This is probably the most honest thing I've ever written about myself. Before you read it and label me as a sociopathic wacko, please note that at this time I believe I was indeed riding very high on what I can only (in retrospect) describe as a continous manic episode: one that lasted several months. It was very, very, very fun and extremely exciting, but there were many moments were I indeed became very terrified for my own sanity - many hours of uncontrollable laughing over ants crawling across the ground and other nonsense, and my own safety - days of fights and arguments - I am a decent boxer, so my skills did help me escape from some very sketchy situations; unfortunately, I cannot rip out the issues that are inside of me and beat them out from my brain.
Let me just start with some observations I made while I was eating Piracetam...
Have any of you noticed a link between taking nootropics (in my case, Piracetam) and increasing one's own 'common sense'? Now, when I say common sense, I mean the ability to think on your feet in the moment - a kind of combination between short-term memory and executive functioning. I mainly bring this up because in my youth (and early teenagehood) my teachers and parents (and some of my friends) used to say (in words to this effect) that I was "pretty smart, but lack common sense."
When I was younger, my mother used to use labels like "Aspergers" and "Autism" when describing me to some people (I overheard her talking) and it angered me to be labelled, to feel different - like an outcast. I never really used to talk much as I was far too more interested in computers - taking them apart, writing C++ programs, etc. I avoided people in general, but I definitely wouldn't have called myself a social retard... it was just the finer details and social dynamics/cues that I just seemed to miss.
It's all very interesting to me because I really feel like Piracetam opened a door in my mind and allowed me to feel what I considered (at the time) to be 'normal'; and for a while this feeling was utterly incredible. Being able to wake up early and be full of energy (while taking Piracetam) after only 4-6 hours sleep, and generally feeling much more 'aware' and in control of my own mind, and the collective minds of those around me. For the first time in my life I felt like I was truly the master of my own destiny.
In the early days of my Piracetam experimentation and research, I remember reading a very accurate description (that neatly represents my journey) of acetycholine: "The neurotransmitter controlling velocity of thoughts" - well, goddamn, Piracetam supercharged my mind alright, it electrified it so much so that I felt like it was constantly expanding - like I could physically feel my synapses forming new connections; my mind had a thirst of its own for learning, one that seemed like it could never be able to be quenched. I walked down the street and I wanted to eat the windows and doors straight off of houses, I wanted to devour the world in twenty four hours, 365 days of the week. I wanted to become God.
And maybe I really did/do have Autism/Asperger's - I read somewhere (just paraphrasing from memory here) about a correlation between receptors/levels of glutamine/glutamate and the increase of Autism-like symptoms. But then, it's hard to seperate what constitutes a brain abnormality resembling Autism to shyness or actual brain damage.
Back to the Piracetam - my 'awareness' (or whatever it is I thought that I was 'gifted' with when I was on it) reached the stage where I would be standing in the middle of a social event/club/function/bar/public space and I would become scared; I was frightened because I believed that I understood and was processing far too much data from my surroundings than I used to -- and what I thought a 'normal' human should be able to. On the surface I was immensely confident, with a constant beaming *Piracetam* smile glued on my face, but often felt like I had to tame my emotions so that I wouldn't attract too much attention - it was a kind of anxious confidence that I was struggling with.
Sure, I could talk to anyone - about anything - but at the back of my mind I always felt like they were going to catch on to my tricks (that I felt like I was playing without playing); I guess I felt like I was an actor who faked certain emotions to elicit the responses I wanted out of people. Indeed, this must sound highly sociopathic, especially because I was heavily involved with studying and experimenting with Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) at the time - but at no point was I exploiting people, manipulating, or lying to them - I never made people do things they did not want to (besides the fighting and arguments, in which my intentions were quite clear) - yet these feelings of my taking advantage over people remained. Likewise, I gave everyone the 'time of day': I would go out of my way to talk to the 'loner' in a group: the kind of personality I saw so much of in my 'old', pre-Piracetam state of self; hell, I even let a few people in on my 'secret' and recommended that they try Piracetam.
Objectively, I did have this much going for me: charisma. I could walk into almost any kind of social event and dominate the discussion - whatever it was, even topics that I had little-to-no idea about, I could twist and turn the subject matter and compare them to vaguely related topics that I only understood fragments of... even if I knew *absolutely nothing* about the topic, I could make it *seem* (all I really cared about at this time in my life was having fun and keeping up appearences) unimportant and navigate the conversation into a direction more favourable to myself - and yet I could pass all of this off so smoothly and succinctly that only an expert conversationalist at work could catch me out - if only a glance was exchanged between me and this conversationalist guru about my games I knew what they were thinking, like a mirror to my own soul... I was a faker - at best, an actor.
