
Nootropics Survey Results And Analysis - Nogwater
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/16/nootropics-survey-results-and-analysis/
======
joe_computer
Gwern also has a detailed personal examination of Nootropics.[0]

0: [http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics](http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics)

------
ozi
I think a better way to deal with the placebo affect is to only look at
accounts where usage is greater than ninety days. As my psychopharmacologist
put it, "you can cure just about anything for four weeks with a sugar pill."

------
mistercow
>One of the nootropics measured, choline bitartrate, has carefully regulated
ability to cross the blood-brain barrier beyond a certain level, and so it
would be surprising if it had direct and immediate cognitive effects.

This isn't quite right. This is true of choline bitartrate itself, but IIRC it
is fairly quickly metabolized into other forms of choline that can cross the
BBB.

I would say it's pretty likely that increasing choline intake would have a
significant effect on cognition. Humans have been consuming large amounts of
fish for much of our evolutionary history, compared to today's typical diet.
Given the way choline is used by our brains, and the relative plethora we had
available when our brains were evolving, it's hard to believe that we get as
much as we can use in a modern diet.

~~~
shotgun
90% of people aren't consuming enough Choline

[http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/21/6/LB46...](http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/21/6/LB46-c)

------
twobeard
What makes people believe that their brains are not good enough just as they
are? If you take nootropics you're messing with the most precious mechanism of
your body. Are there any studies at all about the effects of long-term use on
perfecly healthy young people?

------
proggy123
I've been taking modafinil for a while now (over a year). I initially started
taking it to help with a massive workload at my job. I was a long-time
software engineer at Google at the time. I was utterly burned out and couldn't
retain my focus for more than 10-15 minutes- definitely not enough when you're
writing c++ code and need to retain a huge amount of state in your head
(header file definitions, pointer ownership, etc. etc.). But i wasn't in a
situation where i could immediately take time off or change jobs/groups. So i
started taking Modafinil to see if it would help me concentrate and get things
done.

The immediate benefit and the thing that i still love it for today is how
focused it makes me. As a programmer, most of my day is just getting things
typed out. Pure creative thinking is maybe 1 hour a day at best. Without
modafinil, if people came and interrupted me, i would get distracted, surf the
web and it could easily take me upto an hour to get my head back in the code
(especially since i hated what i was doing). With Modafinil, i would just
retain stuff and be able to get back to work immediately. I'm in my mid-30s.
Even on a good day, without Modafinil, i could stay in flow for maybe an hour
or so before i would get distracted and lose focus. On Modafinil, 3 hours is
average, 4 hours happens sometimes.

You know when you're fixing bugs in a big codebase and for each bug you kind
of have to load up state in your head and think -oh yeah i need to change
x,y,z here and a,b,c there and these tests 1,2,3 have to change and i should
probably make sure foo and bar are still working. Well with modafinil i was
able to think of that and keep all of it in my head for the 2-3 hours it would
take me to type out a fix. Or you're reading a few bug reports and you are
working on fixing one - you look at the file you're in and realize that while
you're working in that file you could fix 2 or 3 other things or you could do
a refactor - and you just do it without losing state in your head of where you
are in the original bug. Modafinil let me do that- it was totally like a ram
upgrade. (Or really like i wasn't burned out or was 25 again or something).

So yeah my short-term recall also went up. Another example - at google we had
lots of command line tools each with tons of options. It used to be a real
mental effort for me to recall the 8-10 options i would have to pass on the
command-line along with gigantic path and filenames to get something simple
done. This isn't uncommon- some of the most popular internal webpages are
commandline option references for the really common tools. And it was a huge
distraction - to have to drop what you're doing to have to go to some webpage,
scroll around or click find until you found some poorly documented option that
maybe did what you wanted etc. With Modafinil, that was all just in my head
for the whole day - enough so that at the end of the day i could make up shell
scripts for the useful stuff, but during the day i could work really fast
because i wasn't looking stuff up all the time.

So yeah it did great things for me. But the bad news- i tried taking it every
day - after a week, paranoia set in and mood swings. I would get extremely
defensive about simple comments in code reviews. Typically i would take 200mg
only in the morning so i could sleep at night- but if my schedule was bad and
i went more than 3-4 days without sleep i would start having persistent
hallucinations that lasted 10-15 seconds - not just corner of the eye stuff
but talking to people who weren't there.

Nowadays, i take it at most 100 mg at a time a maximum of twice a week. I
really enjoy programming and i want to think i'm good at it so taking
Modafinil felt a little like cheating with steroids or something. My current
job is much easier than Google and I've been able to replace most of the
positive effects of Moda by doing a ton more planning - e.g. i help my short
term memory by writing copious comments, keeping a detailed log of exactly
what i'm doing in org-mode, exercising good email discipline, writing code
much more defensively so i don't actually keep a lot of state in my head etc.
etc. I meditate every day even for 5 minutes just in case that will help with
focus. A lot of this works really well. But if the shit hits the fan at work
and I'm debugging blind in a bunch of crappy code i've never seen before, or
my fragile ego requires I be the guy who is just faster than others and gets
stuff done, that's when i still reach for Modafinil.

