19 replies to this topic

[kev]

Hi I've been taking Piracetam at 4-10g and Sulbutiamine at 1-2g with 750mg of CDP choline for a week. So far, I haven't had any response and I was wondering what I should do.

Are there better alternatives?

[mxr808]

Hi I've been taking Piracetam at 4-10g and Sulbutiamine at 1-2g with 750mg of CDP choline for a week. So far, I haven't had any response and I was wondering what I should do.

Are there better alternatives?

For the sulbutiamine not sure about the piracetam, are you taking a fat source with it? It is fat soluble so requires a decent fat source in order to be absorbed a decent amount I believe. I take mine with a tablespoon or two of olive oil.

[kev]

Hi I've been taking Piracetam at 4-10g and Sulbutiamine at 1-2g with 750mg of CDP choline for a week. So far, I haven't had any response and I was wondering what I should do.

Are there better alternatives?

For the sulbutiamine not sure about the piracetam, are you taking a fat source with it? It is fat soluble so requires a decent fat source in order to be absorbed a decent amount I believe. I take mine with a tablespoon or two of olive oil.

Yes, I take all of them after I eat, sometimes with fish oil.

[mxr808]

Hi I've been taking Piracetam at 4-10g and Sulbutiamine at 1-2g with 750mg of CDP choline for a week. So far, I haven't had any response and I was wondering what I should do.

Are there better alternatives?

For the sulbutiamine not sure about the piracetam, are you taking a fat source with it? It is fat soluble so requires a decent fat source in order to be absorbed a decent amount I believe. I take mine with a tablespoon or two of olive oil.

Yes, I take all of them after I eat, sometimes with fish oil.

Well all I can say is try to experiment with doses. You could be taking too little, too much. It's really all down to your own body chemistry. Piracetam I believe is a cumulative effect so give it at least another week or two before you stop it. Some people are just general non-responders to piracetam and find aniracetam or oxiracetam to be much better. I use aniracetam and sulbutiamine and both work great after I figured out how to properly dose and take them.

[kev]

Hi I've been taking Piracetam at 4-10g and Sulbutiamine at 1-2g with 750mg of CDP choline for a week. So far, I haven't had any response and I was wondering what I should do.

Are there better alternatives?

For the sulbutiamine not sure about the piracetam, are you taking a fat source with it? It is fat soluble so requires a decent fat source in order to be absorbed a decent amount I believe. I take mine with a tablespoon or two of olive oil.

Yes, I take all of them after I eat, sometimes with fish oil.

Well all I can say is try to experiment with doses. You could be taking too little, too much. It's really all down to your own body chemistry. Piracetam I believe is a cumulative effect so give it at least another week or two before you stop it. Some people are just general non-responders to piracetam and find aniracetam or oxiracetam to be much better. I use aniracetam and sulbutiamine and both work great after I figured out how to properly dose and take them.

I guess I'll keep trying...is there a way to get rid of the bitterness of piracetam? and are sulbutiamine's effects cumulative as well?

[mxr808]

Hi I've been taking Piracetam at 4-10g and Sulbutiamine at 1-2g with 750mg of CDP choline for a week. So far, I haven't had any response and I was wondering what I should do.

Are there better alternatives?

For the sulbutiamine not sure about the piracetam, are you taking a fat source with it? It is fat soluble so requires a decent fat source in order to be absorbed a decent amount I believe. I take mine with a tablespoon or two of olive oil.

Yes, I take all of them after I eat, sometimes with fish oil.

Well all I can say is try to experiment with doses. You could be taking too little, too much. It's really all down to your own body chemistry. Piracetam I believe is a cumulative effect so give it at least another week or two before you stop it. Some people are just general non-responders to piracetam and find aniracetam or oxiracetam to be much better. I use aniracetam and sulbutiamine and both work great after I figured out how to properly dose and take them.

I guess I'll keep trying...is there a way to get rid of the bitterness of piracetam? and are sulbutiamine's effects cumulative as well?