Yet even with my boxing skills (I was golden gloves champion of my state a few years back) I still felt this overwhelming combination of anxiety and welcoming of physical contact in social situations - as if any second someone was going to discover me for the fraud I felt like I was and attack me for what I then considered to be extraordinary wit and humour. I felt a simultaneous sense of indulgement and repulsion by this ever-looming threat.
I'll try to describe this clash of confidence and anxiety through an analogy...
It was like I was on a stage, high up on my podium (I considered myself to be a genius) - and then BAM, the curtains opened and the lights blared down on me - and here I was, standing in front of a massive audience of people waiting for me to do my epic social charismatic dance... If anyone has ever tried LSD (this feeling was very similar to the feeling I got back when I used to trip) you may know what I'm talking about. It's like a big event was about to blow up at any second... but the climax and resolution would never happen.
I'd just REALLY like to communicate this feeling, as bizarre as it may sound internally, because it really summarises how I feel about nootropics, psychedelics and drugs in general. I was at a warehouse party one night, REALLY high off Piracetam (I think I ate about 30 grams of it *that* very night) and a cocktail of other drugs including psilocybin (magic) mushrooms, MDMA and a number of water-pipes. I wrote a long-winded and disjointed story down on my iPhone trying (in vain) to capture this moment of being a prisoner-of-my-mind in text, and I'd like to share it for the first time now:
14 July 2012 4:01 AM
I just feel at home here, I can make great thing happen. everyone is telling me to do this, that, and the other thing but I just want to write.
life is such a long quest, and unfortunately I am the only person who can live it; through better and worse, through all the time I've wasted and the people I've hurt in the process of living my life, please know this: I am sorry.
through all the facades and all of the games...
I get it.
but there's still so much more that I don't get... I feel like I'm just living to keep up appearences... I get tired of writing, of keeping up this idea of who I'm supposed to be. and yet I know God is behind it all, laughing away hysterically at all of it...
it's always one more hit of this, one more purchase here, another girl that.
and yet you've known
you've always known
I can tell
through it all and there you are just smiling to yourself and realising that I've figured it out too.
it all comes back full circle to the centre - who am I - validating my own ego... living, no, chasing, for my future; a lonely quest with myself and yet I'm the author of my destiny...
through all the jabs and semicolons and problems that life hands me... I am the one holding the pen...
we're all just chasing that feeling, that moment, that clarity (you can hear it, screaming out at you)
of inner peace
knowing who you are
living just for the moment (I know, it's impossible)
it all comes to this: you. the quest is unending, believe me I've tried walking to the end.
this is what I thought I wanted, the people, the sights and the sounds are all how I imagined and visualised them to be, but then I realised that all I wanted all along was just to be left alone...
kicking the sand beneath your feet, knowing that this is only a moment for you and a special somebody out there.
knowing and feeling it for a short moment in time.
being in that zone of contentment where you feel at home (it goes beyond words, doesn't it)
living and existing without boundaries
seeing yourself through the gaze of others
and yet I can't help but feel, through all the good times and the bad, all the people I've known and loved, I can't help but feel that through all of it that God is really just behind it all. hiding behind the curtain, just out of reach. nodding to himself quietly that I know whatever is that I know, whatever quest it is that I'm chasing...
my pipe dreams, my ambitions, my goals... it all comes back to the same; and yet it never stops...
Indeed, it's hard to describe what this moment felt like. It's kind of like being stuck in the middle of a Clint Eastwood Western movie -- where the protagonist walks through a town and everyone is looking/watching him - waiting, no, yearning for him to make his next move. It was like this overbearing expectation that everyone placed on me - as if I was some kind of messiah that they were waiting on to perform a miracle - textbook hypomania/borderline personality disorder.
I was a mental masturbator. I was enthralled with myself - not because of my achievements (of which I really have none to brag about) but because I somehow overcame my 'adversity' of being shy and mentally handicapped. In truth, I wasn't growing as a person, I was just stroking and feeding my own ego - probably the most insane thing about all of this was the fact that I was fully aware of what was going on - that I was actually experiencing a long-term manic high; coupled with the fact that I had been diagnosed with, and experienced, bipolar (episodes) in the past, before I ever tried Piracetam. I was fully aware of what was unfolding before my eyes, yet I did nothing to stop it, only eat more and more Piracetam ($80/kg was pretty damn cheap and beat the hell out of any other drug I'd ever tried - I was high as fuck 24/7 for about 9 months). eBay was my dealer, Piracetam my one and only friend.
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Looking back, though, and judging from the quantities of Piracetam I was eating (almost 3 kilograms in under 6 months - yes, I capped the OO-sized capsules myself - it was my relaxing ritual), my little experiment with my mind was bound to end badly sooner or later. And indeed it did. Reminiscing over all the arguments and physical fights I caused, I was acting like a child, not the genius that I honestly believed I was becoming.
