I've been taking around 2g of piracetam with a 250mg choline bitrate / 250mg inositol cap daily for about a month now. I've been researching a lot of other nootropics but I'm having some trouble deciding what direction to go.
To give a some background, I've had problems with lethargy and "brain fog" for a long time. I was having a lot of problems falling a sleep at night, and even more waking up in the morning. It was common for me to not be able to fall asleep until 3:00, and then have to wake up for work at 7:00. I'd usually get up, walk across the room, and hit the snooze button on my alarm without any memory of doing it. That would happen over and over again until my fiance got annoyed and woke me up. I was having trouble getting to work on time, and once I was there I could barely keep awake and focus on my work all morning. By early after noon I was fine, and after work I would either get a second wind and be wide awake and alert all night, or I would be drained and fight not to fall asleep for a couple hours around 7 or 8 at night. Some of that was because I was getting so little sleep, but in the rare cases where I could go as long as a week getting 8 hours of sleep every night I felt the same during the day.
I went to a sleep doctor and they had me stay over night and the next morning to run tests. They found that it took me about an hour to fall asleep, but I went into REM sleep within 10 minutes. Most people spend less than 25% of the night in REM sleep, I'm the opposite and spent less than 25% of the night not in REM sleep. REM is great for consolidating memories and what not, but your brain is almost as active as it is when you're awake, so it doesn't actually get all that much rest. The next morning once an hour for four hours they would have me go to bed and give me 20 minutes to fall asleep. The first three times I fell asleep in 5 minutes, and jumped straight into REM sleep within 2 minutes.
My first sleep doctor diagnosed me with narcolepsy, but said the fact that I have trouble falling asleep at night meant I probably didn't actually have narcolepsy. The diagnosis was more to get my health insurance to cover modafinil. The modafinil worked great during the day, but at night when it wore off it made me really irritable. I starting taking 5-htp at night, which helped with the irritability, but was more just masking the side affects of the modafinil since modafinil is thought to affect neuroepinephrine, and 5-htp was increasing serotonin.
My doctor referred me to another sleep doctor, who thought that I didn't have narcolepsy but "delayed sleep phase syndrome". She had me start taking melatonin at night, which has really helped me sleep a lot better, and now I usually wake up a few minutes before my alarm goes off.
I stopped taking the modafinil because I had to change health insurance and it was no longer covered. I started taking piracetam soon after, which does a bit better job at clearing the brain fog, but not at keeping me awake throughout the day. I take 5mg deprenyl for the really bad days, which works but gives me a dull headache every time and feels a bit too speedy to take on a regular basis.
Wow...that turned out to be a lot more background info than I planned. Anyways, I'm wondering what else people would recommend to help me stay more awake? Here's what I've been considering:
Pramiracetam - Of the other racetams I've heard better things about pram than ani and oxi, but it's expensive and hard to find.
Hydergine - Seems to be a really good mix with the racetams, but I'm really hesitant to take it because of the reports of it causing fibrosis. I haven't been able to find any detail if fibrosis is normal, or just a rare side affect.
Sulbutiamine - Seems like it might be good for energy, but I've read some people say it makes them less focused, which would be a bad thing for my job.
Inositol - Like I said earlier, I'm taking 250mg now. I've had trichotillomania since the age of two, and I've read that around 9g a day can be really helpful for that, but I haven't been able to find anything about long term affects of this high of a dose, or how it would interact with anything else.
Idebenone - I'd like to find out more about this. I've seen a bit about people here on the forum taking it, but not much detail. I've had mild tinnitus since I got hit in the ear a couple years ago. I'm hoping it could help with that, but again I don't know how it would interact with anything else.
Taking all of the things I listed at once seems like it would be overkill, but I don't know which ones would be worth taking, or if other things might work better. I've found that exercising helps a bit, but not significantly. I've been eating a lot less processed foods than usual for the last few months, which has also helped a bit.
Sorry for making this such a long post, thanks in advance for any advice and insights on what could help!