~~~
kordless
Did you ever try to take naps and compare the effects to taking Modafinil? I
nap about for about 20-40 minutes right after lunch and have a RedBull
immediately before laying down.

------
aestra
Just to let everyone know, a very very rare but very serious side effect of
modafinil is Stevens–Johnson syndrome and other potential life threating skin
conditions.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevens%E2%80%93Johnson_syndrom...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevens%E2%80%93Johnson_syndrome)

I am not trying to discourage use.

------
Havoc
Interesting idea. Some pretty wild comments in the XLS file too. e.g.

>In a tiny blind self trial I could easily tell this from placebo

>I've forgotten what doses I tried.

>Long lasting panic attack

>Most vile substance I have tasted

This guy wins though:

>1.5 tsp brewed grounds, rectally [caffeine]

~~~
aestra
>1.5 tsp brewed grounds, rectally [caffeine]

Ah yes, coffee enemas, the pinnacle of pseudoscience - and dangerous at that.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_enema](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_enema)

Some proponents of alternative medicine have claimed that coffee enemas have
an anti-cancer effect by "detoxifying" metabolic products of tumors.[4] There
is no medical scientific evidence to support any anti-cancer effect of coffee
enemas.[2][5][6]

Coffee enemas can cause numerous side effects, including infections, sepsis
(including campylobacter sepsis), severe electrolyte imbalance, colitis,
polymicrobial enteric septicemia, proctocolitis, salmonella, brain abscess,
and heart failure.[4][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] If the coffee is inserted
too quickly or is too hot, it could cause internal burning[14] or rectal
perforation.[15] Long term use of coffee enemas can lead to malabsorption of
fat, fat-soluble vitamins, and calcium.

The use of coffee enemas has led to several deaths as a result of severe
electrolyte imbalance, hyponatremia, dehydration, pleural and pericardial
effusions.[8][16] The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ruled that
study participants must be warned of the risk of death from coffee enemas in
studies that use them.[17][18]

[http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ask-the-science-based-
ph...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ask-the-science-based-pharmacist-
what-are-the-benefits-of-coffee-enemas/)

------
JosephRedfern
Gwern has written a lot on the subject of Nootropics:
[http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics](http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics)

~~~
Nogwater
Which is where I found this link:
[https://twitter.com/gwern/status/435111412277313537](https://twitter.com/gwern/status/435111412277313537)
:)

------
tripper
"nootropics are substances which purportedly improve mental functioning with
relatively few side effects when used responsibility." hello: LSD?

------
dominotw
I used truBrain (Piracetam) religiously for a 1 month and felt zero effects
whatsoever.

------
GrahamsNumber
What kind/brand of modafinil? The indian-online-pharmacy deal doesn't seem too
trustworthy to me

------
rdl
I wish they'd included amphetamines (both ADHD medications like
adderall/amphetamine and more serious things like desoxyn/methamphetamine),
for comparison.

------
drakaal
I think you have to have certain conditions for nootropics to really do
anything.

I take Aniracetam and it makes a big difference in my life. I take a LOT less
than most people, and the thing I notice is that I don't have songs stuck in
my head.

