eating a well-balanced diet. As he put it, "these are best used to fill any deficiencies." Though it is sad to see what amounts to an infomercial voted up to the number 2 spot on HN. Added: Now it's made the top post.
- illuminate 14y ago
  The claim that "90% of people are deficient" is certainly suspect, considering that admission.
_feda_ 14y ago
I've been taking cod liver oil, ginseng, and multivitamin (vitamin A through D, thiamin etc.) for the past month or so along with a pretty healthy and substantial vegetarian diet. I couldn't say if it's benefited me or not because the effect seems so slight that it could only be measured with some pretty detailed self-tracking. I'll be trying Neurozan (http://www.vitabiotics.com/Neurozan/ http://www.vitabiotics.com/Neurozan/) in the next few weeks.
- driverdan 14y ago
  It contains iron which immediately flags it as garbage. Males should not supplement iron unless directed to do so by a doctor. Unless you donate blood regularly it can build up in your body.

stephengillie 14y ago

Unlike in athletics, academics isn’t necessarily a zero sum game. While in a race there is necessarily a winner and a loser, nobody in academics is held back if another student is better able to retain their information. No, but the doped student's advantage could cause her to be selected over another (undoped) student in college entrance exams, program entrance exams, and other educational competitions. Does this mean we'll soon see articles about how the Ivy League and most hacker dens dope more than the Tour de France?

matznerd 14y ago
There are already many students who are prescribed Ritalin, Concerta, Adderal etc, and these drugs give those students an unfair edge. How are normal students supposed to compete with their peers who are on amphetamines?
- trafnar 14y ago
  Why should learning be a competition?
  - forensic 14y ago
    I didn't create the world, I just have to live in it.
makmanalp 14y ago
> A study in Nature found that an average of 7% (with a range up to 25%) of US college students have used a nootropic at some point in their careers. http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/06/should-students-be-tested-for-brain-enhancing-drugs/ http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/06/should-students-be-test... What would you bet that ivys have a higher rate than average too? :)
- ConceptJunkie 14y ago
  Seeing as how the article considers (and rightly so) caffeine as a nootropic, I'd say the numbers are probably more like 70% rather than 7%.

peteretep 14y ago

[citation needed]

crntaylor 14y ago

Potentially relevant - Johann Hari's article in HuffPost about his experiment with Provigil (aka Modafinil). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/my-experiment-with-smart_b_156954.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/my-experiment-with...

logn 14y ago
Some poker players have been talking about this one too to boost their performance. http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/20/science/sci-braindoping20 http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/20/science/sci-braindop... http://groanblog.livejournal.com/865.html http://groanblog.livejournal.com/865.html I've read elsewhere that it can be addictive. Also, the LA Time article discusses Inderal, a beta-blocker which could be considered a smart drug since it eases nerves by reducing adrenaline rushes (no more shaky hands or pounding heart). Might be helpful to the hacker community if you're stricken by nerves working on a tight deadline.
- elemeno 14y ago
  Everything I've read about Modafinil suggests that it's not addictive - for everything being Wikipedia along with some other sites which I don't recall off the top of my head (it was about six months ago when I did any research about it). It's a lovely little thing though, very nice clean focused sensation coupled with a lack of tiredness.
  - acuozzo 14y ago
    > Everything I've read about Modafinil suggests that it's not addictive - for everything being Wikipedia along with some other sites which I don't recall off the top of my head (it was about six months ago when I did any research about it). It's probably not addictive, but what if you become addicted to the lifestyle it makes possible?
    - dedward 14y ago
      Well, there's a difference between things you don't want to give up, and things you can't give up because you'll get sick as a dog, and/or require hospitalization and maybe die.

crisnoble 14y ago

I only have one question, can I get some links to buy these?

crisnoble 14y ago
Reddit pulled through on this one: http://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/search?q=buy&restrict_sr=on http://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/search?q=buy&restrict...

