ok
let me introduce myself
I am a doctor in my 30s, returning to university study for a masters this year.
I have a few mental obstacles, one of which is a daily battle with musical loops going over and over. Advertising is just cruel. For some time I have avoided television for this reason. But it doesn't stop there. I have a few other repetitive thought schemata, equally or even more annoying, as well as compulsive touching the area where side burns normally reside or my hairline. I cannot have anything other than short hair as the touching or twiddling becomes too distracting. Perhaps a signalling issue in a frontostriatal loop from cortical areas dealing with certain engrams to specific procedural areas of the basal ganglia is ultimately responsible.
This is not the same as OCD or trichotillomania, though incorporates elements of both and with the advent of the internet, I feel confident there are enough people who have this constellation of problems, which is not usefully captured by contemporary descriptive nosology.
To give you a mental picture of what this is like, I recall seeing an old chinese guy once when I was at a bus station, many years ago. He had male pattern baldness and not a great deal of hair left, but he sat there, combing over and over again, as though behaviourally locked. Now imagine the mental variant, including music. It is easy enough to harness attention to work sufficiently n the workplace as there are a lot of stimuli involved, but when there are less, eg study or a speaker in front of a group, or in a group, or sometimes just one, it is often quite another matter.
It is not terribly disabling, but my productivity could be significantly more efficient, without the distraction. That, and I will be up against the study robots at university.
I've lately become interested in nootropics in general, and with interest, I have read of several self-reports of this particular problem remitting with aniracetam.
After some literature research and a larger amount of time spent sifting through material here and elsewhere on the net, I will begin with aniracetam, at around 250mg bd, as of today.
I intend to dose on alternate days, and on the off days use. I will also use Hericium erinaceus (lions mane) on alternate days, to promote neurogenesis.
After a period of two weeks I will double dose aniracetam if no effect.
Some random notes:
I see there a lot of non-responders and there is no study that I am aware of that stratifies responders from non-responders.
Additionally, anecdotal longecity folk wisdom is that a subset of non-responders will respond if choline is added, with some debate over which is an adequate source, which is at the level of self-experimentation. If the brain fog or headache happen to me, I will use Alpha GPC.
Furthermore, there is some debate about the dose, and dose-response curve, and again, nobody really talking in terms of commonly used neuropsychological tests, but rather subjective experience.
There is better consensus about effect on the basis of fat solubility. I will therefore use concentrated fish oil with a high EPA:DHA ratio, with each dose, topped with first press olive oil. I will look at whether a nip of alcohol is an alternative solvent (nocturnal dose).
In terms of effect, in summary, responders tend to describe a mild to moderate antidepressant effect, a moderate to major anxiolytic effect, in particular social anxiety, and a sedative effect.
Some effects are within hours of dosing and some take several weeks to emerge.
The middle range responder's noot experience seems to be a mild to moderate nootropic effect, with a general noot effect on neocortical episodic memory retrieval, and additional effects apparent in visuo-spatial (predominantly colour and spatial awareness) and verbal facility (generally expressive rather than receptive, ie Brocas area at the frontotemporal convergence, although from the grammar, syntax and lexicon used in the descriptions it cannot be concluded if this effect is real or a subject impression)
Of some concern is the dropout rate and there are not a lot of people writing about it after, eg a year or two years.
We'll see what happens with me.
Edited by breakfast, 15 January 2013 - 12:30 PM.