You could just try capping the piracetam. Sulbutiamine is in fact tolerance building so if you keep taking it you eventually won't feel anything so it's one that you need to cycle on and off with.

[chrono]

Hi I've been taking Piracetam at 4-10g and Sulbutiamine at 1-2g with 750mg of CDP choline for a week. So far, I haven't had any response and I was wondering what I should do.

Those are very hefty dosages for piracetam and sulbutiamine. Sometimes doing an "attack dose" of piracetam will help get your brain used to it, but after that taking too much can feel like taking too little (bell-shaped response curve). I'd drop the sulbutiamine for at least few days and give your dopamine receptors a break.

Try taking like 1.2g of piracetam twice a day for a few days and see what happens. The effect can be subtle. The piracetam effect increases cumulatively, but most people notice some effect at first dose once they're "sensitized," so take a few days off from that too if it doesn't start working soon.

Maybe stop the CDP until you have things figured out a little more, or until piracetam fatigue/brain fog suggests you need it. Even then, starting at 300mg might be a better idea. Starting a bunch of useful things at once is the natural tendency, but makes it much harder to tell if/how each is working.

[NDM]

Starting a bunch of useful things at once is the natural tendency, but makes it much harder to tell if/how each is working.

Not if you start with all, and then you keep subtracting from the set, to see if you can maintain the good results without the subtracted element. Eventually, the two methods would converge on the ideal mix equally well.

[chrono]

Starting a bunch of useful things at once is the natural tendency, but makes it much harder to tell if/how each is working.

Not if you start with all, and then you keep subtracting from the set, to see if you can maintain the good results without the subtracted element. Eventually, the two methods would converge on the ideal mix equally well.

For real? You don't think that's much harder than trying each one separately, or adding one at a time and getting used to it?

Using the method you propose, you would have to keep going back to the original combination and subtract one substance at a time to be able to see what each one does. Even then, you would be doing a kind of subtraction problem based on how one combination is different from your memory of another combination. In other words, you don't have a positive knowledge of what something does, but a kind of negative idea based on how different two subjective feelings are. And even then, you would be assuming that your substances stack in a linear way, and that they don't react differently in different combinations.

These two methods would only converge in an "ideal mix" if you happen to subtract the things that didn't work first. But unlike the additive process, it would all be guesswork.

What you say makes some sort of sense if you jump into a combo you're sure will work, and you aren't interested in knowing each individual substance's type and magnitude of effect. But as these things cost money and have potential downsides, and most people start with a few things and add more as they do more research, it hardly seems feasible.

Anyway, right here we're talking about a combination that didn't work at all, so what you're suggesting doesn't really apply.

[NDM]

What you say makes some sort of sense if you jump into a combo you're sure will work, and you aren't interested in knowing each individual substance's type and magnitude of effect. But as these things cost money and have potential downsides, and most people start with a few things and add more as they do more research, it hardly seems feasible.

I have in mind the universal nootropic stack proposed by Bmud...If I were new to this forum and need some cognitive boost in the next few months I would assume that the Bayesian priors apply to me and therefore start with the full stack he proposed...If I'd experience less than ideal effects, than I would deepen my research of individual components to guess which is the likely culprit and withdraw that element from the stack. It's true money isn't that much of an issue for me.

The logic to start with several things is based, in addition to Bayesian reasoning, on systemic thinking...it's unlikely that one element alone will boost your IQ significantly, for the simple fact that IQ is a polygenetic complex trait (read Plomin).

Also, as a personality type I'm rather impatient so even if this system seems more complicated/costly I want to grab the benefits as soon as possible.

[chrono]

I have in mind the universal nootropic stack proposed by Bmud...If I were new to this forum and need some cognitive boost in the next few months I would assume that the Bayesian priors apply to me and therefore start with the full stack he proposed.

If you're referring to bmud's ten months of research condensed thread, you've got the wrong end of the stick. He definitely isn't recommending a "universal nootropic stack." Read through the first two posts; he's recommending what works for him based on his subjective experience. He mentions several things that have no effect for him (including adderall) which many derive benefit from. A cursory read through this forum will show that people have vastly different reactions to almost every substance.