ScottAS 14y ago

It's too bad that this reads like spam. Anyone care to share links to legitimate research?

ggwicz 14y ago
There are a lot of shitty survey-type studies, but there is some good mechanistic research you can turn up just by searching the specific chemical names on Pubmed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed)

jonnathanson 14y ago

A word of caution about vasodilators: I've seen them touted more and more frequently by nootropics enthusiasts, as though they're completely harmless. This is not necessarily true. Blood pressure is a very meticulously regulated process in the body, with countless chemicals, hormones, and other endogenous signals in the mix. It's entirely possible, if uncommon, to overdose when self-administering vasodilating drugs. A lot of vasodilators work by ionically tweaking the fluid retention of the kidneys, which, if thrown out of whack, can lead to all sorts of not-so-fun problems. In general, be careful when messing with your blood vessels, or with any drugs that change the ionic balance of your bloodstream. The other thing I'd say is TANSTAAFL. Generally speaking, when you're upregulating one process or chemical in the body, you're downregulating another process or chemical. If you're not sure what's being ramped up, and what's being ramped down -- or, even scarier, if science doesn't quite know yet -- then proceed with a tiny bit of caution. I don't mean to dump cold water on the idea of nootropics. Some of them seem pretty harmless. Some of them may indeed have a net benefit. Others...perhaps, but the jury's still out. In the meantime, I guess I am hesitant to treat my body like a lab experiment. Especially when there are so many proven, healthy, effective ways to enhance cognition. Such as exercise and study.

Alex3917 14y ago
"The other thing I'd say is TANSTAAFL. Generally speaking, when you're upregulating one process or chemical in the body, you're downregulating another process or chemical. If you're not sure what's being ramped up, and what's being ramped down -- or, even scarier, if science doesn't quite know yet -- then proceed with a tiny bit of caution." This is why the first rule of drug use is 'rotate your receptors'. In general, the most important thing to know about longterm use of any psychoactive substance is that you can never win. At best, if you're really well educated, you can break even in a way that's slightly preferable to you. But most people can't even manage that.
possibilistic 14y ago
As someone hoping to enter a systems metabolomics program next year, let me simplify your statement: If you do this, you're messing with high-order, nonlinear dynamics. Does anyone really trust themselves to dose that properly? They had better be a trained medicinal chemist with great skill at solving PDEs. I also doubt the average enthusiast is set up to run HPLC to measure and model various critical metabolite concentrations and their change over time.

aelaguiz 14y ago

The article is really interesting, but I can't help but be suspicious of the data (opinion) contained within. The expert used in the article is John Holcomb, who owns a supplement e-commerce site. I can't find anything on his site that talks about his qualifications or any hard facts to back up most of this. I'm really interested in nootropics and increasing mental efficacy - but there is no shortage of snake-oil vendors out there, some of whom are undoubtedly taking advantage of the boom in interest for these drugs. This makes me very leery about accepting this information. Particularly the section on Racetams and how there are so many of them that can be tried safely in combination or by themselves. With this awesome line: "The one caveat with racetams: from a wealth of anecdotes about a third of the population is non-responsive or only mildly responsive to one or more types, and about a third are high responders that can experience spectacular results. " Which sounds awesome to me, if I make money by selling these supplements. Basically - you may not experience any effects until you hit the right combination so keep buying them and trying them until you do and eventually you too could be a genius. Is it like some sort of intelligence enhancing slot machine? I wish I could believe this stuff was effective. Someone please tell me I'm crazy and that he's right and for $20/bottle I can be slightly less dumb?

matznerd 14y ago
Most of what John Holcomb says is pretty true. He is involved in a company that sells supplements. Brainpower Nutriceuticals is a new company that comes from his former company, Cerebral Health. Cerebral Health is well known in the Nootropic community as a good, honest, and safe supplier of many different substances. I have used them as a piracetam source before. He really does little to sell his products in his article and discusses what is already common knowledge to even beginners interested in Nootropics. Being an outsider on the topic, I can see how this may come off as sketchy, but the truth is that the Racetams, as well as any drug, have different effects on different people. If you want to get into Nootropics, you will need to do a little experimenting and a lot of research. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all stack or supplement regiment, but when you hit it right, you will notice a difference. You won't be a genius, but you can remove what is called "mental fog," a condition that you rarely known you have until it is gone.
14y ago

gubatron 14y ago

"it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!" fail. I hope you can code in something else than javascript. We have to DEAL with Javascript on the browser because browser vendors haven't bothered supporting other more superior languages, wouldn't it be nice to have type="text/python", type="text/ruby" as options, have threads, native datatypes, real OO, logical variable scoping, better numeric precision and all the things that javascript was not meant for? I hope more big time CEOs come out and say that not everything is meant to be written with HTML5. It's like we're raising a generation of moronic programmers with all this HTML5 hype.

