Piracetam: aka. NeuroLube
This is now my third week on Piracetam. It has changed my life. Period. Previously I was half-alive (despite an extensive set of vitamins and minerals). Constantly sleepy / dozing off during the day, foggy brain, mental tiredness all day.
No matter how much sleep I got (usually 8 hours) or how early a bedtime (9.00 rather than 10-11), these nasties never went away.
One day about four weeks ago I noticed the mention of Piracetam from an acquaintance during IRC chat. I quickly researched it and had my friend order some from eBay. While waiting for it to arrive I prayed and shivered in anticipation.
When it arrived at his house, I ran over with a spoon and took a teaspoon as soon as I arrived in the door! With a bit of nervousness too.
After 40 minutes I started noticing colors were brighter. I left his home and rode my bicycle home. While riding home I had an Albert Hoffman moment! Wow, everything was so damn sharp! The edges of things looked razor-sharp. Also, my distance vision was much better than it has been in years. Furthermore, the colors of everything were so saturated, and the difference in shades was very noticeable, much more so than usual.
As I rode down a side-street past an autobody shop with its garage-door open, some guy inside dropped a hand-wrench on the concrete floor. You know that nice ringing sound when a hardened steel tool hits concrete. But it sounded just so much more! Like some amazing bell it rung, and a moment later I replayed the sound like a frozen crystal inside my mind, CD-quality perfect. Like a jewel.
I smiled, the smile of one who has discovered something, a secret treasure hithero beyond imagining. As I finished my ride home, the sunset turned the field behind my house into a painting, each leaf of different trees standing out in shape and color, a watercolor for my sole enjoyment...
The next day I took my first teaspoon upon awaking (about 4 grams), then one/two more later in the afternoon. For the first time in MANY YEARS, the tiredness that had haunted me for so long had entirely vanished. Vanquished without a trace, I spent the day catching up on stuff and repeatedly looking at the art on my room's far wall, whose colors and lines were now remarkably sharp.
Since then I've tested the limits of this stuff. Both in time and space, my first week was most dramatic. I noticed during the second week tolerance or adaptation or just accomodation. The sharpness was still great but not super-razor-sharp, just razor-sharp. However, the tiredness only came back if I went for more than five hours between doses. It actually took until only two days ago before I committed to using about three grams four times per day, spaced at four hour intervals. That's my effectiveness range.
As for sleep, I now take a teaspoon right before bed. It slowed down the getting-to-sleep time for the first few days, but once adapted I now sleep deeper and far better than I have for years! Plus the dreams are damn vivid (way more than previously). And I wake up super refreshed.
Now, I used to try getting to bed at 8-9 pm rather than the usual 10.30-11.00p, in order to get more energy during the day. It worked only slightly, I would still get tired half an hour after waking, then again in the later afternoon.
Get this, for the last three weeks I've been getting to bed at 2.00a - 3.00a and waking up 7-8 hours later. Totally refreshed, working all day, not a trace of tiredness... in other words, I'm living the impossible and its not wearing off. I've already flatlined on the tolerance curve. Miracles never cease. This stuff will end the coffee business (I've only drank 1 cup of coffee in my life, when I was 16) and I don't take any other form of caffeine.
Now, side-effects. The first two days there was nothing at all, then on day three I noticed the beginning of a slight, barely-noticeable headache. I was already informed of the cause and was specifically anticipating it. However, I still took no choline source, but waited. The next day (day four) the headache had become stronger, more persistent, almost a distraction.
It was at this point that I became convinced that my brain was a victim of a progressive increase in acetylcholine receptor count (and/or sensitivity) per unit of production. So I biked out and bought two dozen extra large eggs. On returning, I took six and separated the yolks from their whites. Pouring the whites down the drain, I ate the six yolks raw.
One hour later the headache was gone without a trace (I never ever get headaches in normal life, btw.). Never did come back, because from that day to this I've been eating six raw egg yolks per day, sometimes cooking the whites and sometimes throwing them out. Raw egg yolks are an excellent source of choline, as well as cholesterol, lutein and lots of other valuable co-factors. Also, they are safe: don't believe the salmonella mythology. The infection is very rare, I've already eaten a dozen dozen and had no problem, but for the paranoid my advice is to eat some plain yoghurt with them. The lactobaccilli way outnumber and outcompete any salmonellas, and their natural antibiotics prevent the evil bacteria from surviving.
