3 replies to this topic

[Green Man]

I'm not totally sure why I'm even posting this but I felt it was something some of you may be interested in. At the very least it is anectdotal data. I am not advising anyone to copy what I did. Figure out what works for you yourself, I'm well aware I overdid it, "more is better" is sometimes a fallacy with nootropics.

 

 

Quite a few of us who have "already-seen" would dare to see even more---would actually follow that dangerous, disappearing, inbound road consciously and witness for the first time what is usually jamais-vu and hidden, and I mean the steady dark frolic of neurons and the ghost that is called ego. -Unknown

 

So this time of year tends to get crazy for a lot of people, especially students. Over the past week or two I have pushed my body and mind farther than I have before. Surprisingly I hardly feel burnt out, though I do somewhat compared to an average day. I'm not advocating what I have done here, and if anything it is irresponsible but I did it and it worked. If you have any questions please ask. I'm growing tired as everything is starting to wear off now so I'll be keeping this brief for the time being.

 

Normal Day

Wake up, make some eggs, bacon, and tea (god I love tea)

Take normal stack

Go for a breezy jog followed by a shower

Go about day to day life

 

Normal Stack

200mg...5-HTP

500mg...Choline Bitarte (don't forget them eggs)

900mg...Gabapentin (spread into 3 doses across day)

500mg...L-Carnitine

500mg...FS Lion's Mane Mushroom

1g..........Piracetam (spread into 2 doses)

Generic multivitamin

 

Final's Week

First off it should be noted I don't follow a normal sleep pattern. It tends to shift by an hour or two a day meaning that sometimes I wake up at 4am and sometimes 4pm. I've learned to live with this as it is significantly better than the sleep issues I have if I try to force a "normal" schedule. I will also sometimes go several days without sleeping or feeling tired and then crash for 12+ hours (record is 20 hours of sleep, it felt like 2). I've dealt with sleep issues since I was a wee little child, I've developed methods to deal with my periods of insomnia and hypersomnia.

 

During this time I probably slept less in total than most people will in a single night. I grabbed an hour of sleep here, a fifteen minute nap there, you get the idea. Sleep is important! This was probably the most harmful thing I did and I am really starting to feel the effects now. The acute effects of sleep deprivation--such as microsleeps, hallucinations, and altered sensation--can be handled when you get used to them (just don't drive or operate heavy machinery) fairly well, the really damaging part is what comes after: the feeling of running on fumes. And IMHO Adrafinil/Modafinil puts it into cheat mode, my body felt tired but my mind was saying "no you're not", personally I feel that Adrafinil is nothing like caffeine, it is oh so much better.

 

I kept up with my usual diet of cooking only whole foods, nothing processed or with a label or list of ingredients on it, only pure animal and vegetable products (and dairy).

I also kept up with my exercise, ya have to get the blood pumping and endorphins rushin', mostly bicycling and running. I normally go for ~20 mile rides on the weekends, on this stack I didn't notice any major changes to endurance but the overall experience of going for bicycle ride was like riding a roller coaster for the first time mixed with the sci-fi warpspeed animation. Anytime I felt extra low, or unwanted extra high, energy levels I went for some air.

 

At first I was taking my normal stack plus a few other things I don't normally take, but I was taking it the same way and at the same times. Then I started increasing the amounts. Followed by a full breakdown into mega dosing. The following is an approximation for a single day, each day was slightly different but this is pretty close to the average.

 

It should also be noted that I'm generally a non-responder to just about everything but at these levels I could feel it, oh could I feel it; mostly the Adrifinil and Sulbutamine I believe but impossible to tell when all mixed up like this with their cohorts and friends: other supplements. The strongest effects wore off the fastest, with the euphoric bubbling energy and endless focus feeling wearing off in less than an hour usually.

 

I'm sure someone will point out that "there's no point in taking that much of X or Y because of Z", and I'm sure they're right, I'm simply reporting my adventure into the most intensely focused studying of my life. I normally hate reading textbooks but during this I couldn't put them down, not because I was enjoying the text but because my mind had already read the next sentence and put it into memory; like a train, it became impossible to stop once I started a task.

 

The Final Stack

Generic multivitamin

Aspirin (baby dose once a day)

A buttload of tea

300mg......5-HTP

5000mg....Choline Bitarte (don't forget them eggs)

1800mg....Gabapentin (spread into 3 doses across day)

1500mg....L-Carnitine

2000mg....Full Spectrum Lion's Mane Mushroom

10g...........Piracetam (spread into 1-2g doses across day)

1800mg....Ashwaganda

500mg......Ginseng

3800mg....Gotu Kola

20mg........Cyclobenzaprine

1000mg....Sulbutamine (mixed this in with the Piracetam and capped it)

1200mg....Adrafinil (300mg every 6 hours)

120mg......Noopept

Edited by Green Man, 17 December 2015 - 06:20 PM.

