Anyone ever used nootropics, like any from the racetam family? I feel like my mind is fairly sharp, ie i'm fairly intelligent but sometimes i think a boost in mental capability would be useful. Usually, in these circumstances i use caffeine to boost my alertness but i would like to experiment with some actual nootropic drugs (is caffeine nootropic?). I would like to achieve improvements in working memory, and easier ability to between levels of abstraction without getting lost. some of the nootropics that interest me the most are not from the racetam family, i've also read that stacking certain nootropics with certain others can result in a greater improvement in cognitive function than either on their own. pramiracetam i've read, is highly effective, maybe even the most powerful from the racetam family so would be an racetam to use in a stack, although it's cost compared to other racetams (and other nootropics in general) diminishes my interest in that one in particular (pramiracetam) noopept is possibly one that i'm the most interested in, maybe I should go with this or stack it with a racetam, or soemthing else? i understand that different classes of nootropics have different mechanisms in the brain to produce the effect and that certain ones can compliment each other because of this. i also have read that acetylcholine can become depleted after supplementation with certain nootropics sometimes which can cause side effects which can be offset by stacking with a choline source (or other nootropic that produces it's nootropic effect by introducing a (acetyl)choline source. i know some of them can produce tolerance, and i'd like to avoid the ones that produce the most tolerance for obvious reasons. i'm not sure where to start, but i'd like to. should i just pick one and try out, then stack maybe stack other stuff onto it that would compliment its effects? stimulants (especially amphetamines) greatly increase mental productivity, but they have side effects that aren't always desirable. speed makes you go fast, so you can get more done, but nootropics i'd like to think of as like an engine running at low RPM but with a lot of torque, capable of performing just as much work as the fast engine but with lower risk of flying apart.
I've tried piracetam + choline. I found that its effect was noticeable after a few days, but I did not find it very helpful for mental work. It made me feel smarter and sharper, but it didn't seem to translate into real abilities. I found that it made me overconfident. When I studied, I would feel like I understood everything, but I would be careless and make mistakes. Piracetam works really well for a lot of people, but I've had a few friends who became manic while they took it, especially people with bipolar or schizotypical tendancies.
I've used Piracetam, I enjoyed it and have actually been looking to get some more but I can't find it for the price that I used to buy it at. I'm fairly certain we've discussed this before, I found Piracetam to have a subtle dissociative feel, not really consciousness altering but provides a calm, relaxed headspace and a slight social disinhibition that is suitable for like a work environment. There was some tolerance which built up after a few days but it didn't seem any more significant than other drugs used on a daily basis. I would consider caffeine a nootropic but unlike caffeine which can produce a crash of sorts, I experienced no negative effects from piracetam.
i remember you telling me that. you mentioned that it was to dissociatives somewhat like what caffeine is to amphetamines. i find that dissociatives highly impair working memory. obviously nootropics would have a positive effect on memory i would assume. apparently the method of action of the racetam family does involve ampa and nmda receptors so it's not surprising that you would recognize the effects as familiar. i'm thinking of maybe trying noopept or one of the racetams like piracetam. i read that there are much more effective choline sources that are more effective that actual choline such as alpha GPC. i've also read that in a study involving piracetame it took like a week or 2 before there were measurable improvements in cognitive function according to the study it has cumulative effects. phenylpiracetam sounds interesting, and a website i found that sells all sorts of nootropics states that it is 30-60 times more potent that piracetam, also way more expensive too ($70 for 10g). i get kinda hung up on so many different choices.
Yep, The comparison to dissociatives is only a surface comparison, piracetam is like being at an initial alerts phase of a dissociative experience for the whole duration. I have a good memory as is and didn't pick up on any significant boosts in cognitive functioning in that department. The acute affects were what I found beneficial, I tend to over think things and the piracetam quieted my mind, made me feel more comfortable in my environment, had a slight anti-depressive effect and thus enhanced my productivity. I am interested in how some of the other racetams are as well, update us on how it workouts for you.
