Nootropics The Big & Dandy Nootropics Thread (Stack 2)

[Vastness]

I've been taking what is purported to be Adamax and NA-Selank-Admidate almost every day for approximately 2 weeks now. Honestly I have been unsure if they're placebo - or if the ones I have are truly legit - or not. Previously when I took these from a source I trusted more I was combining with modafinil, phenylpiracetam and/or phenibut, maybe even Tianeptine or NSI-189, so my judgement of whether they were truly doing anything was kind of impaired... This time I've been basically clean of any drug except caffeine for 2 weeks, and I'm less sure. Granted, I could be withdrawing from years of more-often than not armodafinil use and thus the nootropic benefits are yet to overcome any long term downregulation that occurred... Generally I've been in a good place, I think I might be experiencing some appetite suppression effects from one of these compounds since my calorie count has been lower than usual. I've found it a lot easier to resist negative habits like binge Netflix watching which was a struggle for me, I'm a little embarassed to admit, as well as eating unhealthily... but, my productivity work wise has not been great.

However today and yesterday I am having a lot of trouble sleeping, I took 1mg etizolam yesterday but still only slept like 5 hours, I have taken 2 so far today and am feeling good but not sleepy. I have to do shit tomorrow so I hope I can eventually get myself sleeping.

I remember I had this problem when I used racetams regularly, unfortunately all of them just messed with my sleep to an unacceptable degree to the point I had to stop taking them. Aniracetam was the absolute worst but none of them were entirely benign. Except perhaps in literally the first 4 or 5 days when I first discovered what I thought were limitless smarter-making wonder drugs, when I would wake up bolt upright after 5 hours, go for a run, and feel great, in the days after that fatigue, irritability and symptoms of sleep deprivation caught up with me and I was just never able to resolve them... which is a shame because I am a great fan of racetams in general, mild though they may be.

Anyway - I digress - has anyone else experienced an insomniac effect from Adamax, NA-Selank-Amidate, or BPC-157? Maybe I am doing too high on the Adamax. I do remember Selank having a distinctly relaxing effect when I used it previously however - more noticeable than the NA-Semax-Amidate I was taking at the time - perhaps because I took it more often at night, not in massive combinations with other stimulants... I have not noticed this really this time, which makes me very suspicious of the source, which I am not the most confident in already... but don't want to nocebo myself.

But yeah right now it's anyone's guess if it's doing anything. Maybe the insomnia is just too much caffeine or something.

 

[psy997]

Yo I'm gonna answer here so my experience is available to others, too, Vastness.

I found sleep issues with both Adamax and NA Selank Amidate, yes. The first night I got them in I did 300ug NA Selank Amidate and 1.5mg Noopept subq and woke up 3 hours after going to bed, unable to sleep for another 4 hours until I downed a good amount of vodka and smoked a big cigarette. After that I didn't do anymore peptides at night. Adamax I found that if I did more than 150-200ug or did it too late, I'd not necessarily have trouble falling asleep, I just wouldn't get myself to bed. I'd feel like I could go full speed for another 6 hours, and so I'd just get to bed later. But no noticeable trouble sleeping that I can remember... Though, I do everything I can for my sleep including reducing nnEMFs in my bedroom as much as possible, wearing red tinted blue light blockers after dark, eating meals high in tryptophan in the morning, getting UV during the day for melatonin production, not eating 3-4 hours before bed, etc.

The sleep issues could also be the BPC-157. I've been reading more reports of adverse effects observed with BPC administration including difficulty sleeping, spiked cortisol levels (would correlate with sleep), etc.

Also, you could just be having BDNF and GNF related issues, considering you had sleep issues with racetams, which I think also promote those.

Re: my experience with them, I mainly noticed I felt much more centered and generally well-equipped to handle everyday life. Stress was not so big a deal, I felt more confident and motivated to complete tasks, and again just felt better. Could be placebo, but I don't think it was. The effects were drastic some days, and the two friends I gave both Adamax and NA Selank Amidate to had profound effects on well-being, too.