ConceptJunkie 14y ago
Is this generation any different than the generation of moronic programmers raised on Java?

Tooluka 14y ago

> No one talks about this stuff! Yeah, right. Probably in some other internet. You can't find a site today where there they weren't discussed at least once. Personally I won't take them without prescription from a doctor. Yes, downsides are pretty obscure and rare but the same are benefits. Based on reviews they are not some magic pills like in Limitless. Closer to placebo actually.

matznerd 14y ago
They are not some magic drug like Limitless, but they are closer to that than to placebos. Do you not notice a difference in your mental and physical state when you take caffeine? Caffeine is a Nootropic and it works, but Caffeine is just the tip of the iceberg.
- Tooluka 14y ago
  For me caffeine is also closer to a placebo (I do know that it works, just weakly and randomly for different people). The major positive effect of it I think is drinking 100-200ml of hot drink. I feel the same after drinking coffee or any tea or some cacao mix by nestle. Drinking water a lot is very helpful for human brain, especially in cold and arid offices where we mostly sit without moving.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
KVFinn 14y ago
>No one talks about this stuff! I literally LOL'd at that. You can't throw a stick without hitting a bunch of college students obsessing about this stuff. Is this guy even on the internet?

ryeguy 14y ago

Some helpful links: http://examine.com http://examine.com is an excellent, unbiased, citation-oriented database of supplements and nutrition information. Reddit also has a nootropics subreddit: http://reddit.com/r/nootropics http://reddit.com/r/nootropics.

gaunab 14y ago

Here's a thread on Bluelight on Nootropics, usage, dose and reports on their effects that I found quite informative: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/206147-Aniracetam-holy-crap-does-it-work http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/206147-Aniracetam-holy-cr...!

paborden 14y ago

Please, please, please ... Be careful with Nootropics. I'm a bit of a consciousness-naut and self-experimenter who's obsessed about increasing productivity. I've experimented a lot with Nootropics. My thoughts? Modafinil. Stay away from it. The stuff is wickedly addictive and many people have experienced significant long-term side effects, especially if they try to go off it. Piracetam. Does a lot to reduce ADD and has strong anti-anxiety properties. That said, I found the benefits (minimally increased focus and less anxiety) to be far outweighed by the fact that you have to keep taking the stuff obsessively lest you go into withdrawal (coming off the stuff is horrible once you've been on it for a couple weeks). If you want to increase productivity and focus there are a ton of other things you can do, starting with the basics of exercise, proper nutrition, and meditation.

acuozzo 14y ago
> If you want to increase productivity and focus there are a ton of other things you can do, starting with the basics of exercise, proper nutrition, and meditation. ... and what do you do when all of that's already taken care of?
- mahyarm 14y ago
  Get 8 hours of sleep a day. I bet that can be somewhat difficult for a typical HN reader.
driverdan 14y ago
AFAIK there hasn't been any research into this but from the many anecdotes I've read it seems Modafinil may be addictive for people with a certain brain chemistry, the same type of people who are highly susceptible to cocaine abuse. The vast majority of users don't report addiction.
mistercow 14y ago
>Modafinil. Stay away from it. The stuff is wickedly addictive and many people have experienced significant long-term side effects, especially if they try to go off it. I have known quite a number of people who have taken modafinil, and none of them experienced more than minor side effects. I have several friends who stopped using it for long periods because they built a tolerance (tolerance != addiction), but none experienced withdrawal symptoms. I used adrafinil for a while because it has the advantage of being unscheduled in the US, and I noticed weak tolerance building, but the only side effects I had were insomnia (while it was in effect) and mild headaches which went away with aspirin. The only reason I stopped taking it was that they revoked its approval in France, and none of the generics from other countries that I've found seem to work.

