Smart drugs: How to build a better brain

Luis Buenaventura

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

Smart drugs: How to build a better brain
The idea that you could 'upgrade your brain' with a few tablets is perhaps too good a pitch to ignore

It’s 1:30 am and I wake up to a siren wailing inside my shared AirBNB. It’s a pulsing, escalating whine that doesn’t let up, and eventually I decide it’s probably a fire alarm. A real one, perhaps implying A Real Fire.

Outside in the hallway, other residents are starting to poke their heads out of their darkened apartments. The elevators have all been turned off and we’re on the 16th floor. It’s my third day in Vancouver, and as we all file in to the narrow, dimly-lit stairwell, the half-asleep Canadians are all apologies.

It takes the fire department a little under an hour to verify that it is not in fact A Real Fire. One of the basement sprinklers had gone off and done its own thing, sorry about that folks, just get on back to bed now, eh?

The elevators still aren’t working though, so by the time I’m back upstairs my iPhone tells me I’ve already hit my walking target for the day. Unfortunately, the unexpected exertion has released a raft of endorphins in my brain, and it’s now impossible to go back to sleep. I spend the next 3 hours squinting at the clock, ticking mercilessly closer to my 9 am appointment across town.

I drag myself out of bed with the sun outlining downtown Vancouver in maple yellow and salmon pink. I realize that, with barely 90 minutes of sleep and a couple of important meetings coming up, this was probably the perfect time to pop a smart drug.

Running on empty

Modafinil, one of the most well-known smart drugs, was first approved by the US FDA in 1998, and began to circulate as a generic drug in 2010. It was originally intended for people suffering from narcolepsy or other sleep disorders, but it’s seen a lot more off-label use purely as a wakefulness drug.

Its primary mechanism involves slowing the dissipation of dopamine in our brains. Science nerds will recall that dopamine is the chemical our brain naturally releases whenever we’re rewarded – with unexpected treats, with undeserved compliments, or with anything else that triggers a momentary sense of euphoria. Our brain generates this chemical many, many times a day, and these sensations tend to be fleeting. Modafinil keeps the dopamine from disappearing, which in turn, keeps us awake.

(This is, coincidentally, the same primary mechanism that cocaine uses, albeit less so. Importantly, you also don’t get thrown in jail for having a stash of Modafinil in your laptop bag. You do need a prescription though.)

Wakefulness drugs are attractive to anyone who has led a mentally taxing life: when you aren’t getting enough sleep, there’s a very obvious dropoff in the quality of your output, and Modafinil temporarily reduces your sleep needs by 66%. Being able to perform at peak output even when you’re running on empty is a huge boon, and as such, Modafinil is a popular solution amongst law and medical students, professional athletes, and the occassional jetlagged/insomniac startup founder.

I pop a 200mg tablet, take a shower, and by the time I’m downstairs I’m as close to wide-awake as you can get through any legal means. I’ve got a mild headache too, but when I pitch our business at my various meetings throughout the day, I’m totally normal. Importantly, I’m not jittery, the way I would have been if I had bombarded myself with coffee instead.

The ultimate cup of joe

Modafinil may be the most well-known synthetic smart drug, but the one that most everyone has tried is coffee.

Yup, that orange mocha frappuccino does have a measurable effect on your brain chemistry, by blocking the adenosine receptors and preventing the onset of drowsiness. It also elevates your blood pressure and raises your heart and respiratory rate, allowing you to be more active. It does so with a cost, however. As all caffeine lovers know, too much coffee gives you the jitters, which in turn make it harder to concentrate, and after the initial bump, there’s a marked decrease in your cognitive abilities as you induce more of it. At the same time, it has fairly strong addictive properties that make it difficult to reduce your intake once you’ve become used to having it several times a day.

I love coffee, but I don’t like how much my tolerance for it has built up over the years. Having to take 2-3 cups of coffee during the first half of the day just so I feel any change in my alertness level is untenable in the long run, and it defeats the purpose of the whole exercise if I’m then too jittery to focus on my work. (Thankfully, it takes over 3 dozen cups of coffee to form a lethal dose of caffeine, but who’s counting.)

