Posted 09 February 2009 - 05:52 PM
If anything my blood pressure keeps going down. 110/68 earlier today, as opposed to 130/85 while still on wellbutrin last week.
I'm sure if I took higher doses I could manage to push my bp up, but that is not my goal. I am not pumping anything up into the realm of full blown euphoria, but I do feel like anxiety and depression are basically completely eliminated, and I believe that is likely what's causing the difference in blood pressure. I have ADD + depression, so I am thinking I likely have lower than normal PEA. Other people might get more effect from what I am doing.
The first night I fell asleep for about ten hours, the deepest sleep I can remember. I did not wake up feeling bad, though, but in a great mood. It seems I don't get quite so much effect as I did from that first dose and since then I have been taking 100mg twice a day. It seems to last about 6 hours maybe before it starts to wear off. I don't feel any comedown or negative feelings whatsoever. With adderall, I feel fine when I take it, and no comedown, but taking it seems quite hard on my body. Lot's of vasoconstriction especially - I get super cold hands and feet. Also, sometimes I wake up and feel like I've been hit by a mac truck. This is not as abusive doses, either, just my normal 20mg per day (which I am not taking for now).
My sleep has been messed up for several weeks, which has always been an issue with me. I have consciously decided to stay up all night to sort things out and am not having trouble doing that (witht he help of caffeine). I don't think the PEA or deprenyl does anything regarding sleep for me, though. With adderall, I feel super calm, but at the same time I just won't sleep while it's in my system. I will always find something I need to do or whatever until it wears off after maybe 6 hours, then I can often feel my mind kind of grind to a halt if I am really tired, and then I just drop like a sack of potatoes into bed. These are usually the times I wake up and feel like I have been beaten half to death in the night.
I am not so sure if it gives me any big boost in concentration. It seems to sort of, but adderall is better in this respect. PEA is more feelgood-ish, and it really eliminates my depression completely. Apparently the depression effect is hit and miss and usually depends on the sort of depression you have - most likely in some people they just don't have enough natural PEA in their system. Low average PEA levels (one tenth as much) are found in people with ADD and some forms of depression, and much high levels are found in schizophrenics (they are likely overstimulated from all the PEA running throught heir system). For some people deprenyl or PEA cause instant and permanent (so long as treatment lasts) alleviation of all depressive symptoms. The type it seems effective with is "atypical" depression. This means depression where you tend to be lethargic and sleep and eat a lot. Ironcially, atypical depression is the most common kind, and about 60% of people have it...which is coincidentally the percentage of people who respond well to deprenyl as an antidepressant.
This seems to be the case for me. I have been on heavy doses of several antidepressive substances or drugs for years with only limited results. Normally, if I quit taking the st john's wort (at insanely high doses) or the wellbutrin, even one day later I would be depressed like crazy and kind of listless. If I took an SSRI it would prop me up but in a very artificial kind of way that was not very pleasant. Adderall would kill my depression most of the time, but sometimes it would make me super obsess on it instead. This time I quit both of them before starting deprenyl (so as not to kill myself) and I don't have the slightest hint of it.
I am also slightly colorblind, but this issue seems to be gone now. I can notice things much easier such as dirt on the floor. The second part is the same on adderall, an anti-ADD effect, but the newfound colors is a bizarre and amazing thing to behold. I do a lot of 3D artwork and it seems that I suddenly have a much better handle on how things should look and I can now make faces that look more human instead of all looking kind of the same. I think due to basic increase in visual acuity and perception.
As far as the idea of taking dlpa or phenalalanine goes, I still think it's a bad idea. With PEA, the good thing about it is that it IS a trace amine. You only need minute quantities to have a vast effect on you. That's not really a bad thing because you have much less of the stuff rollig around in your brain. If I take that other shit then to build up to the same PEA levels I will have to have grams of it, and all of them have more effects than building PEA - effects I really don't want or need. PEA fulfills the same roles as norepinephrine when it comes to attention and mood by acting as a DAT transporter and doing a few other things.