My thought pattern quickly changed from my desire to make friends when I could not (before taking Piracetam) to rejecting potential (and existing) friendships I actually had; at the core of myself I truly believed that I did not need anyone except myself and my Piracetam - other people were just an end to achieving my own selfish desires: people who could supply me with drugs and free advice, girls I could have sex with, people who I could use to save myself from feeling bored - I didn't really care for their interaction, instead, just their ability to counteract my loneliness; in all honesty, I didn't really give a fuck about people, I only cared about what they could give or do for me. I was, and still am, extremely selfish... just like the child I inherently am.
It's so hard to describe in words. It really is. Probably because it all started and ended so quickly. Isochroma's 'Ramblings of a Piracetam Addict' gave me goosebumps - how I could relate to someone I'd never met in real life so much.
But objectively speaking - yes, I definitely - without a single doubt in my mind then or now - was operating on a higher level of intelligence. And when I say 'intelligence' I mean: much better short- and long-term memory, sharper wit and availability to a vocabularly (words that I learnt years ago and thought I had long forgotten).
And then my world of nootropics came crashing down like the poorly-built structure it really was; I still don't really know what happened - I suspect carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty/shitbox car exhaust - one that I ironically purchased/threw money at on a whim while I was extremely high on a Piracetam bender; I was driving this thing around for many months (please read my other thread from last year on this if you are interested) but other people have suspected it was due to metal poisoning from a contaminated Piracetam supply. I can't pinpoint it down exactly to one event, but hopefully the MRI brain scan I will have next week will be able to reveal something I haven't considered.
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***Basically the Piracetam stopped working altogether, even after taking a 4 month+ break from it while supplementing with and without Choline. Similarly, smoking weed does nothing to me anymore but make me even more absent-minded, clumsy, forgetful, and give me a nasty headache (yes, I've tried many different strains from different dealers). Amphetamine salts do little for my concentration (where they used to keep me focused to a T), besides make me feel slightly more awake. Something definitely happened to me that seems to have permanently altered my neurochemistry - and I doubt this could be due to Piracetam.
I was looking for a way to change my life, I found it in aces and spades, and then I got thrown back down to the terrible world of my own mind that I, in my infinite foolishness, thought I could escape.
Anyway, all I really know right now is that my life sucks. I've lost 95% of my wicked sense of humour and conversational abilities (my razor-sharp wit, physical energy, zest for life, and venomous tongue is gone) and my beloved cognitive and executive functioning (short-term and long-term memory storage and retrieval) skills.
Nowadays I'm pretty absentminded, forgetful, emotionally blunt, etc, etc - pretty much worse off than I was before I tried Piracetam. Since I stopped taking Piracetam, I once again hanging out with old friends (ones that I made before and while taking Piracetam) but there is this unspoken silence and looks from them that kind of says it all without saying anything at all - "[Xenix], you've changed, you used to be so much smarter, funnier, energetic... now look at you, you're all washed up. You've changed and we don't like change. Don't call us and we won't call you."
It's been good to know that I have a few friends that I can still hang out and feel comfortable around and with even though - if I ever get better, THESE are the people I will be looking out for and helping - not the others who liked me only for my heightened sense of self-awareness. I know, I know, it was my Piracetam personality that they liked - not *me*. I can't blame them, but at least I now know who my true friends are - too bad I had to lose it all to discover that simple truth.
And it's funny, you know, how even the smallest changes in your brain can alter your entire life. It's all in the neurons and synapses; those few cubic centermeters in your brain dictate who you are, who you will be, and what you can have - if nothing else, I can be thankful that Piracetam showed me this firsthand. It's all in the mind.
Psychologists and psychiatrists are no help. And I expect neurologists to be of no greater benefit. Antidepressants are equally useless. Yet suicide remains on my mind most days, not due to depression, but due to knowing what I have lost and having to live with the consequences of my own actions. If my long suspicions are correct, and my issues are indeed carbon monoxide poisoning, I need something that can rebuild synaptic connections and/or damaged brain tissue and neurons - not to 'talk' about my 'issues' in hourly chunks at $100/hour. This is why I've been researching small HGF peptides that can cross the BBB. Cerebrolysin unfortunately did not help.
I can only really relate this all to one book: Flowers for Algernon. I guess I was kind of like Icarus - the boy who was warned not to fly too high, only to get scorched by the sun before crashing down into the unforgiving ocean below. Right now I'm trying out an experiemental peptide to see if its supposed effect on synaptogenesis, neurogenesis, and angiogenesis can bring me back somewhere to the person I used to be.
It's all in the mind. I just hope I can find a way to repair mine so I can escape my own hell.
-X