This may seem like a weird condition to be trying to get rid of but it makes a
huge difference in my life and my concentration. There may be other effects,
and some fuzzy metrics we could test for like how well I do at Baby Animal
Match, or how fast I can do a Sudoku, but I can "observe" this one in my day
to day life.

I talk about my experience here:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcHkTuMlqys](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcHkTuMlqys)

~~~
VLM
I've been following this topic for 20-30 years and this is the only supplement
I've taken where I've felt mental state changes. Its a noticeable anxiolytic.
If its not a strong one, I can only wonder at what a real strong one must feel
like.

Not feeling "performance anxiety" most likely does improve performance for
most people.

Where you obtain this stuff is a mystery. Amazon used to ship it, but it
appears and disappears. One interesting problem is what is merely OTC in one
country is prescription only in another country. This is typical for all the
substances in the list. This is typical for most substances, it seems, like
stevia and perhaps a hundred food dyes.

Stuff I've tried with no measurable performance gain: caffeine, piracetam
(headache), creatine, vinpocetine, choline, some others. Other than occasional
headache, not much effect one way or the other.

~~~
thelogos
You can find bulk powder but I find the taste unbearable. Rx aniracetam is far
too expensive. I'm just waiting for the day when cortex gets their high-impact
ampakine onto the market.

------
computer
I have a fair bit of experience with modafinil/adronafinil, so if anyone has
any questions, feel free to ask. I'm not recommending trying them without
docter's prescription, of course.

It helped me greatly to stay up longer, to sleep less, and to concentrate
better. However, those effects get much weaker over time: the sleep effects
for me were less clear after 1-2 months, the concentration after weeks. Side
effects can be nasty though, including limited appetite and gastrointestinal
discomfort.

For the rest of the list: I've also tried various -racetam's, and they did
nothing for me. Creatine, vitamin D don't have nootropic effects for me (but I
still take them for other reasons). Caffeine is meh. Haven't tried the rest of
the list.

~~~
zen_boy
Would love to hear your general thoughts on Modafinil. One of the things they
say is that it has minor side-effects and that tolerance builds up really
slow, if at all, in comparison. What's your take on it, empirically?

~~~
computer
First a warning, because I've seen many misconceptions: Modafinil is not a
sleep replacement. Especially not long-term. Do not use it that way. Its anti-
sleep property is that it suppresses many parts of the urge to sleep. It does
not provide any of the effects sleep provides.

\--

Well, I've always had issues with sleep: I have an 25 hour circadian rythm, so
before modafinil I often just let it run and wake up an hour later every day.
I thought modafinil might be something useful to help me experiment with my
sleep. Note that I did not get a doctor's receipt, so I imported the drug
myself. (I'm not in the US; it's not a felony where I am.)

You say "in comparison"\-- I must say that I do not have much to compare it
to. The only other substance of this kind that I feel an effect of is
caffeine, and it's on a completely different level, in all ways.

Side-effects I noticed were mostly dry/chapped lips, reduced appetite and
diarrhea-- the last of which seems not to be very common.

In terms of its nootropic effects, I'm normally very bad at focusing on stuff
for long periods of time, and for some periods it helped me focus for long
times on tedious things. Or it helped me focus on cleaning the house really
well, reading the internet thoroughly and avoiding what I had to get done. But
if I used it and spent a night studying, I would remember the material studied
very well. This concentration effect was also the quickest to fade after
longer use.

The main effect is its anti-sleep property is that it suppresses many parts of
the urge to sleep. It does not provide any of the effects sleep provides.

Right now I don't use it, because I am not working on anything that would
benefit from it, and the side effects are not worth it to me right now. Also,
melatonin has helped me with my sleep rythm issues for some time, so I don't
need it for that.

