
Nootropic Brain Drugs Rise in Popularity for Today’s Corporate Climbers - geoffwoo
http://observer.com/2015/04/nootropics/
======
this_user
The one thing that really interests me about this is the long-term damage you
are doing to yourself. There appear to be two types of stimulants. There are
the legal ones like caffeine that have a moderate effect and are not
significantly unhealthy unless consumed in extreme quantities. And there are
the illegal ones like amphetamines that have a significant effect, but will
also cause a great deal of harm the more you use them. So, there seems to be a
clear correlation between the size of the effect and the harm done.

This then begs the question where these new substances stand. Are they barely
more than caffeine and mostly harmless? Is maybe the placebo effect playing a
role in making them appear more effective to the user than they truly are? But
if they do have a significant effect, at what price does it come? The human
body needs rest, that is a pretty well-established fact. It seems unlikely
that these substances would be able to change this fundamental principle. What
does seem likely, if they indeed are effective, is that you are buying more
alertness for the moment, but paying for it in the long run.

Normally substances are researched and tested by professionals for years and
sometimes decades before declared safe. But even that process is not always
perfect and substances with harmful side effects have been known to slip
through. Potentially turning yourself into a human vegetable a couple of
decades down the road by experimenting with these barely understood substances
seems like a dangerous proposition.

~~~
quotedmycode
Piracetam is one of the most popular ones, it's not hard to find, and it works
for most people, or not. The most common side effect is muscle twitches or
headaches. Headaches are caused by a reduction of the amount of choline, and
eating eggs or taking a choline supplement makes the headache go away.
Generally the twitches are not severe and don't affect voluntary movements.
The side effects subside upon stopping. I'd say it's a completely different
effect than caffeine, as it allows me to concentrate for extended periods and
have instant recall. If it is a placebo effect, then whatever it is, it works.
Placebo effect means there is an effect because there is expected to be one,
so in any case it's useful. Piracetam's effects on the body are well
documented, since it's been in use for about 35 years now. That said, I don't
think this gives you any more rest, nor does taking it make it so you can't
sleep. In fact, if I take too much I feel sleepy almost immediately and wake
up feeling pretty good. In any case, these people taking nootropics are the
new normal.

~~~
letstryagain
I tried the racetams but they don't do anything for me. Modafinil does work
though but tolerance develops quickly.

Caffeine of course is still #1 for me in terms of efficacy. I'm not desperate
enough to use harder stimulants like ephedrines or amphetamines or
phenethylamines etc.

~~~
quotedmycode
And that's the thing about these, you try some, find out what works for you. I
don't see anything ethically wrong with taking a brain booster if it improves
your performance at work. If you can do that instead of burning out and you
really love your job, why not?

------
facetube
Phenibut (beta-phenyl-GABA, mentioned in the article) is a GABA-B drug
discovered in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. It's not approved for any health
condition in the US, but is sold as a "dietary supplement". It acts on the
same receptor as Baclofen, a prescription drug that's used to relieve muscle
spasms and spasticity. In higher doses, it can affect GABA-A, with effects
similar to alcohol or some benzodiazepines. After regular use measured in
weeks, it can cause a potentially life-threatening withdrawal syndrome that
includes seizures.

As someone who's taken it a couple times, didn't get much out of it, and is
now amazed he didn't end up in serious trouble: stay the hell away from
Phenibut. Or, don't take my word for it: Google for "phenibut withdrawal".

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Gatsky
Massive, massive potential for the placebo effect. This needs to be tested in
a randomised double blind trial with standardised testing of the purported
cognitive enhancements. Until then it's snake oil.

~~~
steego
I remember reading in one of Dan Ariely's book that spending more on placebos
makes them more effective. (He typically tested people by giving them word
scrambles or similar tasks).

Remember kids, if you want a really good placebo experience, buy the good
shit.

~~~
rictic
Other fun placebo effects: red pills work better than blue pills. All pills
work better if given to you by a doctor. Better still if the doctor is wearing
a white coat. Yet better is the doctor uses a large peace of medical machinery
as part of the intervention. And yet a bit better on top if the machine beeps.

Basically, for best results you want to receive your medicine as the Star
Patient in a Very Important Looking Medical Drama right at the moment where
Everything Starts Getting Better.

~~~
shard
At first each change seems plausible, then it starts veering off into
absurdity. I can't quite tell if this is satire or not. Do you have a link to
share for these effects?

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borgia
I suppose it's only natural that people are resorting to these when huge
swathes of the American youth are being prescribed Adderall and similar and
gaining a competitive edge with them over those who don't have access to them.

