Yowza. I just picked up a bottle of DopaBean that I ordered. The pills have a third of a gram of M. pruriens each, and claim to be 15% L-dopa by weight (Jamshyd, I stand corrected, not L-dopamine), for a dose of 49.95 mg L-dopa in the raw. This isn't the only catecholamine present in this plant, but the main constituent.
I took one cap with a 750mg Green Tea capsule, for the enzyme (a natural equivalent of Carbidopa) that discourages the cleaving of L-dopa to dopamine outisde the CNS, plus all the stimulant and antioxidant goodness that green tea on its own has to offer. My stomach is otherwise empty.
After about 15 minutes, I'm feeling something. It's a definite 'jacked' or 'turbo' kind of feeling -- I'm about 2/3 sure I find it pleasurable, though it's an odd mental state in some ways too. I'm very much enjoying this local nu jazz station out of a local college town. I remark to myself that it's really brisk, jaunty, sophisticated music. At this point I'm very motivated. I wonder why I don't always bust my ass in school, and joint the honor society or something. I sit down to listen to an mp3 of this lecture we had a few days ago. It's my turn to scribe it, for members of the class who missed it.
Normally it takes me 6+ hours to scribe an hour of lecture. My one-finger typing skills always have gotten the best of my quick spelling and verbal processing. But not tonight. My fingers are flying. I still need to play the lecture at half speed to keep up, but I make a game with myself of seeing how infrequently I need to pause it to catch up. I found I could hold longer sentences in my short term memory than usual, and my spelling and dexterity had fewer errors. But even when I needed to stop and catch up or correct myself, I don't feel the usual sense of frustration or failure at all. It's a comparable feeling to climbing a mountain, and being 3/4 of the way to the summit and on the VERGE of quitting and sitting down, but then filled with a resolutely happy sense that no, I CAN do this to completion.
I was hard to interrupt. I was glued to the task, you could say. But not irritable. The only thing that drew me away was an unshakable quandry as to why Doraemon never became popular in the US, though he's known throughout much of the world.
Doraemon
So I ended up reading a good bit about Doraemon. Still never learned why the English speaking world has given this world-famous cartoon character the cold shoulder. As I returned to my scribe, Doraemon was a recurrent intrusive thought. He seemed very important and germaine to the task I had to accomplish, which didn't strike me as strange in the least.
I can almost compare the state I was in to the very first few minutes after drinking a good strong fresh cup of coffee. A very brisk, jaunty feeling. But it was sustained, and not jittery or jangly in the least. It was not wholly unlike amphetamines, without any rushes. My thoughts were full and lush, and a little strange, but not racing.
I got the scribe done in a total of 3 hours.
I slept 6 hours that night, a little short for my standards, but I woke up feeling great, after not too many dreams. I still, about 24 hours after first taking the M. pruriens, feel a bit different. It's had lasting antidepressant effects, I feel, and motivational ones two. There's some odd effect on my verbal processing I can't quite put my finger on, too.
I somehow don't think this is a good supplement to be taking immoderately. I plan on only using it when I need it, because I think it might make a good substitute for Adderall.