24 replies to this topic

[reticent]

Hello everyone -

I'm a short time lurker on here who originally became interested in nootropic racetams and Noopept to assist with my terrible long and short term memory, lack of motivation, and anxiety.

I ordered both piracetam and Noopept about three weeks ago and also procured a B-Complex vitamin, Sublingual B-12, and Jarrow's Alpha-GPC.

I started by taking Noopept 30mg about twice a day, and did not experience much, if anything at all. So, the next week, I took about 4.8 grams of piracetam twice a day, 600 mgs of Alpha-GPC, and 30mgs of Noopept twice a day. I didn't get the amazing imagery like everyone else had described, but after about a week, my memory was noticeably augmented in a positive way. I could easily recall facts that would leave me searching for the right word - and I was remembering faces for the first time in forever without turning to my partner and quietly asking who that was - I was telling THEM first. It was incredible. Little victories.

Things were going reasonably swimmingly, aside from brain fog and lethargy from time to time from what I think was over doing it on the noopept, so to test things out, I dropped the noopept and piracetam for a week, and just took the Alpha GPC, which helped with fluidity of speaking, but caused palpitations when taking too much (as I upped to around 900-1200per day), so after a few days of feeling ill at ease, I stopped everything to reassess and create a plan instead of just bouncing around.

So I decided to go exclusively with the Noopept, which I decided to take 30mg, twice a day, for three weeks, and keep a log of improvement. That started two days ago. The first day went well, the second day, my partner reminded me we had mushrooms that we'd been saving...I tried to do some research to see if there were any potentially negative interactions between the two since I had already taking my 60mg for the day at that point, and I couldn't find anything.

So, I went ahead and took them. And having taken mushrooms multiple times before prior to nootropic supplementation, I know the feeling of detachment and relaxation that comes with digesting shrooms.

This was not it.

My visualizations started...but also with extreme anxiety and feeling faint. Within about an hour after ingestion, I started to feel like all of my actions were becoming manic, but with visualizations, and not in a way where I could breath and call myself down naturally. It became so bad, I was worried that I had started to fry my neurotransmitters, which - I still may have - I called an ambulance because it was only becoming dramatically worse.

These were the most vivid and intense visualizations turning into full on hallucinations. Floors were melting out from under me, by the time we got to the hospital, I had almost completely lost my ability to understand language. It sounded like everyone was speaking french in a huge jumble. My body wanted me to go into it, and relax...so I would close my eyes and it felt like I was dreaming and awake at the same time...but I knew there was a further level of sleeping that I could let myself go to, but I kept refusing to relax because I wasn't sure what was happening to my brain at that point, so all I knew was that I needed to stay awake because I thought I might go into a coma, or even die.

They went to interview me, and I could only answer the most basic questions, after being prompted multiple times and was very easily confused, mixing words - meanwhile, assuming I'm now at the peak of the digestion of the mushrooms, things are only going downhill. I'm in a triage room and I want to sleep so badly, but I'm trying to keep myself from relaxing because I'm panicing and thinking that might be it for me if I go to sleep - at least becoming a vegetable. It was so incredible though...looking into everything in my brain, it was the most crisp and photorealistic dream/visualization space that I have ever had, and I would become to comfortable in it...and then snap back into the real world until the boundaries between the real world and that world were completely non-existant.

At that point, I was pretty sure my neurons were frying...or reaching a critical mass of overstimulation and that I needed something to counteract and prevent the transmitters from being stimulated because in no uncertain terms...I was losing my ability to talk...I could only say two-three word phrases - and everyone in the ER thought I was just being psychotic whereas I was pretty sure my brain was on fire.

Finally someone grabbed the Noopept container I brought with me and looked at the active chemical printed on the side and ordered me two shots of Ativan (lorezepram) immediately.

All the while, my partner is crying and hugging me because I wasn't sure what death felt like...but I assume a slow confusion mixed with bursts of understanding the gravity of what's happening around you...that slowly fades away and away would be pretty similar.

Within about 2 minutes, after the benzos were given, my surroundings solidified...when I reached for my partner, my arm didn't go through their arm...I could feel them again, they were the right proportions, my eyes could focus...and then I could relax. My brain felt completely stable again. I wasn't shouting down the hall at the orderlys to please please help, and arguing with them when they told me it was "just a panic attack" because I knew it wasn't - I told them I needed something to counteract the stimulation and that my neurotransmitters were being friend - which I'm sure sounds insane. But I kept going with it, and my boyfriend believed me and stood up for me.