 

[Vastness]

Thinking about it now I just started taking BPC-157 very recently, and I don't think I had any sleep issues before that, so that might be the complicating factor.

Possibly also I am dosing too high on the Adamax, because it is "subtle", I have a tendency, I think, to just keep dosing beyond what I need in order to "feel" something...

I have been in a good mood recently I must say, I think I said that in my PM also so forgive me for repeating myself - I did also take 200mg Ibogaine extract last weekend so I thought that was the main contributor, and maybe it is a contributor but not the only thing... actually thinking about it now I did also use Adamax last weekend to combat low dose Ibogaine induced lethargy and fatigue and at the time I thought it was effective for this purpose. That must be an unusual combo for sure... but I figured the dosage of ibogaine was low enough, and the effects of these peptides again "subtle" enough that it was unlikely to cause any serious adverse effects... maybe still a bit reckless but I seem to be OK FWIW.

Probably also after quitting taking other more "feelable" noots/PEDs I'm a bit biased/unconsciously resentful towards substances which have less of an in-your-face undeniable effect.

Thanks for the info regarding BPC-157 and cortisol, I will look into that.

 

[psy997]

Yea I pretty much only take things that have noticeable effects. Otherwise, I get most of my well-being from light exposure from the sun and red light devices. But, I am interested in and bought Semax and Selank for their purported brain repair functions. In that sense, all the Khavinson bioregulator peptides are interesting to me.

It could definitely be the BPC-157, then. Keep track of it.

And what are you dosing with the Adamax?

 

[Vastness]

2-3 sprays probably 2-4 times per day - I work that out to be an average of 800mcg / day... I haven't used it every day, did start just under 2 weeks ago I think, but have had a few days off... maybe used 8 or 9 days in that time. Any thoughts? What's your usual dose?

Brain repair is also pretty high on my list of priorities, I'm always a bit hypochondriac I think with regards to substance or bad habit induced brain changes but, y'know, a little fine tuning here and there can't hurt...

 

[psy997]

2-3 sprays probably 2-4 times per day - I work that out to be an average of 800mcg / day... I haven't used it every day, did start just under 2 weeks ago I think, but have had a few days off... maybe used 8 or 9 days in that time. Any thoughts? What's your usual dose?

Brain repair is also pretty high on my list of priorities, I'm always a bit hypochondriac I think with regards to substance or bad habit induced brain changes but, y'know, a little fine tuning here and there can't hurt...

Well, that's a super high dosage of Adamax from what I know. Most people take 2-300ug a day. With the added potency of the NA, Amidate, and Adamantane groups Adamax is 7-9x more potent than regular Semax.

And regarding dosing schedules, I'm using it like it's prescribed in Russia. 10-14 day cycles with breaks in between. I did 1.5 cycles a month or two back, and am now waiting to be out of school and not using anymore amphetamine to study to do another cycle.

 

[Vastness]

Oooh, OK, maybe I'll lay off it for a few days... count that one as a fairly heavy dosed "cycle" and see how that goes.

This last week I have had some major brain fog and difficulty focusing honestly and have struggled to do any focused work for more than a few hours a day (although I have been fairly alright with this too and far less likely to beat myself up about it, such is my typical modus operandi)... maybe the high dose has something to do with that. I've been making a lot of changes with respect to my habits recently though, both substance related and not, maybe a few too many changes at once is causing some confusion about what's causing what.

Is your amphetamine usage anything to do with your reasons for taking these peptides if you don't mind me asking, or is that just kind of incidental?

 

[psy997]

Brain fog could totally be from high dosed Adamax. All of these BDNF, GDNF, etc. raising compounds seem to be able to cause brain fog easily with the right conditions, overdosing being one of those.

