After over a year of procrastinating, I am finally performing my duty as a citizen-scientist and investigating nootropics. (Technically I started a year ago with DHA, but omega-3s have the benefits of being (1) low-hanging fruit, (2) a preventative measure, not an enhancer, (3) socially acceptable, and (4) completely harmless.)
Currently my stack is DHA, potassium, green tea (l-theanine and caffeine), creatine, piracetam, and choline.
My research sources primarily come from Gwern on Nootropics and r/Nootropics, as well as the relevant wikipedia articles.
I plan to update this post based on whatever I learn that is in contrast to the expected benefits, both above and below expected performance.
——————————I have found a noticeable increase in lucidity as well as mental reaction time/acuity. It is hard to compare this increase with the general increase with time that I’ve had all of my life so far.
My alcohol tolerance is astonishingly high. This change happened rapidly within 2 weeks of beginning the stack and only decreased temporarily when I took a week off all nootropics.
My mental health is shattered. I assign a <5% chance that there is any connection with this and the nootropics, as I have undergone significant upheaval in my life.
I am still not nearly as awake as I’d like to be for as long as I’d like to be.
——————————I took a six month break after Burning Man 2013 until starting work at Google. During that time I felt that I wouldn't have benefited from cognitive enhancement, as I wasn't producing intellectual work. I'm struggling against a tendency to self-handicap - by not using all available cognitive resources, I can feel better about mistakes that I make and opportunities that I miss.
Now that I'm at Google, and I'm operating at a near maximal intellectual capacity, I am restarting my usage.