The more experienced I get, the more I realize that, barring a good diet, exercise, and sleep, every substance will bring the body away from homeostasis one way or another. Racetams, and Aniracetam especially, has always had the habit of bringing me into deep dark pits of despair that would destroy hours of my life and create a lasting type of stress that is definitely not healthy in the long term.
Aniracetam causes an increase of choline receptors. There are two kinds, muscarinic and nicotinic. To save time I'll just say that muscarinic is bad and nicotinic is good. Muscarinic causes depression and nicotinic relieves it. This is why humans have used the basic substances to improve mood, like alcohol and tobacco, which are both nicotinic agonists. However, this is also a fault. With the readily available nicotinic agonists, its very rare for a human brain to have a higher nicotinic receptor density compared to a muscarinic receptor density. We just don't injest substances that effect the muscarinics. That is why racetams cause depression, they increase both types of receptors, but you end up having more muscarinic receptors than nicotinic receptors, and the only way to quickly solve it is by using tobacco or alcohol. It's a really hard con to deal with, especially when one tries to stay away from alcohol and nicotine products. Hopefully in the future someone will find a way to balance those choline receptors, but in the end, its diet sleep and exercise that win for the long haul, time and time again.