Bacopa gives me a huge amount of brain fog. If I were to start that stack all at once, there are at least two things (and one combination) which could be doing this. Including several sub-factors for each, which would be very difficult to tweak when starting so many psychoactives all at once.

The logic to start with several things is based, in addition to Bayesian reasoning, on systemic thinking...it's unlikely that one element alone will boost your IQ significantly, for the simple fact that IQ is a polygenetic complex trait (read Plomin).

It's a huge logical leap from this to the conclusion that piling on more substances with largely unknown pharmacology, interactions and personal variability will necessarily increase IQ. In fact, I think it's problematic to assume that traits measured by IQ are the ones that nootropics might improve.

What I'm trying to underline here is that what we're doing is based largely on anecdotal evidence, by no means proven by studies, and is based on complex personal factors which will determine efficacy. If you're impatient, fine, but I don't think it's reasonable to claim that this is logical, or methodologically sound.

Edited by chrono, 07 April 2010 - 08:33 PM.

[NDM]

It's methodologically sound...read J.S.Mill - the method of difference for detecting causality. You have situation A (supps x, y, z), you keep everything the same except for one thing (subtract x, for example), and the difference you detect is likely caused by the subtraction of X. This is studied in any decent graduate level course in causal reasoning or the history of philosophical induction.

[chrono]

It's methodologically sound...read J.S.Mill - the method of difference for detecting causality. You have situation A (supps x, y, z), you keep everything the same except for one thing (subtract x, for example), and the difference you detect is likely caused by the subtraction of X. This is studied in any decent graduate level course in causal reasoning or the history of philosophical induction.

This is very reductionist. As I've already said, your method assumes that nootropics stack in a perfectly linear way. What if X also interacts with Y and/or Z, in different ways and magnitudes? What if X is the wrong thing to subtract first? What if the difference is also influenced by many other factors, like stomach contents, nutrient levels, sleep, mood, surroundings, dosage, time of day, times taken per day, and expected outcome? What if you're talking about 5 or 10 supplements, and not 3?

All of these variables are easier to measure if you have a baseline idea of what a substance does to you by itself, or with a limited number of the other substances involved. While it is technically possible to arrive at the ideal combination the way you're proposing, it is absolutely the most difficult way, requiring the greatest amount of time, money, effort, and experimentation to assure good results. It assumes that one person's recommendations will start you at close to the ideal solution, and any small changes will be easy to make from there. The first post in this thread demonstrates how incorrect that assumption can be.

I feel like I've explained this pretty cogently at this point. These ideas are based on personal experience and research into anecdotal evidence and scientific literature, not designing a stack based entirely on philosophical principles. And since you seem intent on logic, I'll mention that you're only bothering to respond tangentially to the weakest parts of my argument, which suggests you're more interested in being right than arriving at a useful conclusion. But to each his/her own, I suppose.

[NDM]

It's methodologically sound...read J.S.Mill - the method of difference for detecting causality. You have situation A (supps x, y, z), you keep everything the same except for one thing (subtract x, for example), and the difference you detect is likely caused by the subtraction of X. This is studied in any decent graduate level course in causal reasoning or the history of philosophical induction.

This is very reductionist. As I've already said, your method assumes that nootropics stack in a perfectly linear way. What if X also interacts with Y and/or Z, in different ways and magnitudes? What if X is the wrong thing to subtract first? What if the difference is also influenced by many other factors, like stomach contents, nutrient levels, sleep, mood, surroundings, dosage, time of day, times taken per day, and expected outcome? What if you're talking about 5 or 10 supplements, and not 3?

All of these variables are easier to measure if you have a baseline idea of what a substance does to you by itself, or with a limited number of the other substances involved. While it is technically possible to arrive at the ideal combination the way you're proposing, it is absolutely the most difficult way, requiring the greatest amount of time, money, effort, and experimentation to assure good results. It assumes that one person's recommendations will start you at close to the ideal solution, and any small changes will be easy to make from there. The first post in this thread demonstrates how incorrect that assumption can be.