I previously looked at sourcing modafinil but ultimately decided against it
due the the sources available looking dodgy, a lack of clarity in the laws
around it, etc. As more reputable companies emerge in the sector I think I may
well end up giving the products a go.

~~~
HockeyPlayer
I've heard good things about www.modafinilcat.com

~~~
mahouse
That's gotta be the most American thing ever. A .com website that sells you
drugs so you can work harder. And the website is designed to look like they
are selling you lollies.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I can't say being marketed nootropics with an almost LSD-esque site really
inspires confidence in me.

~~~
mrsteveman1
I really expected to see nyan cat bouncing across the screen while waiting for
that site to load. I'm not sure if that would have been better or worse.

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serve_yay
To each his own. I prefer drugs typically associated with decreased work
ability and increased aptitude for fun.

------
yojo
Is it just me that worries about a race to the bottom with brain hacking?
Assume some combination of nootropics/transcranial stimulation/etc gives you a
short-term edge for unknown (or known) long term risk.

If you're a profit-maximizing employer, would you rather hire the person who
performs better today, or the person who is looking out for their own long-
term safety? Or if you're a startup founder competing against a bunch of doped
up super-brains, how strong must the incentive be to join the dark side?

I see similarities with professional sports, where athletic associations are
always playing Whac-A-Mole with performance enhancing drugs, and top earning
athletes routinely get chastised for doping. Should we expect outcomes in
knowledge work to be different if brain hacking proves as effective?

------
MichaelGG
This further illustrates how terribly unfair modern medical systems are. Want
to change your brain chemistry? You've gotta do a song-and-dance for a doctor.
Who might either hate "addicts", or be terrified of the DEA. Do a poor job
lying and try again? Oh, now you're "doctor shopping", which some want to
criminalize. Have an in with a doctor or have enough money, well then it's no
problem. (Sure, money buys a lot of leeway in everything, but this is a fairly
basic freedom.)

I'm not an American but from what I was taught about folks like Ben Franklin,
I think they'd be shocked to know it has become illegal to determine your own
treatment.

~~~
Gatsky
This is a thorny topic. The trouble is that when a large number of people take
a drug, rare but horrific side effects may manifest. How do you factor this in
to deciding an appropriate level of regulation? Is it fair that we permit
easily accessible experimentation with psychoactive or nootropic substances,
when someone downs a few too many, has a psychotic episode and drowns his
children? Or has a fatal allergic reaction? Or drives their car off a bridge
because they have been awake for 96 hours taking one of these products? That
may sound outlandish, but eventually something like this will happen to
someone if enough people take it.

So I don't know if you can just couch it in terms of personal freedoms... it
seems a bit more complicated than that. I don't know what the answer is, but
pretty sure it isn't just 'Let people do whatever they want.' At least with
heroin and cocaine people have some idea about the risks, even if they decide
to ignore them...

~~~
MichaelGG
How do we handle alcohol? You tell people that modifying yourself isn't an
excuse for committing crimes. And follow up and enforce that. Making it a
crime to use chemicals on your own mind is absurd.

With heroin, the biggest risk is the fact it's illegal, thus preventing you
from obtaining clean, known-quantity medication. If Tylenol was sold on the
streets, with pills ranging from 100mg to 1000mg, we'd have a LOT more liver
toxicity cases than we do. It's not like using opiates in a correct manner
leads to death on a routine basis.

~~~
Gatsky
1\. Countless lives have been destroyed by alcohol. Busted up families, people
killed by drunk drivers, children maimed by fetal alcohol syndrome, abused
wives, husbands and children, fried brains, fried livers and across multiple
generations... Why would we want to repeat that experience? If alcohol were
invented today it would never be in widespread use like it is now. It's become
a lifestyle thing because of thousands of years of culture and legacy. It's a
prime example of why your approach is a terrible idea.

2\. Heroin is a highly addictive substance, that will kill you in sufficient
qualities. You don't see that as a problem?? Even if it were cleanly packaged
with a black label, people would still take too much and die from it. Cute
example with Tylenol, but doesn't cause dependence and withdrawal. Opiates are
given to people with pain, where they have a fundamentally different
physiological effect.

~~~
MichaelGG
My comparison to Tylenol is apt. If you bought pills thinking they were
~100mg, but they were 10x that, you would soon find yourself with a broken
liver. To be clear Tylenol will kill you in sufficient quantities, amounts
you're likely to easily by from a store.

Opiates do not have a "fundamentally different" effect if you're in pain. I
think people like saying that about opiates and stimulants so as to excuse
people that "need" it.

And yes, personal freedom is worth people choosing to rip apart families.

~~~
Gatsky
Just to clarify, I'm not advocating criminalisation of nootropics, and I
completely agree that the war on drugs is pretty stupid.