Oh man...I have no idea...no no no idea, but could I have died, or at least literally destroyed half of my brain?

After sleeping on everything...I feel woozy and out of it, but I feel capable and able to communicate. I obviously am able to write and understand language again.

Can anyone shed some light on how stupid I was, and why I had that reaction?

Edited by reticent, 13 May 2013 - 08:51 PM.

[Na8331]

It seems possible that the noopept could have possibly ''intensitfied'' your experience from what you explained here.

But to be honest taking anything over a few grams of shrooms will definately do that to you. I've seen even the most experienced users lose themselves silly and ask to be taken to the hospital after taking anything over an eight. How many grams of did you take?

You can't just assume it was an interaction without possibly looking into the potency of the of the shrooms you had. Sometimes they are strong. Sometimes they're tollerable. Sometimes they're weak.

[reticent]

I was a normal dose, but I can't speak for the specific efficacy of the batch we were taking.

My partner took the exact same sourced mushrooms, and the same dose size and felt normal, relaxed, and giggling with mild visualizations (typical trip, and my normal experience). I'm trying not to make an assumption directly, but occam's razor - I generally have X reaction with shrooms, I've now introduced a new variable, and am now having Y reaction. Correlation doesn't equal causation - BUT I feel like it is highly probable that the experience was augmented or intensified by the combination.

But this is why I'm asking here - hopefully someone knows more than me about how all of these chemicals interact with one another.

[Na8331]

http://www.zoklet.ne...p/t-253695.html

Some reports there. One mentioning an unpleasant trip while using shrooms and noopept.

[Mr. Pink]

every trip on a psychedelic is different and influenced by many different factors. sounds like a bad trip that may or may not be t due to noopept. just speaking from personal experience, many of the problems you are using noopept for May get a lot better by staying off recreational drugs. also, anxiety you mentioned is likely to cause bad trips

[reticent]

Right - but it was psilocybin-induced anxiety (which I am also familiar with) on steroids. It felt like the connections to my prefrontral cortext from every other integral portion of my brain were shut down - or being prevented from communicating with one another.

I'm just curious, aside from "don't do that" posts which I of course agree with now - if anyone knows any of the chemistry relating to if/and why a severe reaction would occur like this?

[renfr]

Yes, never mix psychoactive drugs with anything unless you're 100% sure it's okay, I also learned that the hard way with psylocybin and a drug that lowers blood sugar.
Noopept is said to stimulate dopamine and to my experience I would agree with this statement, shrooms also cause a huge release of dopamine so you added fuel to the flames. (see study about it : http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/10192823)
You probably reached an extremely excitotoxic state since you were unable to talk properly, did you experience spasticity during intoxication? You probably caused some damage to your brain but you hardly fried it all since you're back to normal.

[Alyssa]

Nootropics are actually pretty well-known to intensify psychedelics experiences, I've seen tons of reports about it with piracetam. Most commonly nootropics work to enhance the activity of either acetylcholine or glutamate, and noopept is no different. Psychedelics, specifically 5-HT2A agonists like psilocin, create a significant part of their effects by releasing acetylcholine and glutamate. From what I've read, it's often thought that glutamate release causes many of the hallucinations and probably is the cause of everything feeling intensified, and acetylcholine accounts for how vivid or realistic your hallucinations are. It's also intimately involved in vivid dreams, so it makes sense. As a result of this, taking psychedelics and nootropics together, especially if you're particularly sensitive to either or both, can have very strongly synergistic effects.

As for your trip, it sounds intense, but totally within the realm of what mushrooms can do.... I don't know if you've ever tripped hard enough to think you're dying or something or have an ego death before, but the whole point of it is that it's convincingly real even when nothing is wrong. It sounds like it was a very strong trip but I doubt you did any actual damage, aside from possibly emotional damage, and I can almost say with certainty (and I only say "almost" because I don't know all that much about noopept) that you were not close to dying.

That's my opinion anyway. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Edited by Alyssa, 14 May 2013 - 12:12 AM.

