36 replies to this topic

[Pike]

sorry, didn't have the patience to read through all of the replies, but i will eventually!


anyway, has anyone suggested that maybe piracetam is making you sleepy because you're taking too much and it's cholinergic effects are beginning to have a suppressive action on dopaminergic function?

[kassem23]

Depth Charge: Dive into Your Ocean

The radical hypothesis is about depth, sleep and awakeness.

Sleep is the regen cycle for brain and body. Sleepiness is the sign that the brain needs regen.

How much regen it needs depends on lots of things, and how well sleep works to regen depends too on a lot of things.

The idea is that for those who get sleepy, piracetam is doing a perfect job. The racetams cause the brain to deepen itself. The enhanced sharpness of vision, colour saturation, higher functioning in both daytime and sleep. All these things are end results of a process of deepening.

When I say deepening I mean something very different from what stimulants do, which is overcrank the speed machinery to yield temporary gains at the expense of lots of things over time, including depth. Depth is the magic, the density of neurofunctionality, which shows up in complex thought, memory, visualization, and all those other deep things that people who want to be smart desire.

There's an inherent polarity between depth and speed. They're exchangeable, with the sum total or multiplicative total of both being the innate total capacity of an individual person. The racetams do a nice trick by making the brain open into new depth, but for those who have compromised speed, they will notice a temporary or even permanent decrease in wakefulness.

The crash and tiredness after stimulants, and ultimately the need for more sleep - which itself is less productive due to wearout of metabolic and other machinery.

By forcing the brain to increase its depth due to increased receptor availability and saturation, the racetams create an enhanced requirement - not just for choline and oxygen, but for something else crucial to the functioning of all that shiny new complexity and depth - sleep! Better sleep and more REM are needed, and most subjects experience these on piracetam. That's because the racetams are both the cause and the cure, all wrapped into one molecule. But even that has its limits.

Sleep is the maintenance cycle of depth. Depth is burned during the day even under normal conditions. Very powerful stimulants like amphetamines are so effective at depth-burning that they can create total psychosis with high doses or prolonged use. Insanity is the ultimate reaction to completely unnatural depth->speed/wakefulness exchange.

It's all really about fundamental priorities that evolution wired into the organism since very long ago. It had to choose between two conflicting things, speed/wake and depth maintenance. With a combined limit, an optimal balance would have to be found. Today, how each individual decides the balance is both predetermined by genetics and consciously decided by habits of living. The soft limit is conscious choice and the hard limit is genetics.

When I haven't had enough sleep, my vision shifts back toward lower colour saturation, less sharpness, and lower brightness dynamic range. Thoughts too come not only slower, but are more trivial. Higher level function is degraded, until more sleep is obtained.

Now to address those who get tired from piracetam or another racetam. The racetams create a demand for sleep because they activate depth. Depth has a high price upfront, and a long but slow payoff that is greater than the sum of its contributions over time Almost the opposite of stimulants, which have a low price upfront and a long but slow degradation that is greater than the sum of its withdrawals over time

Stimulants burn depth to yield temporary wakefulness and speed. Long-term use causes a loss in not only depth but ability to regen during sleep, both by direct disruption of the sleep cycle, and deprivation of supporting factors which allow recovery to proceed.

Genetics plays a large role too.

If the brain has a permanent depth limit either due to genetics, chronic lack of sleep, or degradation of supporting systems (adrenals, etc.), then piracetam will create unfulfillable demand for regen, which will result in regen spillover into waking hours (sleepiness!). If piracetam doesn't reach an individual's saturation limit - the most their brain system can deepen, then another racetam might get closer or even go beyond either their temporarily regenerable limit (adaptability priority exchange limit) or their genetic total limit. In both cases daytime sleepiness is the result, but in the first case it can be overcome with time, while in the second it can never be overcome

I want to pursue my saturation limit until I cannot go any further and become sleepy or unawake during the day, and it doesn't remedy in at least a month. That's the timelimit I figure, for the adaptive regen limit.

When I say unfulfillable, I don't necessarily mean permanently unfulfillable. The brain+support system can 'catch up'. That takes time, and depends on the ability of primary and secondary systems to restructure and provide the needed factors.

To offer a bit of evidence for catch-up, I have a PM record with another forum user who also experienced sleepiness. After I encouraged him to continue (dose moderation helps close the unfulfillability gap by lowering the daily restructuration demand gap) - after several weeks his sleepiness ended

None of these ideas predicts how any one individual responds, but it could be useful.

For example, in my case aniracetam - which is more powerful than piracetam - stimulates the intensification of depth via physical restructuring that requires even more sleep than I currently get.

So if I take it, I feel not quite but almost sleepy. So it will take time, and careful sleep hours, and after that my brain will have finished its new works, and I'll return to regular sleep and bright, shiny wakefulness.

This idea also explains why, after taking those stronger racetams, I felt in the days afterwards like I was floating up from the depths, with deeper thoughts and greater awareness. It was waking up to something more than before.

