The Truth about some Nootropic Myths - fake or not?

[dopamimetic]

I trolled reddit & Longecity for years.

I am the anti-nootropic troll who trolled r/nootropics, longecity, brainmeta, several bodybuilding forums, and so on by posting horror stories about nootropics and other supplements.
Ever heard of the parathion horror story, tianeptine horror story, phenibut horror story, nefiracetam shrank my balls, piracetam gave me brain lesions, sunifiram gave me brain lesions, pramiracetam extreme excitotoxicity, saw palmetto destroyed my life, roids shrank my balls, alcohol withdrawal horror, yohimbine hypertensive crisis, selegiline extreme cheese effect, and so on, and so on ...
I created dozens and dozens "troll" topics over the course of 5 years.
Why you ask? Because I was anti-nootropics, anti-drugs, I wanted to demonize drugs as much as possible. In my country even basic supplements are seen as evil and shouldn't be used unless you have an extreme disease, to tell you, you can't even get vitamins without getting a prescription for it.
Therefore I was angry when I was seeing so many people using drugs like sugar pills, I wanted drugs to be banned everywhere, hence why I created horror story topics to ternish reputation of new drugs, especially nootropics.
I tried to find nootropics with certain side effects, and then made a topic saying I got this effect but I exacerbated it to scare people. People were scared and some became reluctant of using these drugs, I got plenty of private messages of people telling me they threw their bag of X because of my topics.
But that's not the end, I also sent several fake adverse event reports to drug agencies in order to have them banned. Not sure how successful it got.
Now I've stopped my irrational hatred against nootropics, it sounded so stupid from me to do that.
I've discovered several nootropics because I had increasing health issues and the doctors wouldn't help me, so I had to resort to nootropics, which were in fact far from being that devilish and they helped me appease my symptoms.
So here are my apologies, I know many people will keep on hating on me for all I did, but now I want to move on and make this clear for everyone. Please accept my apologies.

From reddit.

This guy has actually posted horror stories about sunfiram etc. under the same nick, so it could be entirely possible. And if it is, it would be fucking ridiculous what a single delusional individual can achieve. Also this should be made much more publicly if it is true.

I've read these things about sunfiram, nefiracetam (with the sunifiram thing sounding reasonable thinking of excitotoxicity, but the nefiracetam story honestly I did not believe as it did not fit with my common sense somewhat), etc. and so on more than once before and many many people actually believe in them - why shouldn't they, there is no evidence for either safety or toxicity, just anecdotal reports.

 

[belligerent drunk]

I don't think he's alone. Reading such forums you come across pretty bizarre stuff that barely makes any sense or is utterly idiotic at times and you wonder who wrote it. I'm not putting my tinfoil hat on yet but some speculate that many people purposefully (for whatever reasons) post bogus scare reports on such forums. Some even say that DEA (or the equivalent) agents do this. Who knows. All I know is that everything online has to be taken with a big grain of salt, especially if it goes against scientifically established claims. A lot more people need to be more sceptical when it comes to things like this. That's what we're lacking in our modern society, still... critical thinking.

This is not to say that idiosyncratic reactions to drugs should be discarded on this basis. Those are actually at least as valuable as regular reports, because rare serious complications need to be known. One just has to doubt the authenticity of a report posted by an unknown user with no established reputation within the community if it says that they grew a 3rd arm after smoking meth or the likes.

 

[dopamimetic]

Yeah, of course ... I just find it really incredible in this case because the things about nefiracetam & sunifiram have been spread really widely, and when such things get picked up by more serious people (ones with many postings etc.) other will believe them and things continue... granted, this is the nature of the internet and there are so many stupid things being pushed around Facebook etc. every day, but still.. just wanted to post this, to remind people to think critically about everything they read & take it with a grain of salt as you say

http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/54506-nefiracetam-another-reason-to-avoid-prolonged-usage/ <-- for example
This is because it wasn't just a horror story, but really based on scientific facts - just really exaggerated. Nefiracteam for example really has some impact on testosterone levels, but this more applies to some animal species and it is reversible.

I don't know anything about this particular guy, but usually trolls are just ... trolls. They will unveil themselves soon or later, and / or they will loose the energy. Hell, we are in a time where nobody has time for his/her own life, not speaking of processing all the news throwing in every day. So this is kind of ... remarkable though. I know how detailed and disturbing psychosis and delusions can go with some people, coming up with very detailed conspiracy theories etc. but usually the nature of delusions is that they make the people delusional, obviously, if you get what I try to say (sorry, English isn't my native language)

 

[belligerent drunk]

That's the thing with a lot of drugs and their effects. The extent of their actions or toxicity is rarely discussed. Yes, I can say that valerian root has GABAergic activity, so I can claim that any prolonged usage will result in benzo-like tolerance and withdrawal. Nonsense right? Well that's because the extent of the activity is never mentioned, so it's open to speculation as to how strong it is. And sadly enough, laymen or the general population fall for that. Omitting crucial parts like comparison between binding affinities, toxic doses and so on can lead to very gross misinterpretation and misinformation. The same principle is used in media's scare stories et al. Oh and "dihydrogen monoxide hoax"; that one's a prime example of this.

And by the way your English is alright, only maybe sentence structure can be confusing at times. English is not my native language either, so I guess we have to take what we can get!

 

[Thatmikepageguy]

Several nootropics come to my mind immeadiately which are safer than salt. As in you woud over dose on salt before these chemicals. Lecithin (a kind of choline), piracetam are two. Many nootropics have low toxicity so negative sides require a special kind of irresponsibilty before you'd see even minor consequences. Considering some basic info on these chems is easy info to find and understand.