Life Hack: Nootropic Mind Bending

In the 2011 movie Limitless struggling writing Eddie Morra is suffering from chronic writer's block, but his life changes instantly when an old friend introduces him to NZT-48, a revolutionary new "smart drug" or nootropic. After taking the pill finds himself able to learn and analyse information at a superhuman rate and under the influence writes 90 pages of his book. Eddie starts experimenting with the drug - what might takes months now takes days - he finishes his book becomes a proficient piano player, becomes fluent in several languages and becomes an investment tycoon - predicting the markets and turning a small stake into millions.

While Limitless is fiction "smart drugs" or nootropics are fact - just google (or Bing) "buy nootropics" for bout 397,000 results!


Smart drug use is more common than you might realise - where surveys have been done its common to find anywhere between 10% and 20% of people taking them.

Mind Bending
The psychologist and chemist C.C. Giurgea is credited with coining the term "nootropic" which comes from the Greek nous meaning “mind,” and trepein meaning “to bend.” Giurgea synthesized his first smart drug, called piracetam, in 1964.  Giurgea’s hope was that these drugs could enhance cognition, counter the effects of ageing, help children with speech disorders and other maladies, and treat post-traumatic stress.

Today the nootropic information site Nootriment lists over 120 different drugs and Reddit r/nootropics subreddit hosts a research index of over 200 products with potential cognitive effects.

What most nootropic users (noots or noanaughts) seem to be looking for today is enhancement of executive function through stimulating the cognitive processes involving attention, alertness, focus, concentration, working memory, problem solving, reasoning, the cognitive control of behaviour (selecting and successfully monitoring behaviours that facilitate the attainment of chosen goals) and just staying awake longer.

“We only have 24 hours in each day, and we are all trying to figure out how ... It's the unifying theme that connects Google with Uber with Nootrobox with P90X” ~ Michael Bradt

Its no surprise that Nootropics are a big thing in Silicon Valley - its an intensely competitive tech business environment - they see brains as systems that can be tweaked, enhanced, upgraded, optimised and monetised. Are smart drugs driving Silicon Valley - open the refrigerator in entrepreneur Dave Asprey's home and you may as well be at a pharmacy. To Get ahead in Silicon Valley: take nootropic brain drugs - Nootroo and Nootrobox are two San Francisco nootropics startups that launched last year. Their founders come from the tech scene and their products are squarely aimed at the tech crowd Each claims big-name Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors among their users, though neither will name them.

Nootropics are fundamentally performance enhancing drugs and analogies with doping in sport come readily. The surprising thing is that we also find between10% and 20% of people taking nootropics in sport - in fact the incidence of drug use for cognitive enhancement is greater than that for physical enhancement - brain doping is common in amateur sport ....  because many of the substances aren't banned.

Education is (rightly or wrongly) a mentally competitive environment and we shouldn't be surprised that students turn to 'smart drugs' to boost grades. High school and university are the primary competitive spheres of many people's lives, and ones that have significant bearing upon their lives, in terms of both career opportunities and future earning capacity. The pressure to succeed academically is very real, and in a climate in which high-stakes public examinations have increased demand for private tuition, it is likely that all avenues for performance enhancement will be exhausted. The possibility of purchasing 'smartness in a bottle' is likely to have broad appeal to students.

Universities have been warned of explosion in use of smart drugs and that Smart drug' taken by one in four students really does boost performance. As many as a quarter of students at Newcastle and Leeds and around one in five at universities like Imperial, Sheffield, Nottingham and Manchester claimed to have experimented with Modafinil – a prescription drug intended to treat narcolepsy using it to stay awake and alert for long periods and boost their performance in the run up to exams.

The effects and  effectiveness of nootropics depend on the individual but most of the effects "can be chased down to effects on alertness"  ... they won’t extend your mental capacity to a high order of cognition.”  The Journal of European Neuropsychopharmacology in a study on the most comon nootropic modafinal found that whilst most studies employing basic testing paradigms show that modafinil intake enhances executive function, only half show improvements in attention and learning and memory, and a few even report impairments in divergent creative thinking.

Benjamin Zand's smart drugs nightmare is an interesting read on the effects of modafinil - it increased his level of attention by 10% but made him feel more awake through the day but

That evening, I began to feel the effects of modafinil's "wakefulness promoting agent". When I tried to get to sleep, I found myself unable to switch off until the early hours of the morning.