I did not notice any addictive effects whatsoever. There's no high you get
from it, nor a low after you stop, perhaps besides sleeping a bit longer for a
few days.

~~~
JamesArgo
I recall reading that unusually-timed melatonin supplementation worked for at
least one person.

From HPMOR notes:

>Around a year ago, some friends of mine cofounded MetaMed, intended to
provide high-grade analysis of the medical literature for people with
solution-resistant medical problems. (I.e. their people know Bayesian
statistics and don’t automatically believe every paper that claims to be
‘statistically significant’ – in a world where only 20-30% of studies
replicate, they not only search the literature, but try to figure out what’s
actually true.) MetaMed offered to demonstrate by tackling the problem of my
ever-advancing sleep cycle.

Here’s some of the things I’ve previously tried:

    
    
        Taking low-dose melatonin 1-2 hours before bedtime
        Using timed-release melatonin
        Installing red lights (blue light tells your brain not to start making melatonin)
        Using blue-blocking sunglasses after sunset
        Wearing earplugs
        Using a sleep mask
        Watching the sunrise
        Watching the sunset
        Blocking out all light from the windows in my bedroom using aluminum foil, then lining the door-edges with foam to prevent light from slipping in the cracks, so I wouldn’t have to use a sleep mask
        Spending a total of ~$2200 on three different mattresses (I cannot afford the high-end stuff, so I tried several mid-end ones)
        Trying 4 different pillows, including memory foam, and finally settling on a folded picnic blanket stuffed into a pillowcase (everything else was too thick)
        Putting 2 humidifiers in my room, a warm humidifier and a cold humidifier, in case dryness was causing my nose to stuff up and thereby diminish sleep quality
        Buying an auto-adjusting CPAP machine for $650 off Craigslist in case I had sleep apnea.  ($650 is half the price of the sleep study required to determine if you need a CPAP machine.)
        Taking modafinil and R-modafinil.
        Buying a gradual-light-intensity-increasing, sun alarm clock for ~$150
    

Not all of this was futile – I kept the darkened room, the humidifiers, the
red lights, the earplugs, and one of the mattresses; and continued taking the
low-dose and time-release melatonin. But that didn’t prevent my sleep cycle
from advancing 3 hours per week (until my bedtime was after sunrise, whereupon
I would lose several days to staying awake until sunset, after which my sleep
cycle began slowly advancing again).

MetaMed produced a long summary of extant research on non-24 sleep disorder,
which I skimmed, and concluded by saying that – based on how the nadir of body
temperature varies for people with non-24 sleep disorder and what this implied
about my circadian rhythm – their best suggestion, although it had little or
no clinical backing, was that I should take my low-dose melatonin 5-7 hours
before bedtime, instead of 1-2 hours, a recommendation which I’d never heard
anywhere before.

And it worked.

I can’t _# &$ing believe that #_$%ing worked.

(EDIT in response to reader questions: ”Low-dose” melatonin is 200microgram
(mcg) = 0.2 mg. Currently I’m taking 0.2mg 5.5hr in advance, and taking 1mg
timed-release just before closing my eyes to sleep. However, I worked up to
that over time – I started out just taking 0.3mg total, and I would recommend
to anyone else that they start at 0.2mg.)

------
pakitan
I'm quite surprised to see caffeine ranked so close to modafinil. I've never
used modafinil but from what I've read, for some people it's almost a wonder-
drug. Caffeine gets me "high" but if anything, it can even be counter-
productive at times. I wouldn't rate it anywhere near life-changing.

~~~
Aloisius
Well. I have tried modafanil from two different sources (both were modalert
iirc) and noticed absolutely nothing. I tried various doses. I tried taking it
before staying up all night and after. Each time was a complete
disappointment. So it could be hype, me being unlucky with fake pills or
differences in physiology.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I've used modafinil in concert with tDCS
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct-
current_sti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct-
current_stimulation)) and have found it very beneficial except for some slight
side effects (as someone else had mentioned in the thread, jaw clenching).

~~~
aantix
Did you build your own tDCS device?

------
_delirium
The definition of nootropics used here excludes them (too many adverse health
effects), but I wonder how the drugs on this list compare to e.g. amphetamines
in terms of pro-productivity effects.

~~~
thelogos
The problem with amphetamine is, when they do work, the crash is horrible.
When the crash goes away, it no longer does anything. So you have to up the
dose and the cycle starts again. Some people use NMDA antagonist to reverse
tolerance, but lets just say that they do a lot more than reverse your
tolerance.

In the end, most user end up with a permanent tolerance that no amount of drug
vacation will lower.

