Selling nootropics sounds like a profitable business model. You sell someone on one supplement, they say it doesn't work, then you sell them another. You keep selling different supplements to the same people until they have tried them all. People want them to work so they keep going for more and more unproven supplements.
This is why you need to be a smart consumer and do research. The fact is that quite a few supplements on the market have been shown to be effective in studies. And quite a few are known to if you ask around. For example, there may be no study on using high doses of certain B vitamins to improve attention and mental energy (I haven't checked), but these do appear to be helpful. I got some benefit from them, but I don't really like the side effects, so I use them selectively. There are quite a few supplements that did have a desirable effect on me, but it may have been temporarily, or I really didn't like the side effects. I appear to be very sensitive to substances compared to others, so that is why I'm steering away from anything, or sticking to very small doses. That is the reason for my dissapointment, and I'm prefering more to just leave my brain chemistry as it is. You could certainly be different, and find something that really benefits you.
I'm sorry that I wasn't more helpful in my response above. Some things to try that I'll bet you'll notice something. Keep in mind, the most benign subtances are getting the proper nutrients in your diet, and these are recommened first (like muti vit/min, and fish oil for example):
Multivitamin/mutimineral
High doses of certain B vitamins especially thiamine
Combine B vitamins with a low dose of caffine. I like to use a product called Natrol High (which I stocked up on because it may not be made anymore, but can be found on ebay).
Kava kava
Huperzine A: improved thinking speed a lot(Please note: I had bad side effects on this stuff. Keep the dosage low at first and slowly raise it if needed)
Alpha GPC
Omega 3 fish oil, or flax seed oil: General well tolerated. Try a very high dose for a while. This is a very benign supplement and is more along the lines of getting a necessary fats for nutrients. But for some reason it makes me aggressive and anxious which is not good.
Try cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES). This is a benign treatment approved officially by the FDA for anxiety, depression, and insomnia. I noticed effects similar to taking Huperzine A on a low frequency of .35hz. If you search the market, I'll bet you'll be able to find a machine without a prescription.
Nothing is a good substitute for plenty of sleep, eating a variety of good food often, and getting mild exercise. Sometimes I'm irritable and performing poorly in the morning when I just need to eat something. Also, it is often recommended to eat more protein for sustained energy for the brain, which I've found to be helpful. If you cover the basics, and
then try some of the above recommendations, then I think you'll get a much better result.
The bottom line though I think is that you are probably correct about official ADHD treatments. I'll bet a good dose of amphetamines will really do wonders for my attention like nothing else. It will probably also change who I am, and has the potential to seriously mess up the way my brain works. Nothing can really make up for a system wide difference. The system being different is known as neurodiversity, and I have no doubt that there is real merit to that idea. I was just never made to perform to the same level as others, and trying to get my brain to do that is as flawed as trying to turn normal people into Einesteins by speeding their brain processes with drugs. You might say a specific part of my brain is not functioning properly, like a dopamine deficiency in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), but maybe my brain needs a dopamine "deficiency" in the PFC to work properly, and there are many other differences about it that makes it operate the way it does. Without knowning everything about the system of my brain and how it all interacts, then an approach like boosting dopamine might be absolute madness. What's needed is a much better analysis of my condition which requires a phinominal amount of information about each part to put it all together and model how a change would effect everything. This would be known as synthesis, and we are probably hundreds of years away from doing even a margin job at this.
All that being said, I said I will probably try ampetamine anyway just to know what the effect is. But I'm not going to go through official channels to get that because I have to turn my brain over to someone who knows nothing about it. I can do a much better job of trying a substance and carefully monitoring for any chances, and ultimately tailor my dosage exactly to my needs. Hence, the stuff is hard to get if you know what I mean.
LongeCity
