Hacker News Reader

Comment by tonyhb | Hacker News Reader

Reddit actually has an active nootropics community with a wiki for beginners: https://www.reddit.com/r/nootropics/wiki/beginners.

The standard stuff is L-Theanine + Caffeine. For cognitive enhancement any of the "racetams" are considered proven, and you branch out into untested army drugs when you take modafinil.

I've tried each of these and stick with L-Theanine and Caffeine daily. Piracetam had no visible effect on me. Modafinil got me through 36 to 50 hour work days straight, at crunch time when deadlines were needed for an old job. Work was probably at about 60% of its best at the time – easy to get into the zone but also not quite my best. I know it's not healthy but I was also curious and happy to try it out of personal curiosity. YMMV :)

View on HN

> you branch out into untested army drugs when you take modafinil.

What on earth are you talking about? Modafinil is very much _not_ an "untested army drug". It's pretty well-studied, approved for use by the FDA, and available for sale (with prescription) under multiple names in the US, and by prescription with no other legal restrictions in most other countries. It has a freaking WebMD page[1]!

[1] http://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-16964/provigil-oral/detail...

I totally thought it was untested back when I did it, though that was 6 years ago. And one of the few things I read about it in terms of studies was its effects on army pilots during 12+ hour training sessions here: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA533725, hence why I thought it was an army drug.

Learned something new today.

They used to give air force pilots dextroamphetamine for long flights but recently decided to make a switch to Modafinil

In regards to modafinil, it is a schedule IV drug in the US. It's a bit difficult to get and quite expensive. I've done well with adrafinil, which is a prodrug of moda and relatively easy to get.

Modafinil was quite cheap and easy to get in my experience. That was in the middle of the US, nowhere near a big city.

It's absurdly easy to get. There are even dedicated online sites like ModafinilCat that make the whole experience like buying on Amazon. It is a bit pricey since it's coming through customs from India typically, but still affordable if you just need some to take during crunch times.

Very cool! Thanks for the info!!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com