I feel like I've explained this pretty cogently at this point. These ideas are based on personal experience and research into anecdotal evidence and scientific literature, not designing a stack based entirely on philosophical principles. And since you seem intent on logic, I'll mention that you're only bothering to respond tangentially to the weakest parts of my argument, which suggests you're more interested in being right than arriving at a useful conclusion. But to each his/her own, I suppose.

Why the problems (e.g. missing on synergies) that allegedly beset my backward subtractive reasoning (from many to fewer supplements) do not beset your forward reasoning? I just do not seem to get why you don't realize the different constellations of gains and losses of the two approaches:

for example,

you begin with supplement x -- it doesn't work; you eliminate it. Then you move on to supplement y. It works, but you don't know that, had you kept x in the stack, it would have amplified the beneficial effects of y significantly. If you follow my approach, however, as you move from (x, y) to either x alone or to y alone, you would quickly detect that they are both needed and reintroduce the subtracted one in the stack.

The forward-looking additive approach you advocate is likely to have its own kinds of reductionisms and oversights, as I've just shown.

Also, please note that, unlike you, I did not attack you personally, imputing motives other than the genuine quest for truth. The fact of the matter is that i do write a lot on these topics in the abstract and I'm genuinely interested in exploring their potential & limitations. So, claiming that I do it to prove myself right, no matter what, is unfair.

I think we have to do with us having quite different primary intuitions that guide our theoretical models - hence the difficulty to get the messages across into a genuine dialogue.

[kev]

well... so far I feel more energy whenever I dose at 1.2g to around 4g of piracetam, but this may be attributed to other variables. I am going to try to dose it at 50g and see if I get any of the adverse side effects to make sure I actually respond to the compound and that it is legit.

[chrono]

you begin with supplement x -- it doesn't work; you eliminate it. Then you move on to supplement y. It works, but you don't know that, had you kept x in the stack, it would have amplified the beneficial effects of y significantly.

Sure, if you're trying different elements blindly, having no idea what they might do together. But we're not designing a theoretical system for novel drugs here. Odds are someone on this (or another) forum has noted this as a possibility. It's still useful to see which reaction you'll exhibit, but if you've done your research it's unlikely you'd make such an obvious mistake if you've decided to take this in the first place.

And we're not only testing a binary system of works/doesn't work. We're seeing how well we respond to each one, what adverse effects manifest, etc, to make more knowledgeable judgements as we build our stacks—not just throwing everything together for an ideal effect, and seeing what we can get away with dropping.

If you follow my approach, however, as you move from (x, y) to either x alone or to y alone, you would quickly detect that they are both needed and reintroduce the subtracted one in the stack.

If you first step down to x alone (and feel nothing, apparently), how would you have any idea that it amplifies y? It would be much more natural to assume it does nothing, and the effects of x+y are due entirely to y. You would need an idea of what y does by itself to realize that its effects are stronger when taken with x.

Doing it your way has an extra step...why start out with both, if you'll need to try both apart, and end up back at both again? This extra step becomes several if we have more than 2 elements.

Why the problems (e.g. missing on synergies) that allegedly beset my backward subtractive reasoning (from many to fewer supplements) do not beset your forward reasoning?

Some of them do, though not the one in your problematic example. See all of my previous comments for why deriving effects by subtraction is more difficult and complicated. And there are special concerns which apply only to a subtractive process. You've ignored several already, but here's more:

Many substances require time to build up an effect in your system. If bacopa takes four months to manifest memory enhancement, is stopping it to see what difference its absence makes, only to re-start it again, in any way more expedient or beneficial?

Many substances have an effect which persists beyond cessation. While this applies to trying each one separately, it has no detriment when adding substances together. In your system, it only adds more time and confusion to an already roundabout and lengthy procedure.

And many substances require acclimation. If you're taking more than one which affects the same neurotransmission system, throwing them at your brain all at once is not going to give you a fair idea of what therapeutic use is like. In fact, it could be pretty unpleasant.