I'm not even mentioning here the whole issue of amphetamine disrupting vesicle
pH gradient, causing dopamine leakage. Dopamine is very prone is auto-
oxidation to quinone when they float free around in the cytosol.

~~~
sizzle
you need to keep your ph levels in check for amps to absorb properly. if I
have orange juice, I feel nothing working.

can you share some links to the dopamine leakage you mentioned, that sounds
terrible.

~~~
thelogos
The disruption of the pH gradient is the central part of amphetamine's
mechanism of action. Dopamine is stored inside vesicles inside presynaptic
neurons. By disrupting the proton gradient between the lipid bilayer of these
vesicles, dopamine is allowed to leak out and released into the synaptic
cleft.

Which is part of the reason why amphetamine increases extracellular dopamine.
Unfortunately, instead of being nicely packaged in vesicles, now some of these
dopamine are floating around in the cytosol, making them susceptible to
autooxidation to quinones, nasty stuff.

Unfortunately, most of these research are behind paywall but that is the
little lf what I remembered from all the reading years ago.

~~~
sizzle
thanks for the response, I'll look into it through my uni research portal

------
tokenadult
Okay, I have read the fine blog post (which took a while to load). The article
leads off by defining nootropics as "substances which purportedly improve
mental functioning with relatively few side effects when used responsibility."

The blog post author mentions a few small-n, limited duration studies, and
then describes his voluntary-response survey methodology:

"I asked people in the two largest online nootropics communities (that I know
of), Reddit’s r/nootropics and Longecity’s Brain Health forum, to take a
survey describing their use of 31 different substances. I got 162 responses."

"Respondents were asked to rate their subjective experiences of different
nootropics on a scale of zero (completely useless, did nothing) to ten (life-
changing). Comments on Reddit suggest several people misunderstood the scale,
but not much I can do about that at this point."

So all the data here are voluntary-response data, with the known problem of
response bias[1] and other defects about which I have an entire FAQ[2] I post
on HN from time to time. Worse than that, all the data are self-report
data,[3] which also have plenty of problems, even when gathered in a
comprehensive survey with a representative sample of the general population,
because of the risks of incorrect self-reports unless checked by other data
sources that are objective.[4]

The blog post author then gives a lengthy description, with pretty colored
charts, of his hand-waving statistical analysis of these dubious voluntary
reponse, self-report data. It would not be wise (that is, it would not be a
sign of improved mental functioning) to take these conclusions seriously as a
description of how nootropics work, or indeed if they work at all. The author
would do well to study fundamental principles of statistics by reading the
online articles "Advice to Mathematics Teachers on Evaluating Introductory
Statistics Textbooks"[5] and "The Introductory Statistics Course: A Ptolemaic
Curriculum?"[6] to wrap his mind around how strictly necessary it is to have a
valid data-gathering plan before engaging in any statistical manipulation of
the data. Garbage in, garbage out. More background on experiment design to
think about while evaluating the blog post kindly submitted here can be found
in the essay "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"[7] by
Peter Norvig, LISP hacker and director of research at Google, on how to
interpret scientific research.

What might big-time convince me to try out a nootropic substance would be an
objective demonstration that someone with typical abilities (say, someone who
goes into online discussion with a known propensity to believe what's on
Reddit without checking it) can become a person with thoughtful insight (say,
someone like Peter Norvig) at adult age simply by ingesting the nootropic. On
my part, I like to improve mental functioning with relatively few side effects
as much as anybody here, and one way I attempt to do that in middle age is by
reading thoughtful articles by careful scholars and then discussing those
among the learned participants on Hacker News. I'd appreciate comments from
any of you about how one could know, objectively and verifiably, that a
nootropic substance really does people good (even if they don't feel that
themselves). I especially invite comments from participants here who have a
professional understanding of statistical studies in clinical trials of new
medicines.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Response_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Response_bias)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322237)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
report_study](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-report_study)

[4]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15528061](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15528061)

[http://www.wiley.com/legacy/wileychi/barker/supp/excerpt.pdf](http://www.wiley.com/legacy/wileychi/barker/supp/excerpt.pdf)

[5]
[http://statland.org/MyPapers/MAAFIXED.PDF](http://statland.org/MyPapers/MAAFIXED.PDF)

[6]
[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz](http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz)

[7] [http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html](http://norvig.com/experiment-
design.html)

~~~
nl
I'm sorry, but that's a _terrible_ comment.