[Green Man]

The worst negative effect I experienced is a sensitivity to noise. The levels I normally have my audio equipment set to most people would consider too quiet but I ended up having to turn it down further. With headphones on it felt like someone was screaming inside my head. Besides this no headaches or indigestion (yet). Urine reeks like hellfire and brimstone and I have been burping fairly consistently. Obviously, I am growing more and more tired as everything (read: Adrafinil) wears off and a week of sleep deprivation catches up.

 

Overall, 7.8 out of 10. Would only repeat if in dire need.

 

I am sure there are better supplements for a problem like this, I was simply making do with what I had on hand.

[lourdaud]

1800 mg gabapentin 3 times a day and 300 mg adrafinil every 6 hours? This is a very bad idea. Take adrafinil first thing in the morning, ditch the gabapentin altogether as it will drastically impair memory consolidation.

[Green Man]

1800 mg gabapentin 3 times a day and 300 mg adrafinil every 6 hours? This is a very bad idea. Take adrafinil first thing in the morning, ditch the gabapentin altogether as it will drastically impair memory consolidation.

 

The gabapentin was 3 doses at 600mg each for a total of 1800, not 1800 3 times a day; I was prescribed it off-label primarily for chronic nerve and muscle pain after a serious accident. I was taking twice my normal dose which was already on the low end, tolerance builds quickly unfortunately and my doctor has cleared me for higher doses than that but I have no need to. It is often prescribed in 900mg pills taken 3 times a day or more so I suppose 1800mg 3 times a day may not be unheard of.

 

Ditching the gabapentin is out of the option, I have tried other medications, I have seen specialists including pain management and physical therapy, nothing works like the gabapentin does. It is also the only med my doctors have tried for this that has primarily positive side effects instead of negative ones, namely calming my anxiety/nervous behaviors with a general confidence boost and 'slowing' the mind in social interactions such that I can actually hold one. The positives (pain management alone) far outweigh the negatives for me personally.

 

1800 mg gabapentin 3 times a day and 300 mg adrafinil every 6 hours? This is a very bad idea. Take adrafinil first thing in the morning, ditch the gabapentin altogether as it will drastically impair memory consolidation.

 

Why do you say it is a bad idea? Not to disagree, rather curious actually.

 

The adrafinil I picked up a few months back but had only tried it once or twice up until then. I started it at 100mg twice a day and moved it up pretty quick. Was it too much? Maybe but it worked the way I used it. Was that the best way to use it? Probably not. Probably could have gotten away with 300mg twice a day and gotten roughly the same effect as four times a day. I found that every 6 hours was the high-end of optimal for not turning into Sleeping Beauty. Is using adrafinil in this way to go days at a time without more than an hour or two of sleep healthy? Absolutely not, please get your sleep people. I definitely prefer the energy from adrafinil to that of caffeine, feels smoother in the come up and come down, less jittery and more euphoric plus I was able to sleep when I wanted to I just largely chose not to during this time (or so I felt). I doubt I could sleep on it during the first 2-4 hours (and this is the reason for timing between doses) but after that initial onset started to fade into the background sleep wasn't a problem despite not feeling sleepy or fatigued.

 

If there is anything I would drop from that list and scour like the devil himself it would be the cyclobenzaprine. Good for calming the nerves but leaves me feeling hungover and too spaced out to drive or really do much of anything, and not in the way some people like to be.

 

1800 mg gabapentin 3 times a day and 300 mg adrafinil every 6 hours? This is a very bad idea. Take adrafinil first thing in the morning, ditch the gabapentin altogether as it will drastically impair memory consolidation.

 

I think this would be a great idea for most people but again you hit the exception bullseye. I wasn't using this in a normal way. I wasn't waking up 6am and going to an office job. Heck, I wasn't even keeping a schedule except for countdown to each exam. Actually, it seems you may have misread my post as a whole, maybe not though; I am not recommending this as a daily thing or something to strive for, this whole situation was about the exception and seeing what I could do to it in that tiny timeframe with mega doses. In my personal subjective opinion, quite a bit actually, but that it is not sustainable for long.

 

For what it's worth, I did score higher on my finals (all but one were cumulative) than on any other exam this semester. That could be associated with a lot of things though.