The amphetamine usage isn't a big reason for using them, no, just a reason. I mainly started using them because I wanted to get another nootropic or two going for the first time in a while, remembered the really oddly named ones that had been getting big back when I was into nootropics a lot (Semax, Selank, P21, PRL, etc), started looking them up, found out about peptides and the Khavinson bioregulators, and decided I wanted to get some Semax and Selank.

I did mix the Adamax and Selank with my dextroamphetamine and it was weird. It could totally be placebo but it felt like it had unintended not positive effects.

 

[+96+]

To the people who have used noopept intranasally, do you just take the tiny dose as a bump or do you make/buy it as nasal spray? I'm kinda weary of trying it because the noopept I have has a really strange smell, it's hard to describe but kind of bitter and sweet? I always avoid smelling the bottle when I open it... it's not the worst but not too pleasant either.

 

[psy997]

To the people who have used noopept intranasally, do you just take the tiny dose as a bump or do you make/buy it as nasal spray? I'm kinda weary of trying it because the noopept I have has a really strange smell, it's hard to describe but kind of bitter and sweet? I always avoid smelling the bottle when I open it... it's not the worst but not too pleasant either.

I've snorted tons of dry Noopept. It has a distinct smell to me, slightly sweet if I remember correctly, but I don't remember bitter.

I'm pretty sure Xorkoth snorts dry Noopept a lot.

 

[Xorkoth]

I wouldn't say a lot, but when I have it, I snort it, about 10mg for a dose. I probably get a 10g tub of noopept once a year and do it most days until it's gone. Doesn't bother me, it's more effective and a way lower dose. I never noticed any sort of offensive smell. Nasal sprays always increase absorption and decrease any mucosal irritation though so it certainly wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

[Vastness]

^ How often would you typically snort 10mg doses in a day, youthink? Snorting definitely satisfies my deep seated drug-doing urge in a way that sublingual/oral does not, but I feel like it lasts quite a short time, like a few hours, compared to an oral dose which could last 4-5. Maybe this is just my imagination though and ingrained placebogenic effects from being used to snorting snortable substances a little more frequently...

 

[Xorkoth]

Well generally snorted doses of anything produce a shorter duration, so it makes sense it would last shorter. For me, I honestly usually just do one dose when I wake up. I don't really like to overdo it because it can start to feel sketchy in some way, it can produce light anxiety and also give me a sort of mild headache. I usually take it along with my morning caffeine, when I have it around.

 

[Vastness]

^ Yeah, I actually did have a slight headache, slight uncomfortable axniety feelings having snorted about 50mg over the day... :D It's just the damn activity of snorting I think... addictive.

Brain fog could totally be from high dosed Adamax. All of these BDNF, GDNF, etc. raising compounds seem to be able to cause brain fog easily with the right conditions, overdosing being one of those.

The amphetamine usage isn't a big reason for using them, no, just a reason. I mainly started using them because I wanted to get another nootropic or two going for the first time in a while, remembered the really oddly named ones that had been getting big back when I was into nootropics a lot (Semax, Selank, P21, PRL, etc), started looking them up, found out about peptides and the Khavinson bioregulators, and decided I wanted to get some Semax and Selank.

I did mix the Adamax and Selank with my dextroamphetamine and it was weird. It could totally be placebo but it felt like it had unintended not positive effects.

Well, having quit Adamax and Selank for the past week, so 5 days now - it would appear the sleep inhibition has cleared up massively, although not entirely. While I have less trouble falling asleep, I do seem to sleep less - like, a lot less - not much more than 6 hours per night... I am very wary of this effect because I had a similar effect a long time ago taking a bunch of racetams but after just a few days, I was experiencing fatigue, irritability, all the negative symptoms of sleep deprivation.