[Guacamolium]

As stated above, shrooms cause an increase in glutamate transmission. Couple that with an AMPA agonist (not modulator, like most racetams), and you have 5-H2A glutamate release + AMPA glutamate release. That's why the effects of the benzodiazepine reversed the glutamatergic frenzy; it negated both pathways' transmissions with one fell swoop.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If you plan to trip on ergot alkaloids (LSD), tryptamines (shrooms, AMT), and/or phenylethylamines (mescaline, 2C-I), have a benzo or thienodiazepine around if things get to the point where you think an ambulance ride is a proper choice. This works too with the synthetic cannabinoids if you happen to have a panic attack on them. By introducing this safety measure, you help reduce the amount of hospital visits around the world that are solely based on illicit drug use.

Also, oxiracetam in my experience goes well with shrooms if you ever get the inclination to mix noots and psychedelics again. I'm also glad you alerted the community about the interactions between AMPA agonists and psychedelics.

[reticent]

Thank you somethingtoxic and alyssa - both of your answers make quite a bit of sense! I'm happy to know what was happening in my brain...which can help me avoid mixing these substances in the future.

As for your advice of having a benzo on hand - I'd assume for most viable commercially available benzos I'd need a prescription. Would something like valerian root operate on the same pathways?

[Guacamolium]

Valerian root builds up tolerances too quick, but even if you keep it only for emergencies, it doesn't have the opposing efficacy to counteract glutamate entirely. Skullcap is a little better, but not by much.

Etizolam is not currently a prescription drug in the United States or UK, and more importantly for legal reasons it's also not a controlled substance - only in India. If you can track down sublingual etizolam or Etilaam brand tablets, store them in a safe place for emergencies. Costs way less than an ambulance ride and a night stay at the hospital. It's a short acting thienodiazepine with subdued euphoria (compared to the euphoria of others in its class), which means it fits the bill when it comes to quick acting solutions to a bad trip - especially a bad trip mixed with a provoking agent like noopept.

[reticent]

Two days on from the initial ER landing incident, feeling a subtle ache and bursts of slight anxiety - enough to be unsettling. I'm assuming I destroyed some, or many glutamate receptors among who knows what else.

This experience is at the least providing impetus to avoid psychedelic substances...when my ultimate goal is to improve my brain function rather than further degrade it.

I'm happy to take responsibility for doing something stupid... but I'm assuming, I should probably give my brain an ideal healing environment. I don't want to overload it any further.

Hopefully not to abuse the kindnesses of anyone on this board by asking for further advice - but if anyone has suggestions for cultivating an environment/supplement suggestions for hastening the healing, I'd be greatly appreciative. I'm kicking myself for this.

[Suirsuss]

One most certainly doesnt need to have been using nootropics to have such a reaction to psolocybes. If youve popped as many caps in your day as you make it sound is it wrong for me to assume frequent marijuana and some other recreational drug use? If so and if you're holding the wrong genetic hand the noots could have just been some coal in the engine of a train headed for some kind of hospital bill.

I mean not to critisize. I was put into an inpatient facility for 5 days during a period of what I call PTPSD (post traumatic psychedelic stress disorder).
For years everything was fine with occasional boomers and lsd until this one particularly potent blotter sent me to another world.

EDIT: after effects of this (>2month) episode of psychosis left me with very comparable after effects of the aggregated reports from studies of people who have gone through a near death experience.

Edited by Suirsuss, 22 May 2013 - 05:43 AM.

[reticent]

suiruss - no criticism taken - it was admittedly a stupid thing to have done - not thoroughly researching potentially negative interactions between two psychotropic substances.

With that said, it's actually the only recreational drug I still do, and only maybe once every six months. I haven't smoked weed in about two years.

I'll chalk it up to what somethingtoxic explained - a pair of drugs that compliment each other way too well.

In an update - this week, just now starting to feel solidly like myself with the anxiety abating. I've been taking 900mgs of Alpha-GPC daily and eating well with nothing else added.

I'll reassess in a few weeks if I want to start my noopept regimen back.

[robosapiens]

A friend related that he took 3 grams dried and 30 mg noopept, and had no negative reactions at all, in fact the visuals were significantly lessened, and and even expanded awareness was the only noticeable effect from the noopept.

Sounds like set and setting issues to me, or they were laced with some junk.

[Xenthide]

I know this thread is a little old but I feel the need to respond because I see people throwing around terms like "excitotoxicity" and talking about actual neuronal damage, which is almost definitely just nonsense.