The point is about dangerous usage patterns. You are trying to argue that hard
drugs are actually not that bad if only they were available with the same
safety and dosage rigor applied to approved pharmaceuticals. My point is that
it isn't an apt example because nobody gets euphoric or addicted when they
take Tylenol. Any drug that causes some physiological disturbance in
sufficient quantities is going to be more dangerous if that drug is taken by
users in ever increasing quantities.

> Opiates do not have a "fundamentally different" effect if you're in pain. I
> think people like saying that about opiates and stimulants so as to excuse
> people that "need" it.

It is different. Say a patient has severe pain from metastatic breast cancer.
I can give them a dose of morphine that would stop you from breathing
permanently, and they will be fine. Are you saying she didn't really need it,
she just likes the rush? I don't understand your point, maybe you can clarify.
The rates of opioid addiction in people receiving it for pain are much lower
than you would otherwise think from the way people buy oxycodone on the black
market.

Personal freedom? What about the personal freedom of the kid who gets bashed
by their drunk parent? Or the personal freedom of the cyclist that gets run
over by a drink driver? Or the personal freedom of the emergency department
nurse that gets her ear bitten off by someone with amphetamine induced violent
psychosis?

~~~
MichaelGG
No, my point is that "hard drugs" like heroin are vastly more dangerous
because users cannot use properly whilst the drug remains illegal. It's a
manufacturing and usage problem. Opiates are rather tame as far as side
effects go, and avoiding overdoses isn't terrifically hard _if you have the
right stuff_. Users don't want to waste precious medicine, nor die. With
precision markings, there'd be vastly less problems reaching the right level
of usage. Instead, users are admonished to "do a test shot" each time, which,
through laziness or practical concerns, gets ignored and someone falls out.

But let me understand you: Are you saying that if someone is in pain, their
respiratory system just ignores opiates and they can take large doses even if
they're opiate naive? Does this work retroactively, like if you don't have
Narcan handy can you just snap someone's leg to save them? (And then, with a
broken bone, they'd certainly get medicated - double win!)

Sarcasm aside, do you have a citation for this claim? That opiate tolerance
doesn't matter in face of pain? That there's a "fundamental difference" in the
effect? I'm truly interested in hearing about that (feel free to contact me
via my profile if this thread is too long).

Everything I've read and experienced says otherwise. I've talked with some
users that were taking opiates for cancer pain management, or for otherwise
long-term pain, and they just as happy to take them as unlicensed users
(though perhaps a bit more cautious in admitting so). In personal experience
from acute trauma leading to a hospital team applying morphine, I went from
screaming in pain to absolute noddy-head bliss. I'm pretty sure that's the
exact effect people are seeking.

~~~
Gatsky
I agree they are vastly more dangerous because they are illegal. But you know,
alcohol is legal, and people still binge drink, fall in ditches, have random
unprotected sex, get pancreatitis etc... and it isn't even addictive. I'm just
trying to say that even if heroin were legal, it would still be unacceptably
dangerous, because at the end of the day it's a highly addictive general
anaesthetic. Even with 'vastly less' problems, which is your conjecture, there
are still significant problems. Anyway, we both clearly think that harm
minimisation is a good policy.

Yes, that's right, if someone is in pain, the respiratory depression is less.
This is evident to anyone that prescribes opioids regularly or looks after
people with chronic and acute pain (as I do). It is also evident that the ever
escalating doses and withdrawal symptoms demonstrated by recreational users of
heroin for example, are not manifested in people with pain. So that's why I
use the word 'fundamental difference', because the coupling between dosage,
physiological response and behavior is completely different.

Lots of people don't enjoy taking opioids, they get nausea, nightmares,
constipation etc, or it just doesn't work for their pain. I know this because
that is what is reported in controlled trials, and because people complain to
me about these side effects all the time.

Reference:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8867254](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8867254)

More general overview:
[http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/100/6/747.full](http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/100/6/747.full)

(Glad you are truly interested, but in the time it took to write your
sarcastic comment, you could have just googled it, and we'd both be better off
right now.)

------
Quizz
How rampant is nootropic use in Silicon Valley?

~~~
omgitstom
It will be hard to measure effectively. When you see the breadth of chemicals
considered nootropics, you will see why.

~~~
mattmanser
You're looking for breadth, not breathe.

~~~
omgitstom
Thanks! fixed...

------
krupan
Why does this remind me so much of the multi-level marketing companies that
are so prevalent in Utah, making bold unproven claims about their tropical
fruit juices?

~~~
adamnemecek
probably because you don't know much about nootropics?

~~~
steego
I bet he didn't even read the marketing literature or the industry funded
studies.