Medical progress _often_ starts with observations, and is _confirmed_ by
trials. Penicillin is one such example.

To discount the value of observations is to ignore an important part of the
discovery process.

There is extremely limited data available around the use of nootropics for
mind enhancement (as opposed to in medical use for treating illness). In the
absence of of such data a survey like this indicates that there are a few
things worth studying in more depth (and some supposed nootropics that seem
worthless).

The author appears extremely aware of the problems with their methodology, and
makes no attempts to hide these problems. To pull quotes:

 _The online nootropics community consists of mostly healthy individuals
looking to use these substances to gain motivation or clearer thinking. They
tend to “outpace” the scientific literature, using some substances that
haven’t yet been shown to work, or haven’t been shown to benefit healthy
individuals._ ... " I would have liked to have some placebo nootropics to use
as a comparison, but since I wasn’t running a trial, I didn’t have that
option. I did, however, try to assess the placebo effect in a couple of sneaky
ways." ... "I have very low confidence that these represent real effects
rather than artifacts of the gymnastics I had to do to make the data
correlatable at all, and I report them only to encourage other people to do
more sober analyses."

I think attempting to do this - knowing that people will criticize the
methodology - is admirable.

~~~
Natsu
Observations are one thing, attempts to do any kind of serious study on the
results are another. It is not meaningful to do statistics on data that bad.

~~~
nl
No at all - you just need to be careful what conclusions we draw.

We can safely report the statistic that "more people self report caffeine
having an impact than ginseng."

The author goes as far as noting how many people are reporting an impact where
there appears to be no known mechanism that impact could be occurring. That's
a defensible statistic too.

Data from self-reported surveys isn't entirely useless, and is in medical
research often enough for there to be studies on the kinds of error that arise
from them:
[http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=self+reporting+survey...](http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=self+reporting+survey+statistical+errors)

------
fatman
What about Nicotine? Back in college and for a few years afterward, I used to
put in a big fat dip (or chew) for all/late-nighters to help me buckle down,
focus, and stay alert. I stopped for all the standard health reasons, but I
find that caffeine is only about 2/3 as good.

~~~
surement
Using nicotine gum, you can avoid the typical health hazards of tobacco
products. I personally found that caffeine wasn't comparable to nicotine, the
former just keeps me awake, while the latter can keep me focused and motivated
for several hours.

~~~
thelogos
Not a good idea. Nicotine gum is not too good for gingival health. Nicotine
patch is consider the safest form of nicotine delivery. Also the most
expensive. E-cigarette is a good 2nd option. Vape unflavored or menthol,
because the health effects of flavorings are still out there. Vendors have
mostly stopped using diacetyl in their flavorings. Diacetyl gives that vanilla
aroma, but also responsible for popcorn lung. Still they're using acetoin
which could convert to diacetyl in small amount uncertain conditions. There's
also the issue of vegetable glycerin (used as a carrier) converting to
acrolein under high heat. I think this is a non issue if you don't let your
atomizer gunk up, which inhibits heat transfer from the coil.

I'm alarmed at the ubiquitous use of aldehydes in flavorings. Most of these
have no solid research proving the safety.

If money is not an issue, I would use the patch everyday instead of e-cig.

Nicotine, I've found, is the only sustainable option in the long run.
Methylphenidate, amphetamines, other dopaminergics, caffeine, modafinil, they
all poop out eventually.

I'm also convinced that nicotine is the safest and most effective nootropics
known at the moment until cortex gets around to releasing their ampakine. The
structures of which are all under secret, so we self-experimenters can't even
get it custom synthesized.

~~~
venus
> the health effects of flavorings are still out there

This is very true. I have been very concerned with "vapers" I know buying
cheap juices from China - to me this is rolling the dice, almost as bad as
smoking!

You will find that reputable juice mixers will generally make statements about
their ingredients. My usual favourite (indigo vapours - I have no commercial
interest, just a customer) for example explicitly state that they do not use
any flavour containing diacetyl, acetyl propionyl or acetoin.

Flavours which may contain aldehyde elements are a concern, but what is much
more my concern with e-cigs is the long-term effect of propolene glycol
inhalation, and potentially significant formaldehyde levels potentially
produced by the heating and/or oxidation of the base liquids. There's a decent
amount of research ongoing in these areas.

Despite these issues I am reasonably confident that e-cigarettes are within a
safety range I am comfortable with if (and only if) used with high-quality
liquids.