I just do not seem to get why you don't realize the different constellations of gains and losses of the two approaches

Because there are many drawbacks to your approach, and no apparent benefits. I've yet to hear why you would do this in the first place, besides quicker start-up if there are absolutely no problems.

Which isn't to say that the methods you're talking about have applicability. Stopping a substance to see if it solves a problem is necessary all the time. But as a method for exploring what multiple compounds do, and for trying to build a stack for yourself, it's pretty backwards. NOT theoretically impossible, just not practically advantageous.

The fact of the matter is that i do write a lot on these topics in the abstract and I'm genuinely interested in exploring their potential & limitations. So, claiming that I do it to prove myself right, no matter what, is unfair.

Sorry if I was a little out of line in guessing at your motive, but my point about your argument still stands. You're not bothering to acknowledge or respond to most of my objections, when I've spent a lot of time responding to yours. This makes a theoretical discussion both useless and frustrating, so I think I'm done here.

Edited by chrono, 09 April 2010 - 06:13 AM.

[chrono]

I am going to try to dose it at 50g and see if I get any of the adverse side effects to make sure I actually respond to the compound and that it is legit.

I can't begin to imagine why you think this is a good idea. Piracetam is generally considered to have no known lethal dose, but this is beyond megadosing, and higher than I've ever heard of anyone taking. Taking 50x the generally useful dose of something is not a good idea, and I strongly recommend that you do not do this.

Not to mention that piracetam has a bell-shaped response curve; taking way more is unlikely to produce the effects you want. You're looking for the "sweet spot" that most people find somewhere between 800-2400mg or so.

Telling us where you got it might be a better idea to find out if it's what you think it is. If it's not "legit," then 50g of it could hurt you. And at that dose, no one can say what the side effects are like, so it's not going to help you identify this substance.

I suggest you employ a little more caution and respect for these substances. "Nootropic" doesn't necessarily mean "impossible to hurt yourself with at outrageous dosages."


EDIT: Just re-read some posts. Have you tried taking piracetam on an empty stomach? Say, first thing in the morning? Its already-subtle effects are harder to detect after a heavy meal.

Also, sometimes it takes a couple weeks for the brain to get sensitized. Just keep trying at regular doses.

Edited by chrono, 09 April 2010 - 06:14 AM.

[kev]

Not to mention that piracetam has a bell-shaped response curve; taking way more is unlikely to produce the effects you want. You're looking for the "sweet spot" that most people find somewhere between 800-2400mg or so.

Telling us where you got it might be a better idea to find out if it's what you think it is. If it's not "legit," then 50g of it could hurt you. And at that dose, no one can say what the side effects are like, so it's not going to help you identify this substance.

Well it's been about 3 weeks, and I haven't felt any noticeable effects, unless the effects are extremely subtle. I bought my Piracetam and Sulbutiamine from Nutraplanet, but they did not come with measuring scoops. Maybe I'm dosing it wrong? I use a 1/2 tsp (2.5mL) of Piracateam everyday, which I think is 2400mg. I usually guess to get lower doses; I don't have a smaller measuring spoon, except for a pinch.

Also, for taste, I've found that placing the powder under the tongue and then mixing it in the mouth with a liquid is better than mixing both and then drinking the chaser.

[chrono]

Yeah, 1/2 teaspoon is probably more like 1400-1600mg. That's a pretty good starting dose, actually.

The effects are very subtle. You don't feel it like you do caffeine, unless you're very used to it, maybe. More like you notice subtle improvements to different aspects of thinking (I notice better writing ability, as a big one) as you're performing different mental tasks. CDP choline is even more subtle.

Sulbutiamine is one which should produce a more distinct change in mood, though. Especially at over 1g.

Edited by chrono, 12 April 2010 - 11:27 PM.

[kev]

Well, it's been about a month, and i haven't really felt any of the effects I guess they're just too subtle to notice. I just hope my memory has improved, which is really what I need for finals.