This time I do not have that - BUT I DO seem to have regained my ability to focus. I was having a major issue with procrastinating work for the past month, maybe even the past few months - quitting modafinil about 3 weeks ago didn't help, for sure - but this week it's like I suddenly remembered how to decide to do a task and actually DO IT rather than just scratching the surface, feeling major resentment that I should have to even, like, move and then thinking fuck it I'll just look on my phone/watch Netflix/eat shit. That has just been not a problem this week. I'm checking Bluelight now, but I've been very disciplined with my breaks today. My good mood persists. Maybe this stuff isn't placebo after all.

Of course, I am, or was, taking a few substances - so it's maybe hard to pin down. I didn't stop taking BPC-157 because I have resumed exercising more frequently recently and had a minor muscle injury I hoped to heal faster - it did seem to work for this purpose. In fact I feel a lot less "stiff" than I have done recently on waking or after working out the day before. BPC-157 of course, itself, allegedly has some stimulant-tolerance-reversal and GABA-normalisation effects so this could be a culprit, or at least, implicated. I'll note also I have been meditating daily, receiving therapy and doing my best to live well... so, many confounding factors... but, these peptides are interesting substances for sure. It does appear to be the surely massive BDNF/GDNF/NGF? boost that my sustained Adamax megadosing had induced that was the likely culprit for the sleep issues. I'll note I have taken Selank a few times, mainly towards the end of the day, I have yet to quit coffee or caffeine and sometimes feel a need to counter this with something... I'm so damn cynical about the placebo effect in myself I couldn't say if it's doing much, but it appears in much lower doses not to impact sleep to any significant extent, at least.

 

[Pfafffed]

Ewwww, how? I take noopept sublingually at 10mg and even that's kinda gross. But insufflating it? *shudder* So mushroomy smelling

 

[psy997]

Vastness, I don't have the time to reply to more than the Noopept piece. 50mg snorted of Noopept in a day is a massive dose. Most reading I did online suggested 10mg max insufflated in a day. Some biohackers even said their ideal dosage is 2.5mg, and going above that leads to brain fog and negative effects.

 

[Vastness]

@psy997 - Yeah, I am well aware of that honestly, my more is better consumption-malfunction has just leaked into my usage of otherwise benign nootropics as well in recent years... I'm over that now though I hope!

@Pfafffed - to me it smells like serenity and peace.

I actually have a pretty long history with noopept and believe I will always have quite fond memories of it. I first started taking it I think 7 years ago now in combination with other racetams, was not in a happy place mentally and looking for a solution the only way I knew how. While the various racetams had been interesting and did lift my mood to some extent, I believe noopept was the push over the edge that I needed to see behind my anxiety curtain of self defeatist delusions, and see the world as it is.

I did not have a scale back then, so was using a small micro scoop, weighing what I THOUGHT was 10mg, 3-4x per day - in retrospect however I believe it was probably a lot less, maybe \mg which is more in line with what you stated, psy.

I remember very clearly the quick/slow onset of clarity after 6 or 7 days of taking it - an overwhelming feeling of serenity and peace. I remember very clearly seeing that I was afraid of life - and thus holding myself back - but NOW I SEE there is no reason to be afraid. (The film "Limitless" comes to mind - I actually might have watched this back when I was first getting into nootropics - so maybe the subconscious seeds of believing such a cognitive shift might be possible had been sown...). In the next 3-4 weeks, I made some significant changes to my life, and the way I lived it, the impact of which has affected me even until the present day. Shortly afterwards I ended up in a relationship and stopped taking it because I found it was affecting my libido.

Since then, I've never again experienced the same overwhelming sense of serenity and peace in any other "cycle", although I have dabbled with it on/off since. This could be a dosage thing, admittedly, since afterwards i would tend to take 10mg at a time, newly weighed, which was undeniably a larger dose than my original one - this is the dose I've seen recommended almost everywhere though... and for some reason I just couldn't shake my "more is better" mentality about it even though I surely knew it was clearly larger than the dose on which I had got such good and transformative effects... It's also a possibility however that whatever changes needed to take place in my brain had been done after that point, so the scope of any further change was always going to be more minimal.