Admittedly, I took large doses of aniracetam, pramiracetam, and oxiracetam. I did so on this hunch, that they would produce maximal depth with a large debt which would be payable in sleepiness to start with. And it worked out exactly like that.

You're so full of shit that I envy your ignorance.

I'm sorry-- I like you, Isochroma. Really. And I'm glad piracetam is working for you. But it is not the panacea that you dogmatically make it out to be. Not at all.

How can you even say that? If he experiences these things.. Then I find it great that he shares his experiences with us. It shows us, that sometimes even such a simple molecule as Piracetam can do wonders for SOME people.. and I like the idea of that.. I don't know Isochroma personally, but I'm pretty sure that if Piracetam wasn't the panacea, that he describes, then he would not have been reporting to us for the past 1.5 years and posting on several different forums around the internet.. For him it might be just the panacea that you are describing. What I'm trying to say is that it's all subjective.

[ParrotSlave]

The day before yesterday i took one 400mg piracetam tablet in the morning and got very sleepy all day. Today i took 1/2 teaspoon (1440mg) piracetam powder from 1fast400 brand in two equal doses morning and lunch time and didnt get any sleepiness. I am wondering if perhaps the tablets having sunset yellow in its ingredients made the difference????
I think its very possible as it is known to case a host of alergic symptoms. Check your ingredients sleepy people and let us know.
Another possibility is if the powder is not what it says it is i have no way of checking.
I tidied alot of the house today which is most unusual for me, maybe more motivation showing already but placebo also very likely.

It might very well be your supplier. I had been taking CTD piracetam for a long time, but, due to the imbeciles in Washington, that source is no longer available, so I ordered some that supposedly is made by a a generic supplier, Aliud. It comes in blister packs of tablets instead of capsules. I still have a supply of the CTD product, but I decided to try the Aliud, since the condition of the boxes the blister packs came in was much less than perfect. I have been alternating between the Aliud and the CTD for the last 10 days in order to see if my first perception was correct about the Aliud product: it made me sleepy, just a little. I first thought it might be the formulation--the CTD product, being a powder, is instantly available--so I started chewing up the Aliud tablets. That did not change anything. Since I have only tried it a few times, there might well be some other explanation for the difference, something individual unrelated to the drug, which is the rationale for the challenge/rechallenge using it. At this point, I am concerned that the product might be counterfeit.

[NooQuestion]

Suffered from the same issue during the past year. Made a few adjustments, did a little research - solved the problem entirely.

I found that the problem results mainly, either from:

1. Co-administration of Choline and Piracetam

2. Choline depletion

I remedied this by taking my Choline at least 8 hours before my first Piracetam dose - which is usually before bed.

Aside from this, remember: your mind is working at an enhanced rate, working at a capacity that you wouldn't normally experience off of Piracetam. It does cause you to burn off energy quickly.

I remedied this by taking ALCAR, which reduced the fatigue by a noticeable degree, and taking a caffeine product (100 mg of Methylxanthines, but your run-off-the-mill Starbucks drink will do) two to three hours after taking Piracetam with ALCAR.

The results? 8 to 10 hour endurance with no crash whatsoever.

[ParrotSlave]

I found that the problem results mainly, either from:
1. Co-administration of Choline and Piracetam
2. Choline depletion
I remedied this by taking my Choline at least 8 hours before my first Piracetam dose - which is usually before bed....
I remedied this by taking ALCAR, which reduced the fatigue by a noticeable degree, and taking a caffeine product (100 mg of Methylxanthines, but your run-off-the-mill Starbucks drink will do) two to three hours after taking Piracetam with ALCAR.

I have been taking 200 mg phosphatidyl serine, 1 gm PPC, a spoonful of granular lecithin, and 1 gm of acetyl carnitine, along with the piracetam and a few other things, on an almost empty stomach--a tablespoon or two of some green powders--along with a mocha Frappucino. However, I have been taking lecithin before bed also, and I continue to observe a difference between the two brands of piracetam.

Being just one person, I cannot measure, nor can I discount the placebo effect: the packages the blister packs of piracetam came in were torn a little, and I was immediately suspicious of them, then discounted the suspicion after thinking that the company might be having to stash the product in, say, a rental warehouse instead of their main office to avoid enforcement activity. On the other hand, I have been told that, if you know the right person, you can get counterfeit anything from the PROC within a few days. And I remember reading an article in the Smithsonian a couple of years ago about counterfeit antimalarials entitled "The Fatal Consequences of Counterfeit Drugs." Who can you complain to? People wanting non-allowed substances are perfect targets for criminals.

[riloal]

Hi, i also feel sleepy with piracetam. Also it makes in the need to sleep 10 or 11 hours. I tried choline, after, with, and after piracetam, the same result= sleepy. I,m also on ritalin, it seems that piracetam makes ritalin less efective. Perhaps it,s not a good combo ritalin with piracetam. Any suggestions?

[kai2]

Has anyone heard anything in the last few years to suggest that the "adrenal fatigue" explanation of piracetam-induced sleepiness is credible?