I worked endlessly until around 11pm in the office - editing, filming, writing - doing things I didn't even know I needed to do. I felt like I had to continue working, as opposed to wanting to do so.

While Nootropic Brain Drugs Rise in Popularity for Today’s Cutthroat Corporate Climbers Noots and noonauts using nootropics can in a sense be considered bio-hackers - experimenting with new drugs to enhance the human mind - increasing mental ability, upgrading their brains for  self-actualisation and to fulfil potential. The r/Nootropics, the Reddit forum (or “subreddit”) shows the personal price the noots pay for alertness—that piracetam has been causing chronic nausea, or that noopept (a peptide compound and powerful focus-booster) has them crashing down for days of sleep at a time. It’s the price that fringe users pay for messing with chemicals that haven’t passed through the medical community: Each one has a whole host of documented effects and drawbacks, and it can be tricky to determine what’s a function of the drug, or some combination of diet, exercise and personal biology.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society says "smart drugs are only going to become more popular and, with time, popping a pill on your way to work or university may become the norm" - later blogs in this "Life Hack" series will look at the ethics and philosophy of cognitive enhancements.

Live For The Journey, Not The Destination

Image from San Diego Children and Nature (sdchildrenandnature.org)

"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust" - we all have the same destination ... its how we get there that matters.

"Life's short enough as it is without rushing it" ~ Terry Wogan

Like the girl in the image - you don't have to hurry along the path, enjoy the walk - stop off along the way and spend some time to appreciate what's on the path. 

“Life is a journey, not a destination”  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I remember hearing a radio program about different cultures approaches to travelling - how, heading to the Alps for instance, the English would try to do the journey in one long session to maximise time at the destination - often arriving tired and exhausted when they got there. In contrast, the program said that the French like to take their time on the journey, often stopping overnight on the way and enjoy the whole experience - arriving at their destination relaxed and ready.

Today I like to go running "off grid" taking no watch or paying any attention to time but enjoying the run and the surroundings - my running hadn't always been like this. Like so many people I used to time my runs  and I would try to "zone out" so that I didn't feel the pain but didn't see the surroundings much either - I might as well have been running inside on a treadmill. My runs became a race against the clock I wasn't enjoying running anymore. I decided to run differently - to run random routes, appreciate the surroundings and not to time running ... today I don't even take a watch with me. In September 2007 I wrote "Loneliness of the long distance educationalist" with the sub title "Don’t forget the Journey  (It’s a Zen Thing).  I applied the ideas of enjoying the journey rather than measuring it to education - it was an early bit of my thinking about how measurement and testing affects education ... almost 10 years on nothing has changed ... in fact there is more testing and measurement than ever.

"It ain't what you do its the way that you do it"

Its not what you make but how you make it that matters. Where I would be concerned with trying to make things with the kids - I would watch with wonder how they would have a lot more fun just hammering nails into a bit of wood with my dad. Its only on reflection so many years later that I realise how good my dad was on the journey - being poor we had to make the most of what we - we couldn't go to all sorts of places but it didn't matter - every Sunday we would go for walks around where we lived - it didn't matter where we went - we enjoyed being out and about and drawing in the surroundings.

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour" ~ William Blake

When I was a student back in the 1977 I went to a "talk" by a Buddhist monk - in fact he didn't talk all but I do remember that he simply held up a flower for us to look at for ages and ages. I later came to realise that this was the Zen Flower Sermon .I found this profound - it's easy to look at something but not see it, but if we take the time we can see the beauty in everything and anything - just open your mind and appreciate things for what they are.

"Today is a gift; that's why they call it the present" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.” 
― Walt Whitman

Be Mindful It can be easy to rush through life without stopping to notice much. Paying more attention to the present moment – to your own thoughts and feelings, and to the world around you – can improve your mental wellbeing.

In our busy, highly connected and mediated world its quick easy and convenient to look outside of ourselves for definition and construct identity through existential consumption becoming - trading our selves for identikit personalities. Look inside as well as outside - take your time and appreciate the inner journey as well as life's journey for they go hand in hand.

“Everyone is gifted, but some people never open their package” ~ unknown
"Be yourself. Everyone else is taken" ~ Oscar Wilde