Don't assume that just because you're getting enough choline that it will end the headaches. Because choline has to be turned into acetylcholine, and that requires all kinds of enzymes, the most important of which is rate-limited by vitamin B5, also known as pantothenic acid. My friend ate tons of lechithin but that didn't end his headaches. He's a natural-foods nutso and doesn't take any b-complex. So I laid out the reality to him, and now he's trying it with 100mg per day of b-complex. That's probably just barely enough to stop his issue.
I've been taking 100-1200mg b-complex per day for decades, so never had the issue. Most recently I'd dropped my dose to only 100mg (which also provides 210mg choline as the bitartrate), so decided to double to 200mg. It seems this is an excellent dose. High doses of 600mg or more cause insomnia for me, and 1200mg caused numbness of the fingertips (peripheral neuralgia).
In conclusion, Piracetam is my miracle, the most important stuff I've ever taken in my life, and I'm going to stockpile hundreds of kilos of it just in case it is banned or becomes unavailable in the future. The improvements in my mental state have been progressive, not episodic.
After sleeping for eight hours after my last night dose, its already long cleared from my brain but my vision is still super sharp. Some of the advancement of each day remains to add to the next! This stuff is like having a bank account with positive balance, which earns interest.
Using depleting stimulants such as caffeine, etc. only withdraws from the brain's bio-account, causing painful crashes and withdrawals, and ultimately progressive loss of energy and premature aging. This material is a total replacement for those toxic drugs, one which protects and lubricates the brain. I am always at my best now, and have resumed projects left behind due to tiredness.
Finally, on the interactions with drugs. Before, I would smoke a whole bowl of cannabis and still only get medium-high. Now I smoke 1/3 to 1/2 of a bowl and I'm too high! Like, the feeling that it would be just unwise to take one more toke, because then I'd be just way over the line...
Now, cannabis is not particularly stimulating, but this stuff made it like LSD, brought back the psychedelic effect from years past. I cannot imagine what a stimulating psychedelic such as mushrooms, MDMA, LSD, etc. would be like. Let's just say it will be at least a 2:1 potency increase, judging by other user accounts. I don't have these materials to test, but if I do in the future a full and highly descriptive report will be issued on the double.
Plus, I am now so much more wordy! It is fun to talk in depth with others. I can put together much better sentences. I've had lots of new creative thoughts, from stabilizing unstable tokamak fusion plasmas to nanomachine x86 instruction execution with separate quantum sub-units for calculation and yet other quantum nanosensors for wholesale import of entroy from the nonquantized universe outside the device.
There is much much more to life, and my mind is waking up to it one day at a time. This is a gateway. Next stop on the track is Aniracetam. Even if none of the more potent racetams work, this stuff will still be enough.
I just can't understand why and hardly believe that such a simple molecule could make so much difference. Sometimes I imagine how it vibrates in water solution, how it bounces around and touches various structures inside the cells. But nothing short of a physics simulation on a supercomputer is going to really show why it works. Those are expensive and far between, devoted right now to more profitable enterprises.
Finally, real health does not have the kind of short-term high-revenue profitability that is the lifeblood of today's short-circuit economy. Thus it is very much up to the individual to research and keep digging, to go beyond what is offered on shelves and advertised on TV/radio/print.
And I didn't need the Alpha-GPC scam to get my choline up. Eggs are not only cheaper, but my money feeds real farmers in my province, not some 24x overpriced enterprise that thinks it can milk consumers for something that's not more than two or three times as potent as common food sources, such as egg yolk and lecithin. That kind of product is not within my economy, which is highly efficient in value per dollar and runs on a sustainable basis.
I'd encourage everyone to take this stuff, as much and as often as possible. Like vitamin C, there are no downsides to megadoses except for the wallet (a bit). Except no diarrhea.
My current dose is four teaspoons per day, spaced evenly, with the first at wakeup and last at bedtime. Each teaspoon probably weighs 4-5 grams, so total 16-20 grams per day. I'll measure on a friend's scale and update this post with the real quantity shortly.
The God of chemistry handed me my mind back, made new and fresh once again. As the neurolube drips from its surface, he winks at me, saying quietly as he walks into the sunet, 'enjoy...'.
Edited by Isochroma, 16 July 2008 - 04:41 AM.