~~~
adamnemecek
Are you debating whether say Adderall has any noticeable effects?

~~~
steego
Yes. You outed me. That's exactly the point I'm making. I'm claiming Adderall
has no noticeable effects. I'm also claiming caffeine does help people stay
awake and that pot doesn't give people the munchies. While we're at it,
morphine doesn't help with pain. I am taking the hard-line position that all
well tested drugs have no efficacy.

Seriously, I don't think people doubt mind enhancing drugs exist. We're
skeptical of manufacturers and people who believe they've "researched"
nootropics because they've read a lot of stuff on the internet written up by
marketing guys, PR men, and researchers willing to do shoddy research for
money.

~~~
adamnemecek
well that's the claim made by the comment i was originally responding to.

~~~
steego
First off, nothing personal against you here. Onto the post:

Read his comment again.

This article is painting a picture of silicon valley kids coming up with
exciting new nootropic drugs that will help us perform better mentally.

OP is saying this new "nootropic industry" smells and sounds like the bullshit
that's peddled in Utah. He's not wrong. I can smell the jizz from the pants of
the PR guy who coordinated this article with Observer. Unless these new drugs
are rigorously studies and their efficacy is independently verified, we're
going to be bombarded by all sorts of pseudo-drugs and supplements that are
unregulated, untested and potentially dangerous. You're going to see marketing
guys, PR men, and all sorts of phoneys trampling over themselves to get a
piece of the nootropic action. They'll form associations and lobby for
nootropic friendly legislation that defangs the FDA so these marketing
psychopaths can experiment on us with their secret blends of brain food.

That's a legit concern because we've seen this sort of nonsense repeated
throughout history for hundreds of years. Some of the stuff might be good,
most of it will be garbage, and the overwhelming majority of people won't have
enough skill or training to be able to discern the bullshit from the real
deal. Most pharmaceutical "autodidacts" who "research their shit" online will
have no fucking idea what they're talking about, but they'll be more than
happy to confidently share their ignorance with others. They won't be able to
discern real independent research from industry sponsored research because
modern PR groups and associations are really good at lying. The pharmaceutical
companies know how to manipulate doctors. Do we really think these marketing
and PR assholes can't dupe some autodidactic dipshits who extract only the
most vague understanding of the "research" they just happen to come across.

That's what he was getting at, not that there aren't brain enhancing drugs,
but that he smells the bullshit coming down the road.

It all starts with a bullshit name that sounds smart (Oohh nootropics!), but
is legally vague enough to skirt any meaningful regulation or discernment
between bona fide brain enhancers and grass clippings put into pills. You add
a story about how nootropics are the future and then you divide the market up
into "reputable" brands vs. unreputable brands. People don't have the mental
tools to be able to discern what's good or bad, so they'll naturally follow
the "wisdom of the crowd" and tell themselves they researched it.

It's the same fucking story. Science and understanding is substituted with
brand reputation once again.

Fuck nootropics. Not brain enhancers, but the word nootropic.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic)

------
jheriko
people who want to get ahead will do their best to cheat without getting
caught, and will take unreasonable risks... doing whatever it takes to
succeed. this is not new.

personally i prefer to dumb myself down with a bit of weed... :)

------
michaelochurch
I used a fairly popular, legal nootropic and set off a manic episode. Not
hypomania (I'm cyclothymic, so I'm used to that and it's usually benign) but
scary, saw-code-when-I-closed-my-eyes mania. (It was bad code but at least it
wasn't Java.) Also, mania isn't usually "happy"; it's 15% euphoria but 35%
anger and 50% anxiety. Based on one episode (eh, maybe two or three; before
your mid-20s it is hard to tell) I give the experience 0 stars.

Obviously this is not a common reaction, and probably very rare with most
nootropics. I just want to point out that there _are_ long-tail risks to this.
Although many of these agents are probably safe for the majority of the
population, creative and ambitious people are likely to be already a high-risk
group.

If you're a mathematician or artist or novelist advancing the state of
humanity, "enhance" away, and I'll wish you the best in recovery if you get
unlucky. If you're a corporate climber and you blow your brain out trying to
gain an edge in a zero-sum game, then I have zero sympathy.

~~~
mrsteveman1
You could probably do a lot of good on a small scale just by naming the one
you're talking about, even if that reaction is rare.

~~~
michaelochurch
Inositol but it was a huge amount: more than 20mg/day, which is most
definitely a pharmacological quantity. The amount you get from food or even a
normal vitamin is not going to hurt you.

I was also self-medicating for Open Plan Syndrome (often a precursor to full-
blown Panic Disorder, as it was for me, and not uncommon in tech) so the
reason why I was using it (in such absurdly high doses) may be a contributor
to the fucked-up-ness.

