After incredible difficulty dealing with OCD (nearly purely obsessional) I began trying supplements such as inositol, ashwaghanda, and curcumin and while they seemed to help, they didn't seem to help very much with OCD (more so with my mood) and when they did help they did so sporadically. SRI's were not an option as they inflamed my Bipolar symptoms and led to instability (although inositol did not).
So after reading about Memantine (from this forum, actually) I became obsessed with finding effective glutamate modulators.
I researched about it and because I was unable to acquire Memantine, I obtained NAC. The first time I only took it for a month and noticed no improvement (no worsening either) However I became impatient and used my money instead on Inositol (as it did help my well being).
Anyways, after reading over and over that NAC took about 3 months to work in multiple types of illnesses (COPD, OCD, trichotillomania) I decided that there was more to the anecdotal reports of people finding effects within days, weeks.
So again I began taking NAC (1200mg x2). Again there was no worsening, nor benefit for the first month but when the trial neared two months I began noticing it was much easier to un-glue myself from my obsessions and my doubt decreased. However, there were also unexpected side effects I definitely did not expect!
I have a very poor sense of smell/taste, I can eat anything at all, and sadly for my girlfriend I don't appreciate her cooking as much as she'd like. However, during this same period that my OCD symptoms began to reduce, my smell/taste and also touch began to markedly improve. Suddenly I started being picky about foods, and foods that tasted good before tasted incredible!
At this same time I ended a four year long record of anorgasmia. Something about a psychotic/manic episode (and subsequent dissociative depression) led to me being unable to experience orgasm. Perhaps there was another cause? I could still have sex and even ejaculate but as far as experiencing an orgasm I had been deprived for very long time.
Anyways, during this improvement of ocd, and betterment of senses, i could orgasm again and even now that improvement persists.
There were some unpleasant side effects as well. about 4-7 days after this sudden improvement I also began to feel somewhat cognitively dull. Having OCD and wanting to be better I sometimes spent 8 hours a day researching online, trying to find solutions. I found that once the symptoms had improved I could not maintain that kind of focus, reading scientific papers of which I had to do multiple searches to even understand became very difficult. I became sleepy, my drive to research very blunted.
Caffeine seemed to work very little and not for very long, for some reason Cannabis ameliorated this fog better than caffeine. However Cannabis also makes me sleepy afterwards...heh
Little later I was able to get my hands on some Sarcosine and though i'm not sure it was coincidence or not, Sarcosine helped rid of the fogginess without affecting any of the other improvements and also appears to magnify the improvements for OCD on NAC. There is likely something to it as I had been a foggy state for about 2 weeks and since i took sarcosine the fogginess has disappeared for the past week i've been taking it (700-2100mg)
This could all be coincidence unrelated to NAC, there have been times where my smell/taste improved but never for this long. There was one occassion when I had an orgasm about 1.5 years ago but it did not repeat.
Really not sure glutamate would relate to that...Nonetheless...very interesting were there a connection.
