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Concerned about my congitive abilities...looking for guidance to improve them.

cognition

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#1 IAmMutable

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Posted 20 January 2015 - 12:58 AM


Hi friends,

 

To start off this thread, I'd like to post some information about my formative years. It's rather lengthy, but there's a short summary for those who don't want to read all of it under this. I thought it'd be beneficial to provide the objective facts that may reflect why my problems exist. 

 

Background

- I believe that I had a normal life up until the age of 12. I was an energetic, extroverted, competitve, and overall confident child who learned things pretty quickly. Although most of my intellectual pursuits (e.g. playing instruments, reading, and playing around with coding) were forced onto me by my asian tiger mother, I enjoyed them. Even back then, I had a habit of making "best" friends. Basically, I latched onto one or two people and was content with that.

- My mother became ill with cancer when I was 12. For the next year, I was left to my own devices as my father spent most of his time supporting my mother. Most of my time was spent either on the computer, playing games, or occasionally hanging out with friends. My mother died when I was 13. Other notable occurances: Took Prozac for about a year, self-harmed for about the same time. I also had a traumatic experience with my first psychedelic: LSA found in morning glory seeds.

- In high school, things improved somewhat. I got involved with cross country and track for my freshman and sophomore years. These activities helped me socialize, although I still didn't assimilate well into peer groups. Also, I began smoking marijuana occasionally during my freshman year and did LSD twice.

- In Junior and Senior year, I began to smoke more often and isolate myself from others more. In regards to drugs, I had a 2 month long period of binging on DMT (I got into the habit of going to school, coming home, finishing a bit of homework, and playing League of Legends until I went to bed. I remember long stretches of time during which I'd speak less than 100 words a day. I buried my developmental issues under the pretense that I was an intelligent individual (solely based off of the fact that I graduated from high school in the top 5% of my class and scored high on the ACT). This carried into the summer. Most of my days during this time was spent in a haze, delivering pizzas. Finally, once I started college, this illusion of security shattered.

Cliff Notes:

- Developed normally up until age 12.

- Mother died when I turned age 13, abnormal tendencies develop.

- Was back on track during the first two years of high school. During the last two, I started abusing drugs and seriously isolating myself. I stagnated, maybe even regressed, intellectually and socially. 

 

 

PRESENTLY:

A rough semester of college and a suicide attempt later, I'm now starting to realize how severe my problems might be.

Here are my main issues:

- Unable to verbally communicate efficiently with others (I barely remember information that is communicated to me...people can be telling me their life stories and afterwards I can hardly relay this information back to someone else or even myself for that matter). I speak in broken sentences and whenever I ask questions I always end up pausing and rephrasing. I find it extremely difficult to express certain ideas that I have and choosing the correct words/structuring my sentences correctly when speaking. Because of this, I think i've learned to repress my opinion. I speak less than 250 words a day and most of these words are used to formulate basic questions/comments. I haven't had a meaningful conversation about anything for a while now.

- ^the above also happens to me when I read. I can read a whole page/chapter and fail to tell you what its content was. 

- Unable to verbalize my memories. I'm horrible at telling stories and most of my long term memories are extremely difficult to remember.

- Lack of motivation (I've spent many hours a day idly browsing the internet or laying in bed ruminating since college began)

- Unable to think critically (I don't even know what thinking critically feels like anymore. All I can do is read directions and execute)

I've taken a few steps to improve my mental condition:

- I take a simple stack of nootropics: 5mg Noopept taken sublingually and 250mg CDP-Choline taken orally per day

- I'm seeing a CBT therapist and i'm practicing mindfullness

 

I really need some advice/guidance towards improving my overall cognition and getting out of this state of mind.

Thanks in advance for any information that might help me. 



#2 TheWorldAroundUs

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Posted 27 January 2015 - 03:49 AM

It seems like most if not all of your cognitive symptoms stem from severe depression, so seeing a psychotherapist on top of the CBT therapist could help with your cognitive issues. Now as for supplements, you could look into L-tryptophan or even 5-htp if the L-tryptophan is not strong enough, just use the 5-htp sparingly as there are heart risks. You could look into L-tyrosine combined with some caffeine to see if it could give you an extra kick of focus and energy. For memory look into Acetylcholine enhancing supplements and precursors like the racetams etc. 

 

Just keep in mind that while you do have symptoms very similar to that of a Dopamine and Acetylcholine/Norepinephrine Deficiency(No Motivation, Unable to Think critically, Working memory deficits, Hard time processing information etc.) that these could be caused by Depression. So taking chemicals to treat this depression induced cognitive issues would be like taking aspirin for a headache; It makes the pain go away but the underlying health problem that caused the headache is still there. So I would again encourage you to look to psychotherapy and maybe try out some other antidepressants. But if you still can't focus and have these issues, look to dopamine and norepinephrine/acetylcholine enhancing supplements such as L-tyrosine(Dopamine and Norepinephrine precursor), Caffeine(Dopamine and norepinephrine enhancer), Racetams(Acetylcholine Enhancer), Higher Dose CDP-Choline Dosage(Acetylcholine and Dopamine Enhancer), Choline(Acetylcholine Precursor), Huperzine A(Prevents Acetylcholine breakdown) take a look at these supplements for now and keep me posted.

 

Hope Your feeling better soon :)



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