Basically, NE is a shitty way to do things and has a host of very bad physiological effects that go along with its few good effects, and DA especially is an unwanted side effect. People get the idea that DA increases are how stims work, how they do what they do, but in reality they are merely an unwanted side effect. I know this goes against the standard (obviously flawed) belief that the brain is like a car battery and you just pour in the right levels of ingredients to get the right output. However, I'm absolutely sure that is a dramatic oversimplification and basically complete bullshit.
I've always had that belief simply because I could experimentally see it is not so in myself. I can bomb myself with DA or NE with great ease, but doing this is largely a waste of time (especially with DA). Of course some jackass with a briefcase full of dangerous chemicals does not a scientist make, but recent scientific findings have borne this out and given more to it than just unsupported opinion. It appears more and more that the most common neurotransmitters are just crude hammerblows and in many cases simply blinds to what's really happening. Otherwise someone could just take a lot of 5htp orally and be instantly cured of depression for at least a little while. Or they could take a bunch of mucuna pruriens and cure their ADD. Anyone who's supplemented with either knows their effects are minimal, if even measurable. I can take mucuna pruriens til my heart rate gets dangerously high but it doesn't do a damned thing for my ADD. 5htp maybe might help a tiny bit but the most it seems to do is make me very slightly sleepy.
It appears now that antidepressants affect learning and neurogenesis. Perhaps they work by helping the brain to go beyond learned helplessness response which is intrinsic to most forms of depression, but however they work it seems that it is a much different mechanism than has previously been believed. Which absolutely makes sense, otherwise antidepressants would be pretty much interchangeable, with just slightly different side effect profiles. However, we know that's not the case, and some people fail to respond to extremely similar SSRIs.
It's recently been discovered that the beneficial effects of norepinephrine are due to binding to the HCN channel to signal prefrontal cortex to stop manufacturing cAMP, which shuts down the prefrontal cortex in times of stress. I can only speculate the reason for this is to allow the mind to enter into more emotional/fight or flight thinking to deal with stressful situations - let instinct take over and beat your cro magnon era enemy with a bone instead of trying to reason with him, or perhaps shut down and run and hide for weeks after your village got burned down in a fire. The other beneficial effect of amphetamines seems to be in reversing the DAT transporter. This actually signals the dopamine to DO something, basically.
As a neuromodulator, PEA enhances the action of the other transmitters and the DAT reversal is one mechanism it uses to accomplish this. You coud say that amphetamines are, by dumb luck, doing what PEA is supposed to be doing anyway, or at least part of it. The great thing is that it does all this without pumping your brain full of tons of extra neurotransmitters. It also has the same effects on GABA system that it does with DA and NE. That means that it's very unlikely you would ever get massive aggression or other unbalanced effects on PEA like some people can get.
So, as you can tell, I'm really liking it so far. I also don't think there's any danger whatsoever. At least, not so long as you are being careful with your dosing and using common sense. Of course, I have a kg of PEA and if I ever mess up and mistake it for ALCAR and scoop 2g into a cup and chug it down that could be extremely bad. I am thinking I might do something like cut it with something of similar density. Maybe glutamine? I'm not sure I want to have very much glutamine intake, though (if any). I suppose ALCAR might be ok, but I don;t want to go crazy with that. I'd use inositol but I don't think it would mix very well.
The jury's still out on how well it works for motivation, but I am getting work done, so I am hopeful. For depression and social anxiety (or anxiety of any kind) it's simply incredible. I am not sure that other people would get this effect, though. I believe I am probably low in PEA and have a better reaction than many might. Also, some who have more of it naturally might have serious reactions at the doses I am taking, so anyone trying this at home is advised to be extremely careful.
If you're going to use deprenyl with PEA, then it's probably better to stabilize your dose for at least a week before starting the PEA and then work up slowly to see what dose works for you without causing any bad side effects.
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