Cognitive Enhancement
The struggle to find a drug that makes you so fast that you save more time by taking it than you lost by researching it
August 7, 2017 — March 11, 2024
Medication for brain performance enhancement. Anecdotally common in my highly competitive field, and amongst dotcom types. Tweaking brains with ‘smart drugs’ to get ahead in Silicon Valley is notorious. Also my brief contact with finance types leads me to believe it is common there. I am sure it is in many industries besides.
My advice on this is mostly worthless, as I know nothing of pharmacology etc. But even if I did, I would not endorse the taking of performance enhancing drugs without professional medical and legal advice regarding the impacts upon your own health and compliance with the local governmental regime and its positioning/branding regarding regulation of bodily autonomy.
1 Assessing effectiveness of
Hmm.
DIY? “Neurohacker toolbox”.
Aella, Are you just pushing the “insight” button? on taking LSD for the (feeling of?) insight.
2 Mechanisms
Scott Alexander speculates on Cognitive enhancers: mechanisms and tradeoffs. Relates to Gwern’s Drug Heuristics.
3 Hallucinogens
4 Modafinil
In practice, many nerds seem to take modafinil plus some other things. Reports are generally positive, though I have heard reports of undesired side effects such as suddenly liking house music.
A profusion of sites with names like Nootropics Depot, modafinil.org, modafinilxl.com and buymodafinilonline.com and presumably modafinil4meplz.com suggest that taking Modafinil without prescription is pretty common. I imagine it is a kind of ‘viagra for the brain’ market niche that is filled by these suppliers. I not certain how legal this drug is, nor how safe, nor how effective.
See also:
5 ISRIB
Is ISRIB any good?
6 Zembrin
7 Creatine
8 Caffeine
9 Choline stuff
Cholinergic systems etc. I know little about this. Alpha-GPC seems popular.
- Klaire Labs’ Alpha-GPC Overview
- Alpha-GPC
- Examine.com, Alpha-GPC Supplement — Health Benefits, Dosage, Side Effects
10 Meta
Review of Examine.com write-ups
My (Elizabeth’s) tentative conclusion is that it would take tens of hours to beat an Examine general write-up, but they are not complete in either their list of topics nor their investigation into individual topics. If a particular effect is important to you, you will still need to do your own research.
Sam Atis, in More notes on ADHD, connects ADHD medication to nootropics and finds no meaningful differentiation between medicalisation of a disease and cognitive enhancement.
Trying to eat something that tastes gross? Amino Acid Flavourings Powder Australia is a generic flavouring which has essentially no nutrients in, so it will interfere minimally with any dietary regimes.
11 Incoming
- The Algernon Argument posits among other things, that really good nootropics will not exist or nature would have already exploited them
- A rebuttal by George: Increasing IQ is trivial - by George
- Alpha-GPC benefits, dosage, and side effects Not mentioned: Stroke risk (Lee et al. 2021)
- N-Phenylacetyl-L-prolylglycine ethyl ester benefits, dosage, and side effects
- Why are the nootropic experiments such a grab-bag? “we administer a combination of Huperzine A, Vinpocetine, Acetyl-l-carnitine, R. Rosea and Alpha-lipoic acid (called Ceretrophin) vs placebo” (Stough et al. 2011)