Nootropics, Sex and Rock'n'Roll

And look, we (mostly) left big pharma out of it!

9/6/2022 - Dan B.

Dicking with your brain chemistry is an age old practice going back to “soma” and other various discovered psychedelics used by our ancestors with some pretty good evolutionary results. The practice is currently available to the public in all manner of ways, be it prescribed on a notepad and then filled in a little orange bottle that has your name on it, or scored from a drug dealer like in the 90's. Or, off the deep web like all the despondent hapless younger millennials and zoomers with their agoraphobia, anhedonia and lethargy, do to kick up their tragically deformed and over-bombarded dopamine receptors (they didn't make this world, they just live in it) – apparently not inspired by Dennis from “It's always Sunny in Philadelphia” to score crack in an alley.

Research Chems (RCs) once known as “designer drugs” are also a thing; the idea being that the molecular structure of a scheduled narcotic is now legal because they tweaked a covalent bond or something. The analogue act was designed to classify these knock-offs as still illegal, but the paper work can be arduous and painful to arthritic bureaucrats as they attempt to scribble “NO!” over the new diagrams of the molecule with their government issued sharpie.

Now that I've gotten around to explaining some pretty sketch stuff, legal or illegal, we move into 2022 and enter the world of “nootropics,” which in simple terminology means a primarily cognitive performance enhancer: mental, physical, preferably both. It is a term that encompasses anything from single origin coffee, nicotine, eggs benedict, various legal mushroom extracts such as lions mane, microdosed psilocybin which has yet to be fully decriminalized but is frequently referenced in pop culture. Then, discontinued Russian or Belgian pharmaceuticals like racetams that potentiate glutamate, and other “legal” drugs that produce similar effects to GHB and opioids. (Fun fact: GHB was once sold legally at GNC. Was it because they were both three letter initialism starting with G, and someone in their sales department got the two confused? We'll never really know.)

Is the opioid-like, Southeast Asian, pulverized leaf, powdered stimulant kratom a nootropic? Most people would agree “no,” at this point – but Joe Rogan and his wimpy little pal Tom Segura would tell you it's a great pre-workout while basically eschewing any explanation about it or its potential for debilitating withdrawal.

Many consider phenibut a nootropic (GNC sold this too!), even though it is addicting, dependence forming and nearly impossible to detox from in a medical facility once psychosis has set in, due to its complex and poorly understood pharmacokinetics in the USA. You're honestly better off being addicted to heroin because at least doctors will know what to do (being addicted to heroin is not a good thing however, don't do that just because I said one thing was worse, ya jackass.)

Finally we arrive at “noot stacks,” the most recent frontier of self-optimization as “no fap” lost traction. The stacks, among the reasonable public who don't want to dive deep into companies that sell or have discontinued the aforementioned pharmaceuticals, typically involve ingredients considered to be relatively harmless replacements for more serious ones. So, vitamin b-complex, choline (which is found in eggs,) caffeine, uridine, a-l-carnitine, DLPA and what have you: all isolated, enhanced, compounded, pill-pressed and packaged into bottles labeled “alpha brain” or “alpha mind,” so everyone can get that slight competitive edge and feel on par with every other optimized shithead out there. And still, we could just drink tea, meditate, exercise, eat healthy and not try to have god like powers to mitigate the damage from slouching in front of Reddit.