Serotonergic psychedelics such as psilocybin, LSD and other similar chemicals are almost entirely nonetoxic. That isn't to say that they can't induce lasting negative changes, but due to the very nature of psychedlics and the potential for difficult experiences these changes are almost always entirely psychological in nature such as bad trip induced PTSD, and not resulting from any real, physical damage to the brain.

While interactions between such psychedelics and Noopept are admittedly probably completely unstudied and largely unknown, Noopept itself, again, in normal doses has not shown any neurotoxicity, in fact quite the opposite, along with other more conventional 'racetams it is demonstrably neuroprotective in a range of scenarios.

Given what we do know about both the above mentioned substances (Psilocybin and Noopept) we can easily deduce that while it may well result in a traumatic experience such as the one described, there is absolutely no reason at all to think that this is connected to any imagined neurotoxic or excitotoxic effects.

Edited by Xenthide, 30 September 2013 - 12:56 AM.

[protoject]

I think it's purely the shrooms that did it. It's not uncommon that a bad trip like this could happen. Some people trip balls from even low amounts. Potency is never something that you know- it could be a low or high potency and you have no way of knowing beforehand.

Other than that, and I say this for entertainment purposes only, noopept increases NGF in your brain which is implicated in schizophrenia and so possibly is the 5ht2a agonism and other stuff of shrooms..

Even though I think it was just the shrooms, I've had a lot of psychotic dreams on noopept and it also felt as if noopept was slightly budging my underlying schizophrenia when i took it, so hmm i dunno maybe there's some link

[Godof Smallthings]

What do you mean by a psychotic dream, and how does it differ from a 'normal' dream?

[protoject]

Noopept caused a severe case of nightmares for me after taking it for a while, at one point at least. I would have really wierd dreams that didn't make sense and ended in me being ripped apart by a bear and I could feel him digesting me. I also had severely shortened sleep.

It was that kind of dream where youre intensely dreaming and then you wake up with adrenaline pumping through you and you could probably bust through the walls of your house. And then your brain feels all scatty and disconnected for a little while.

Usually I almost never have nightmares ever. Did have a massive ton of them when i was young though.

[Absent]

Racetams always interact strongly with psychedelics. This is well known. A normal dose of Piracetam can make an LSD trip 100-1000x stronger, making hallucinations go full blown.

I wouldn't have gone to the hospital. I've had overwhelmingly intense trips before and come out just fine. An overwhelming trip does not mean you are dying.

[nightlight]

I wouldn't have gone to the hospital. I've had overwhelmingly intense trips before and come out just fine. An overwhelming trip does not mean you are dying.

God advice. One gets tagged for life as mentally unstable or psychotic. This episode may surface later if he is running for office, applying for security clearance or a high responsibility job, buying firearms, etc.

[protoject]

Racetams always interact strongly with psychedelics. This is well known. A normal dose of Piracetam can make an LSD trip 100-1000x stronger, making hallucinations go full blown.

I wouldn't have gone to the hospital. I've had overwhelmingly intense trips before and come out just fine. An overwhelming trip does not mean you are dying.

How sure are you about this on a scale of 1-10? For example have you tried taking these drugs [without piracetam] from the exact same batch, consistently getting the same effects every time, and then taking a racetam with an exact same amount of the drug and then getting mind-blowing effects? I'm just not seeing a connection here but if you can give me a level of sureness here I will have to consider.

[Absent]

Racetams always interact strongly with psychedelics. This is well known. A normal dose of Piracetam can make an LSD trip 100-1000x stronger, making hallucinations go full blown.

I wouldn't have gone to the hospital. I've had overwhelmingly intense trips before and come out just fine. An overwhelming trip does not mean you are dying.

How sure are you about this on a scale of 1-10? For example have you tried taking these drugs [without piracetam] from the exact same batch, consistently getting the same effects every time, and then taking a racetam with an exact same amount of the drug and then getting mind-blowing effects? I'm just not seeing a connection here but if you can give me a level of sureness here I will have to consider.

I'll give you a real life example. I've taken LSD many times before, and the halucinations/visuals were always minor. I took 3g of Piracetam one day and LSD about 2-3 hours later, and it was crazy. The entire trip I was in another realm. I was surfing on the DNA inside of cells. I was flying through the universe, diving into atoms. It was like a super vivid waking dream. This was just off 300ug of lsd too. I've taken 5-10x that much without Piracetam before and never had such intense visuals. Who knows. I've taken Piracetam with shrooms before and I didn't notice anything too crazy, LSD is another story though.