tokenadult 14y ago

The article begins with "It’s a lengthy read, but don’t let the wall of text dissuade you." That's scary right there. Anyone who is scared off by this short, popular fluff piece needs a lot of help in reading (or is not a native speaker of English). To learn to read a piece like this thoughtfully and critically mostly takes practice in reading, not the latest "smart drug." I've been hearing people tout smart drugs for as long as I have been involved in online discussions (since 1992), and I have never seen any evidence of regular users of smart drugs doing anything smart. Let's learn from how an indisputably smart person (LISP hacker and genuine NASA rocket scientist Peter Norvig, now Google's director of research) approaches claims of a new wonder drug. He writes of "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html in a free online article that is also a wall of text, but which any Hacker News reader could read and apply to become more smart in day-by-day life. We can learn together by comparing the popular article kindly submitted here to the checklist of warning signs provided by Peter Norvig. Warning Sign D1: Lack of a Randomized Controlled Trial The article about "smart drugs" submitted here doesn't cite any scientific literature from any country and makes no reference to results from randomized, controlled trials. As another participant here has already pointed out in a smart comment, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4516111 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4516111 the author of the article's main text is in the business of selling smart drugs. He is not a neutral, objective source of information on the subject. He doesn't seem willing to share his evidence base for his claims, perhaps because he has none. Warning Sign D2: Lack of Double-Blind Studies The author refers to people taking various drugs while being aware of what they are taking, which skews their recollection of their performance and very likely results in invalid recollections. Most SCIENTIFIC studies of mental performance interventions are careful to be "double blind" and to have neither the subject nor the experimenter aware of which subject received the studied intervention and which received a sham intervention. And such studies have careful tests of mental performance (working memory, IQ, or the like). The article here is mere advertising puffery by comparison. Warning Sign D3: Too Few Subjects The author advertising smart drugs doesn't describe any careful studies, so of course he doesn't mention the number of subjects in any studies. Most so-called studies of smart drugs have been far too small to have any statistical power. Warning Sign D4: The Wrong Subjects People voluntarily self-administering smart drugs are VERY likely not a representative sample of the general population. If some people self-report that they became smarter after using the drugs (do their friends and relatives agree?), that by no means shows that most people will be better off if they take the drugs. Random assignment to the treatment condition from among a representative sample is necessary to show that the drugs have any general or consistent benefit. Warning Sign D5: The Wrong Questions Most of the supposed tests of smart drugs appear to use mere user self-reports rather than standardized measures of mental performance that show up in the scientific literature on psychology. Simply put, no high-quality treatise on human intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige... has ever reported that smart drugs are good for anything. Warning Sign D6: The Wrong Statistics Again, most statements about smart drugs found online have no statistics at all. In any event, what studies there have been about smart drugs that use the language of statistical analysis have mostly been very amateurish in their statistical approach. Warning Sign D7: Lack of a Specific Hypothesis, or Overzealous Data Mining Before the user begins taking a smart drug, is the expected effect "creativity," or "memory" or cognition, or what? The article, by its incoherence in grouping drugs by their supposed effects, shows that most of the time people who have sunk money into smart drugs are expected to imagine their own benefits, and will, to avoid embarrassment at being snookered. Warning Sign D8: Lack of a Theory The human brain is a very complicated biological system, with many feedback loops, and so far there is no mainstream theory of neurophysiology (a topic with MANY investigators all over the world) that suggests simple chemical interventions to produce long-term improvement in any aspect of mental performance. Warning Sign D9: Lack of controls It's not clear in the smart drug promotional literature even what should be controlled if there were a controlled trial of smart drugs. The smart drug promoters are not making enough effort to contrast taking smart drugs with other interventions (say, learning to read more challenging reading material by practice) that likely have better impact on long-term mental performance. Warning Sign I1: Lacking Repeatability and Reproducibility The author basically acknowledges that many smart drugs have results that are not reproducible reliably. Warning Sign I2: Ignoring Publication Bias Because smart drug trials are not announced in advance in publicly readable databases, every person selling smart drugs gets to announce unverifiable anecdotes while hiding in the file drawer all the cases in which smart drugs failed. Warning Sign I3: Ignoring Other Sources of Bias The smart drug promoters make no effort to subject smart drug claims to the statistical tests that in recent years have revealed many incorrect claims in published scientific literature on other subjects. Because the smart drug claim is an extraordinary claim, smart drug promoters should produce extraordinary evidence to back up the claim. I'll skip Norvig's next warning sign, as the following one Warning Sign I5: Taking p too Seriously is more relevant for the claims here. There is NO indication that smart drugs have any real-world significance (in other words, that people actually live smarter lives after taking them) as contrasted with claimed (but unreported here) instances of the drugs having "statistically significant" effects. The last few checklist items on Norvig's checklist http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html are also worth looking at in connection with claims about smart drugs. To sum up, I am willing to do a mental test (memory, or IQ, as the smart drug promoter chooses) duel with anyone who claims that smart drugs have helped him become smarter. I don't believe it, because I don't think there is sufficient evidence to back up that extraordinary claim. If anyone wants to set up the duel, we should each choose "seconds" to negotiate the terms of the mental test duel. I would, of course, insist on a series of STANDARDIZED mental tests administered by a psychologist with a lot of clinical experience. I don't expect any user of smart drugs to win such a duel. AFTER EDIT: Responding to the first two replies received, there are standard methods in statistics for estimating adequate sample sizes based on expected effect size of the intervention. There isn't any one best sample size that fits all experimental studies, but a careful experimenter will calculate what sample size is large enough to maximize likelihood of meaningful results (statistical power) while minimizing the expense of gathering lots of subjects for the experiment. My proposal for a duel is, of course, a sample size of 1 plus the number of smart drug users who come forth to take the duel, and has other problems as a data-gathering measure, but I offer the duel to illustrate that I think that anyone can improve in smarts, for any real-world purpose, in a lot of ways that are better than taking poorly understood drugs pushed by smart drug hucksters.