I did try single megadoses a few times since - and found 100mg~ish to be a potent and clean anxiolytic, although probably not for work purposes. I never found it to be particularly performance enhancing for cognitive tasks, even in the early days, since it was just too relaxing. Maybe one would say brainfoggy, although I didn't back then - the brainfog just didn't bother me, such was the impact of the relief from my deep seated fear of life.

 

[Working_Class]

Ill throw this one up on here just for fun

RCs - 9-methyl-β-carboline + others

So this report is on some largely under reported nootropics of interest. I've done quite a bit of research on them, most of the information I can find on 9-methyl-β-carboline, is on longcity, and there isn't a lot. The posts ran from 2014 to 2019, and can be summed up in the length of about 6...

www.bluelight.org

I tried not to get too overzealous, its my first time with all 4 of these particular noots. But damn is this stack ever an interesting ride so far.

Its a long read, but the main noot of interest is 9-methyl-β-carboline.

By the end of the experiment, I'm gonna save a few mg to see what kind of experience mixing say 5 mg with ALD-52 or one of the lysergerimides might be like, or possibly some good ole DMT, or some other psilocybin analogue.

So far, it's been fun. Experiment is over in 3 days and I'll dry out and reassess. As a side note, I've found psychedelics to be very useful for learning in an academic context. Also, I'm a bit of a junkie at heart. Loves me some schooltime / at work euphoria.

 

[+96+]

I've snorted tons of dry Noopept. It has a distinct smell to me, slightly sweet if I remember correctly, but I don't remember bitter.

I'm pretty sure Xorkoth snorts dry Noopept a lot.

I wouldn't say a lot, but when I have it, I snort it, about 10mg for a dose. I probably get a 10g tub of noopept once a year and do it most days until it's gone. Doesn't bother me, it's more effective and a way lower dose. I never noticed any sort of offensive smell. Nasal sprays always increase absorption and decrease any mucosal irritation though so it certainly wouldn't be a bad idea.

I'm not sure where I got a bitter smell (I guess dwelling on it's strangeness) but now that I smell it again it's just really sweet in a bad way. I'm scared the smell will haunt me lol

Since I've been taking noopept again the 2nd Paul Stamets JRE episode came out and I'm going to follow his microdosing pattern for a while. To be safe I've only taken half of a point of mushrooms to make sure the noopept doesn't potentiate it past microdose. So my daily stack right now is 20mg noopept, 20mg caffeine, 200mg L-theanine and adding niacin and 50-100mg of mushrooms. Plus my Stamets 7 should be here tomorrow so that too.

 

[Working_Class]

I'm really curious to ask if anybody in the community has had any cancer scares or anything like that, it would be interesting to see this discussion in the thread (or redirected to A thread if this one is inappropriate) seeing as this particular thread has been open since 2012, which makes it around seven years old. Who knows, maybe we can collectively find some lesser-known side effects of short-term and long-term use.

Although it is totally possible that polydrug use (Which is quite typical of the members in these forms) would make the information null and void, it would still be interesting to see what the statistic is among Bluelight members. Partially seeing as we are such avid Psychonauts and what have you.

Being a member, and writing detailed reports is like having a chronological journal of basically every substance you've consumed, which was questionable, or in the category of "research chemical" or otherwise, along with possible anecdotal evidence of deleterious or negative effect thereafter. OR, (much more optimistically) the opposite. Taking down health statistics as you go along in the form of blood and hormone testing, checking BP regularly and updating lifestyle and mental changes could be great information to just be had in the vast expanse that is the internet. Just a thought as I study more about the human body.

For science I say! :D

I've committed to taking down any and all data points I can and laying them out for the world to see on here. To help others make possibly more informed and therefore possibly safer and more critical choices about what they decide to put in their body. It's not a bad idea if experimentation is something we're up to anyways.