I am not the only one who has had experiences like this. You can look online for reports of Piracetam+Psychedelics. It seems to have very impactful effects for some people. The effect is has on the individual may be dependent on their chemistry. Here's one from Erowid.
http://www.erowid.or...exp.php?ID=9126

Once again, my tolerance to LSD is rather high, and my normal dosage is 10 to 20 hits, followed by as many in a few hours. LSD is by far my favorite and most frequently used substance, however I do not use it as a party drug, I prefer to use it as a door-to-another-dimension-trance-inducing-out-of-body-experience-god-awakening-turning-myself-into-input-sponge sacrament. The first time I used LSD with Piracetam, I only had 4 hits of blotter left, and was unable to obtain more. So I took a single dose of 2400 mg of Piracetam and followed in 2 hours with my modest reserve of LSD. In 15(!!!!!!!) minutes I began to feel the trip, as a tsunami wave swallowing me In 1-2 more minutes, I was looking at my hands as they became transparent and disappeared. I was gone: for the next 50,000,000 years (or 10 hours) to the sound of Allure, Van Buuren and Camaya Painters I was flying at light speed through the universe, seeing galaxies and insides of cells, flying along DNA of T-rex, traveling through time, reading some ancient accounting books with regard to transactions in cattle among 17th century farmers, confessing my love to my girlfriend, stopping the motor of the world (as John Galt) and laughing at founding fathers, desperately trying to make a candy out of pile of shit. My girlfriend, who wasn't tripping, later told me that I was doing things, like making pizza, coffee, smoking, yet whenever she would ask me something, she would immediately realize how far I was gone.

As I began to come back, we went to the lake, then to walk in the forest. I was feeling so wonderful, so happy. In 12 more hours I went to sleep, woke up after 3 hours, refreshed, fully functional, attended all of my appointments for the very busy day and retired in front of the TV, watching Beavis and Butthead. It was one of the deepest trips I have ever been on. And the happiest one. I have repeated this experience many times since, in different surroundings, and details were different as well. Yet all of Piracetam + LSD trips had one thing in common -- they were profoundly powerful, although LSD dosage was 1/4 to 1/2 of what I usually take without Piracetam.

It's very interesting to read the other interactions he has on there also. The Piracetam+Meth/Amphetamine thing he has on there about how the Piracetam eliminated any crash/comedown/hangover is interesting also.

From all my experiences with combining Piracetam with other drugs, I have concluded the following (please don't hold me to scientific soundness -- it is my mere opinion). Piracetam does not interfere with depressants & narcotics. It diminishes effects of dissociatives (DXM and Special K)(although I need more experimenting here) But it increases many folds effects of stimulants and hallucinogens, while decreases or eliminates negative symptoms. Once again -- this is my subjective experience, do not interpret it as an advice. Drugs are illegal, and the government is insane. This is a bad combination. But Piracetam + LSD is the good one :-)

I don't think I was as far gone as the guy above, but my experience was similar. Reading this kind of makes me want to try it again. I've tried DMT before, and you can't really too much when you're in the other realm. With the L+Piracetam it's different, there's much more control, much more vividness, etc.

I wouldn't have gone to the hospital. I've had overwhelmingly intense trips before and come out just fine. An overwhelming trip does not mean you are dying.

God advice. One gets tagged for life as mentally unstable or psychotic. This episode may surface later if he is running for office, applying for security clearance or a high responsibility job, buying firearms, etc.

I still think if a person gets themselves in a dire psychedelic situation, before hand, they should try to have benzo's ready just in case. Benzos/Xanax have been known to kill most psychedelic effects very quickly(very common with shrooms/psilocybin), as well as calm the user down, sooth heart issues beating out of control. Go to the hospital and they'll give you some antipsychotics that will lock up your system and possibly give you brain damage. From what I heard if you're tripping uncontrollably they give you an injection of some stuff that makes you feel you're in a mental straight jacket for 12 hours straight, in other words, like your in hell; it's horrible I hear.

Edited by Siro, 01 October 2013 - 09:20 PM.

[Adaptogen]

My experience with piracetam and psilocybin is that the combination gives me a 'clearer head' with less visual distortions and hallucinations than my typical trips

[protoject]

interesting