i just ordered some noopept and some phenylpiracetam as well as a scoop from the site you told me about. i saw that they accept bitcoin too so i paid with BTC. now that i come to think of it, it does seem like i did try piracetam one time probably 10 years ago and just now can remember that i think that's what it was. iirc it was crystally and tasted pretty bad. i did buy this drink at vitamin shoppe today that listed piracetam as one of the ingredients as well as some other supplements though i doubt the piracetam dose was a large dose (it didn't list the dosage in it). i did definitely feel different pretty quickly after drinking it, and yes it did feel like the feeling you get when you first start to notice a dissociative taking effect. not sure which i'll start with first (noopept or phenylpiracetam), i'm tempted to take them both but should probably start with one or the other so i can judge the effects individually. also thinking about possibly getting some adrafinil for energy/alertness/motivation the next time i order something. adrafinil is like another version of modafinil (provigil), it's a wakefulness promoting agent, but it's not an amphetamine or like caffeine either, it has a different mechanism of action. i'll post the effects when i receive it. i've read some reports of noopept having like an HD vision effect and just enhanced perception in general though not everyone experieces that. that effect also seems common with coluracetam.
okay, received 10g of Noopept and 2.5g of phenylpiracetam. i must have overlooked the fact that each nootropic would come with a scoop and ordered a $1.00 scoop so ended up receiving 3 very tiny scoops which resemble a teaspoon measuring spoon like you would use for cooking, except the spoon end of it is very tiny, about the size that a BB would fit in the end of it. on the site i ordered from it states that it holds 12-15 mg depending on powder density but elsewhere i read that for Noopept that these hold 3-5 mg. I took a CDP choline capsule before dosing any of these to increase the acetylcholine level in my brain. i started with the Noopept, and measured out 2 heaping scoops and placed the powder under my tongue. the taste is not bad, so long as it stays under my tongue where there are no tastebuds, otherwise it tastes bad, but not unbearable, similar to the taste of some phenethylamine psychedelics such as 2c-i. The powder itself sorta looks like 2c-i actually. i waited probably 15 minutes and wasn't sure if i was feeling anything, but felt like i felt "different" or at the threshhold of something. It could have been placebo effect but i felt like it wasn't. At that point i decided to try the phenylpiracetam. Since i can't find my scale i eyeballed 100mg which could have been way off and put it in a capsule. I took the capsule right before i ate a meal. By the time i was done eating, i started to feel different again, and i'm not sure if this was the noopept kicking in, or the phenylpiracetam. Now i'm going to fastforward to when it was undeniable that i was on it.... I took 100mg of caffeine somewhere after it started, and then 100mg more caffeine a little later. Both times the caffeine seemed to be a lot more strong than it usually would, as well as really set off the effect of the nootropics. The feeling i got from the nootropics was a very clear head, as well as a fairly strong stimulation that borders on an amphetamine comeup. It isn't "tweaky" like amphetamines tho, it's very clean and calm, i think the caffeine is responsible for most of the stimulation but the nootropics caused me to be able to focus on a problem for a lot longer without my mind getting "burned out" and fatigued. Some problems can still result in me being completely stumped, but I was able to work on these and not feel as frustrated as i normally would. Normally when i get to that point of being stumped, eventually my mind will get fatigued and I have to take a break or else i just make it worse and worse. I was doing an excersise where i wrote some code that implemented my own version of some string manipulation functions in the C standard library. I hit a point where I was absolutely stumped by the behavior and would probalby normally get fatigued, frustrated and most likely just make the problem worse until the code became so bad i had to rewrite the entire thing. I seemed to have a lot more endurance, when i got stumped i was able to continue and think the entire process through instead of adding more conditions and variables to try and create some kind of shitty hack that would make it work (that normally just digs a deeper hole). I don't think i could go to sleep right now, the stimulation i'm feeling is actually going pretty strong. I will say that it's not like amphetamines which have the effect of producing this hyper-intense focus, where you micro-scrutinize something and put the problem under a microscope and keep zooming in, but are uncapable of stepping back and looking at the big picture. This is something i normally do anyway at times, just normally my mind gets fatigued at a point and i can't go too far with that. On this combo, i seem to still be able to see the big picture and not obsessibely analyze .... like i said, it's a clean type of stimulation but i don't feel like i'm really "tweaking". I'm fairly certain that the caffeine is responsible for a good deal of the stimulation, and that all of the are synergistic, potentiating each other. Normally however, caffeine on it's own isn't that mentally stimulating as this is, physically stimulating and stimulating in a way that reduced the feeling of physical tiredness but doesn't increase my mental endurance in the way this does. It's too early too say much more about the individual effects of phenylpiracetam vs noopept, I can tell a difference but since i haven't tried each one completely on it's own anything i said at this point might not be accurate.