notJim 14y ago

Very heartening to see the skeptical reaction this article is receiving here.

narrator 14y ago

I think the whole idea of nootropics goes against what I call the "American ideology". The "American Ideology" being that anyone can do anything they just have to try. If you can cognitively enhance yourself and become more successful then that proves that there's some things some people can't do because they are just not smart enough and that realization is enough to activate full blown cognitive dissonance. People think, "this must be cheating!", "this must be dangerous!", "this must be addictive!", "why isn't everybody else doing it?".

31reasons 14y ago

The best smart "drug" you can take is Omega-3. 90% of the population is deficient in it. Its also the #1 supplement to control ADHD.

kgosser 14y ago

At first, I thought this was relating to Lower Dens (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyxzjF8IjE8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyxzjF8IjE8)

Rickasaurus 14y ago

I've been taking piracetam with choline twice daily for about 5 years now. It's not very profound, just lets you think a little harder for a little longer. In R&D that can mean a lot though. The downside is it interacts with stimulants. Too much coffee and you'll be running to the bathroom. Just something to keep in mind.

bshock 14y ago

While I'm suspicious of the unsupported, anecdotal assertions in this article, I'm also confused by the author's use of the phrases "water soluble" and "fat soluble." For instance, he states about Piracetam that "Being water soluble, it has a long half life in the system, but can take up to 6 weeks of daily dosing before full effects are apparent." And about Aniracetam, "A fat soluble racetam, meaning it is fast acting." It's been several decades since I studied biochemistry, but I seem to recall exactly the opposite -- water-soluble substances were filtered out of the body through the kidneys with relative rapidity, while fat-soluble substances needed to be metabolized by the liver and tended to hang around quite a while. I just ran a very superficial web search on this topic, and found that the popular literature on vitamins and supplements seems to agree with my interpretation. I'm a software engineer, not a biochemist, and I've read about some fairly tortuous biochemical pathways that turn what seem to be chemical likelihoods on their heads, so I could very easily be wrong in regard to nootropic substances. But if I'm not, isn't this basic error a warning sign that the author might be mistaken in other basic ways as well?

desireco42 14y ago

I started experimenting with nootropics maybe year ago. There are some interesting effects. I still have to get something that would impress me. Claims that modafinil creates addiction, not true, it seems that same guy is going on forums and spreading those rumors. Anyhow, just wanted to say I am for it, but be reasonable. However, you should also know, that it is much easier to get a lot of effects just by using things that are easily accesible to us: * exercise or even walk (like 45 mins) * coffee (obviously, unfortunately doesn't work for me) * tea, green tea, yerba mate, others (amazing and powerful effects) * music - trance or classical work really well * binaural beats - also work exceptionally well, for focus and for creativity, idea generation * meditation (goes with the one above) So what I am trying to say, there are a lot of ways how we can boost our intellects. Let's not forget really enjoyable ones like green tea for example.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
I find that cutting my soda (and thus my sugar) intake out completely makes a huge difference in my ability to think clearly for extended periods. Dunno why, might even be placebo effect, but I noticed the effect before I made the connection to the cause.
te0x 14y ago
Well, I see no reason not to use all of the above in conjunction with nootropics.
- desireco42 14y ago
  I agree.