~~~
thelogos
I wasn't even aware of the formaldehyde issue. Here I thought propylene glycol
is much safer than vegetable glycerin because of the acrolein.

~~~
venus
Here is the study:
[http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2013/03/05/tobac...](http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2013/03/05/tobaccocontrol-2012-050859.abstract)

Here is a (rather editorialised) summary:
[http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/new-study-
of-...](http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/new-study-of-
electronic-cigarette-vapor.html)

The study found variations up to 20x in levels of formaldehyde contained in
the vapour produced by some top e-cigarette products. At the low range, the
levels are of little concern and barely above background. At the high range,
they are of some concern. Unfortunately brands, etc are not broken down.

I have a strong suspicion that formaldehyde levels correlate with country of
origin and/or quality of the liquids involved. If you stick to using PG
sourced from countries with reliable certification systems I think it is OK.

------
Xcelerate
What I find interesting is the fact that modafinil and caffeine ranked almost
the same. I've always thought it would be interesting to try modafinil because
of the widely claimed cognitive benefits and how it has less drawbacks than
caffeine, but if it ranks essentially the same as caffeine, there's really no
point to trying it that I can see. Caffeine doesn't really do _that_ much to
be honest. It seems as though none of these really have any profound effects
on mental capability.

~~~
robbiep
The difference between caffeine and modafinil come down to two things for me -
\- length of effect (caffeine seems to pick me up for had ran hour to an hour
with a 30 min lead time - vs 12 hours with modafinil with a 45-1hr lead time)
\- side effects (if I am really tired and have to get a big day out, I might
end up havering somewhere between 6-12 'doses' of coffee. Cf. 200 mg
modafinil- by 3/4 through the day on the caffeine track I am jittery, have a
noticeable essential tremor, my eyes are gritty - all this vs nothing on
modafinil- nothing for me at least)

Few notes: Modafinil was a massive productivity booster while I was at uni. I
would occasionally do a 36 hour period of solid study or work or whatever to
cover a whole bunch of content and take up to 600mg modafinil durin this
period, sometimes followed by a normal 8 hr sleep, then repeat. It was
wonderful; I covered huge sections of my curriculum efficiently. The only side
effect I have ever really felt from modafinil is a slight bit of 'coke mouth'
when taking a high dose, and a minor bit of jaw clenching a la MDMA at the
high doses as well.

Now I use only when work is very busy and I have been stupid with my sleep,
100mg mane for a couple of the days of the week seems to work very well
although I am not an 'every day' doser and always prefer to be around 36 hours
from my last dose if I am going to drink or take any other substances (I find
I don't get the sensation of drunk if still on modafinil)

Edit: to more directly respond to your post, as opposed to ramble, you note
that caffeine doesn't do that much to your mental capacity. Modafinil doesn't
really either. The studies that have looked at mental capacity, creativity etc
whilst under modafinil cf. amphetamines cf. placebo have all shown decreasing
returns for people of normal or high baseline cognitive function. Modafinil is
_not_ going to make you smarter. But if you take it in the right environment,
it can make you a lot more productive

~~~
toomuchtodo
Be careful with regards to the jaw clenching. I used modafinil extensively
several years ago as part of a clinical trial/research study participant. I
now have stress fractures in two of my lower teeth from the jaw clenching, and
will either need to eventually replace those two teeth with implants or
(hopefully) stem-cell derived replacement teeth.

The body is not built for constant stressing, in many ways.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I spoke too soon:

[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-
fitness...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-
fitness/health/New-painless-treatment-to-repair-
teeth/articleshow/30562836.cms)

New 'painless' treatment to repair teeth (indiatimes.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7252950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7252950)

I guess I don't need to worry about my adventurous clinical trial days after
all.