Initial impressions of oxiracetam: All my doses have been eyeballed. I initially tested ~400 mgs in combination with a soda. Compared to Piracetam, this stuff tastes WAY better! I'd go so far to say that strictly based on taste, I would consider using it as a sweetner for foods, however I cannot really gauge how this stuff metabolizes with food yet and what not. During the initial alerts, I was impressed. There was a light push towards euphoria, a serene feeling which was not overwhelming yet had me excited to where this might lead. I practiced some basic computer programming and noted some things in regards to a project that I am working on. When I got into a public environment, I found the oxiracetam let me down. The oxiracetam didn't seem as effective as Piracetam in diminishing social anxiety and I even felt foggy headed at some points, like I wasn't able to efficiently process social interactions with the details of my work. I felt more compelled to talk but at the same time slightly out of it. In one instance, I recalled a series of numbers more effectively than I think I would have had I not otherwise taken the oxiracetam, however I made a couple errors as well when it came more to spatial awareness, which I don't think I would have made not on the stuff. It's difficult to distinguish these chems in a sense because the affects are rather mild, so I find myself contemplating whether the drug actually caters to a particular sphere of mental processing or it's just my mind happens to be captured by the particular effect. Oxiracetam seems decent for working on personal activities which don't involve a bunch of full range motor activity. Piracetam seemed quite a bit better as anti-depressant and for social situations. I also seemed to more easily use some of this guys techniques on oxiracetam, who I've seen on Brain Games: http://youtu.be/ZU4EiYJ71dE http://youtu.be/oY6DznRX6L0
I have read reports of other people claiming that oxiracetam had a pleasant taste. Maybe they should start using that as an artificial sweetener in diet soda and such things, boosting the intelligence of the general population would not be a bad thing. I'm not sure i can quite pin down the difference between noopept and phenylpiracetam, as you said the effects are quite subtle but definitely noticeable. I often combine the two, but not every time because phenylpiracetam apparently builds tolerance more quickly than noopept. Not sure about noopept and tolerance, i have heard that it does, but also seem claims that it can still have beneficial effects if taken every day. I would like to find a racetam that I can use as the base of a stack that's okay to take every day. From the research i have done piracetam is the only one that should be taken every day, and that the others all build tolerance and should be cycled to prevent tolerance from getting too high. Of course this is all anecdotal evidence. I find the effects of caffeine to be greatly potentiated while on either noopept or phenylpiracetam. The effect is so strong that anything over 100mg of caffeine risks turning into a meth type stimulation without the euphoria, and this level of stimulation probably actually reduces productivity because of the hyper focused tunnel vision effect. I literally spent 12 hours working on the same code, and when i looked at what i had done i felt that for the size of it i had spent FAR too long on it. Actually, i think it was "done" a lot sooner than i realized and kept making little changes that weren't really necessary, and continuously restructuring it, some of which was purely to increase it's aesthetics and terseness which made me feel kinda cracked out actually. I've only had this effect combined caffeine though, so it seems these chems increase my sensitivity to caffeine. They do seem to have stimulant qualities though, of a "cleaner" quality than caffeine and a general clarity. I do feel that phenylpiracetam is more stimulating than noopept though. Higher doses sometimes bring a sort of calm or serene feeling on top of the subtle stimulation, a bit like a low 1st plateau dxm experience, or possibly the afterglow of a low dose dissociative. Similarity to dissociatives end there, and i think it is purely subjective. Don't always get that effect either, sometimes it feels more stimulant like so i feel it may be dose dependent, or possibly dependent on other things. Not enough experience yet to tell. What it does seem to definitely do is to give me more mental endurance, I'm less likely to get frustrated or impatient and when starting a project I don't really care how long it is going to take or think about how difficult it might become. One of them or both seem to have some decent antidepressant activity. Noopept has been shown to increase NGF and BDNF(nerve growth factor, and brain derived neurotrophic factor) of which BDNF has been shown to be a fairly powerful endogenous antidepressant, as well as both of those enhancing the ability of neurons to survive and grow new receptors, synapses, etc. I have seen anecdotal evidence that too high a dose can cause "brain fog", not sure what people mean when they mention that, but that could have been the "foggy headed feeling" you mentioned. I think i felt this once, the dose of noopept didn't seem to be that much higher but noopept is a potent chemical. That time I felt like my working memory was pretty bad and felt like i was acting a little weird or something. Could have been sleep deprivation though, since i always struggle with insomnia and sometimes go completely without sleep because of it. I guess too much can be worse than not enough. Seems to be good for things like coding, or learning new things. Things that require much logical or analytical thinking seem to be best suited for the use of these, or solving problems that require thinking on several levels of abstraction simultaneously and switching among said levels.