As it happens, caffeine forms the basis of the other smart drug I’ve brought on this trip. The core of the idea is that a 2:1 ratio of L-Theanine and caffeine will give you the alertness of coffee tempered by the relaxing effects of LT (an amino acid extracted from green tea). The result is that you’re alert, but not on edge, which is a much more pleasant mental state to be in and is purportedly great for studying or creative work.

If Modafinil is a rave party, LT+C is a ballet recital.

There have been more than a few clinical trials that have studied the effects of LT+C (herehere, and here), and it’s regarded as one of the safest and most accessible kinds of smart drugs. It’s purely natural and easy to put together, as LT can be purchased by the bottle from most local health stores. The caffeine requirement can even be fulfilled by your regular cup of joe: your average instant coffee contains about 50mg of caffeine per cup, and your average third-wave hipster brew has about twice that.

The most noticeable difference with the LT+C cocktail is that it’s not all that noticeable. Or barely noticeable, relative to the face-slap of your first Modafinil in the morning. I take 400mg of LT coupled with a 200mg caffeine tablet at breakfast, and the kick is only briefly as strong as the one that Modafinil delivers. Past lunchtime I’m feeling fairly normal again; there’s no tension and no hard edge. I feel subjectively good, but the effects are subtle enough that I could very easily have just been having a good morning.

The business of smart drugs

Not surprisingly, most mainstream buzz about smart drugs are coming from San Francisco with young startups like Nootroo and Nootrobox, the latter of which includes names like Mark Andreessen, Marissa Meyer, and Mark Pincus amongst its investors. The idea that you could “upgrade your brain” with a few tablets was perhaps too good a pitch to ignore.

These young companies eliminate the guesswork inherent in kitchen-table smart-drug mixology by producing combos (or “stacks”) for the average consumer, with successful recipes put together by other enthusiasts in the burgeoning “nootropics” community.

Their ready-made capsules and chewables are tempting – it’s easy to find the individual ingredients (B6, B12, L-Theanine, Caffeine, Bacopa Monnieri, are all available in health and drug stores) but it’s too much work to combine them in the correct ratios by yourself. Both startups only use ingredients that the FDA has marked GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe), so harder-edge, prescription-only drugs like Modafinil or its more intense sibling Armodafinil don’t figure into their recipes.

Cheating at life

People who regularly use smart drugs often share familiar anecdotes of increased productivity and alertness. As can be expected with most medication, the dosage and the duration of the effect varied from person to person. Some beginners reported mild headaches the first time they tried it, and I personally found that mixing it with another stimulant like caffeine made me hyperventilate for hours afterwards.

The folks who have really raved about it tend to be those whose sleep schedules are out of their hands: parents with newborns, BPO support agents, professional poker players, etc. It suggests that the effects of this drug may not be very pronounced if you’re sleeping properly and otherwise leading a hassle-free life. In most cases, regular exercise has better long-term effects than taking any kind of brain supplement, but there are also plenty of situations where exercise really can’t help you.

I’m no more swamped with work than the average tech startup founder, but I do feel that these smart drugs are allowing me to get more done, over longer periods of time. My average workday starts before 7 am and continues for the next 14 hours, and it’s often challenging to sustain that level of mental availability consistently seven days a week. I see exhausted friends and colleagues struggle to get started in the mornings, or taper off mentally as the day wears on. They complain about how their brains have “just stopped working” as they log off from Slack and shut down their laptops, and I feel a little guilty. These smart drugs almost feel like cheating.

The father of the Nootropics concept, Corneliu Giurgea, predicted back in the 70s that man would not “wait passively for millions of years for evolution to build him a better brain.” And I look at these tiny capsules full of promise in my palm, and it’s like that better brain is already here. – Rappler.com

Author’s note | This should go without saying, but: Consult a doctor before taking any of the drugs or stacks described here (or anywhere else on the Internet, for that matter). Once you get a greenlight, do your research and buy from reputable sources. Many Philippine doctors don’t have any experience with Modafinil, Racetams, or nootropics in general, so take some reading material with you if you’re speaking to them face-to-face.

The author would like to thank to MS and TT for the consults while researching this piece, and CV for not shutting down this experiment.

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