Okay so yesterday I took my stack, and then an hour later I took ALCAR. Then later on I drank a cold frap, so caffeine.
The day started off well, before I started developing anxiety later on, and then became depressive. ALCAR is definitely not a supplement for me. While caffeine in the past (a few years ago) from energy drinks has made me extremely stressed, I don't think caffeine effects me that badly in lower doses these days, though I rarely drink it. So I put the bad experience down the ALCAR. Also had major insomnia yesterday and OCD thoughts.
I want to go through a list of things and experiences which have helped or worsen my mood, and see what combo I could create out of it.
Forskolin - So this stuff on its own is mood lifting and gets rid of anxiety, even when taken alone. Higher doses aren't the way to go as I do get major insomnia later on. The mood effect could also be partially due to the fact you break down more acetylcholine on it. It also made my low more controllable when I tried it a week prior, but didn't completely eliminate it.
Sulbutimaine - In the past I've had mood lifting experiences, but usually this happens once and then I don't get that effect. However I've noticed this combined will forskolin does increase mood every time I think, rather than a hit and miss when taken alone. However due to the strong insomnia is causes, whether taken alone, or with forskolin, it really isn't viable for me.
Propranalol - I totally forgot about this. But I started experimenting with on the basis of trying to erase fear memories associated with emotional flashbacks (or a strong bipolar low). So I was attempting to take it whenever one of these would occur, but would often forget in the moment. However I remember one experience, one of the early ones, where I took some before a party. I became in a really good mood and was dancing a lot. It's something I think I should look into, to see if I can take regularly, it was a 40mg dose.
DMAE - Is a no go. Originally I believed it helped me with my emotional stability and obliterated anxiety taken at very low doses, 1/4 a pill, 43.75mg, and I'm pretty sure it worked. But recently I tried two normal pills, 325mg, and had a terrible experience with it, completely stressed me out, bad mood, and a bad situation ended up making me break down and cry. The reason I tried this higher dose, is because I noted before when I tried this higher dose last year, I became a bit hypomanic and experienced euphoria. But I also note I had drank cocoa earlier on, so it most likely potentiated cocoas effect. The other thing is DMAE is like ALCAR and Sulbutiamine where it will cause major insomnia.
Cocoa - I completely forgot about cocoa. But at one point I was drinking it every morning at one point, for around a month or more. I remember it had great effects on my mood, and my memory was also getting better. I've found the post (#179 this thread), and wrote about it also here. In fact reading my old experience, cocoa significantly improved my memory, more than anything I've tried in the past, and my long term memory is really bad.
Because today I was texting a friend who I went to college with. And for years now when he use to bring stuff up from college, situations, people we knew, things we did, I couldn’t remember any of it, and we both agreed my memory was terrible and that’s been the case for years now. And these past couple of years I’ve also noticed how terrible my short term memory has become. Anyway today while texting him, within our 30 minute convo, I must have brought up 8 or more things of past college experiences I remembered, and I even said to him, damn my memory’s improved so much all of a sudden, must of be all that cocoa I’ve been drinking. I mean it’s hard to explain because they’re my memories, but before I couldn’t remember anything, very blank, while today I could remember more college experiences then I have done in years, and I mean that very literally.
I found in my notes this: "Note: Not taking anymore, even 1 teaspoon is too stimulating and makes me act weird/hyperactive.", I was probably describing hypomania/mania.
Lithium - Now lithium seems to be the only thing that completely eliminates my highs and lows (except depressive symptoms when combined with ALCAR). I know this because just a week prior I was testing forskolin and tickled, and while it slightly helped, I still experienced a high, a low, and pressured speech. Since taking lithium this week and tickling a lot, I still haven't experienced these bipolar symptoms. So whereas things like forskolin or low dose of DMAE partially helped in this area, lithium is a complete cure in this area. There was one day where I sort of had a high, but it was a controllable high, more like controlled high brain energy. The other thing lithium does, especially when combined with cocoa or caffeine, is crush my appetite. The negatives of lithium, is while it stabilises these symptoms, things like forskolin which would put me in a good mood, are dulled. As in I'm not in a better mood, but rather more emotionally dulled. The other negative of lithium is I feel slight brain fog on it. The other thing is addictions are much more controllable. While I still smoke tobacco, I haven't felt the urge to seek out and smoke weed or drink alcohol. Compare this to only a few weeks ago where I went on a weed binge for a couple of weeks.
Turmeric/Curcumin - This stuff worked well with for anxiety, but without any side effects. Most notably no insomnia, unlike a low dose of DMAE, or forskolin can cause in higher doses. It also seems like I started taking it around the same time I stopped drinking cocoa, so it does make me wonder how much of this was a lingering effect I had from cocoa. But to be honest, even before taking lithium, I wasn't experiencing much or any anxiety, which I mainly attributed to the turmeric and forskolin in my stack.
NAC - When I started taking this, I eventually got to a point where I would question whether I had OCD anymore or not, and it helped me with the anhedonia stuck in a rut feeling. But the other thing is I stopped taking it at one point for because I ran out of it, and I didn't buy anymore because I thought my stack was working fine without it, until I started developing that stuck in a rut/anhedonia feeling again. Once I added it back into my stack, that feeling disappeared.
Selenium - Now this is one of my top supplements. While I had a pretty good stack before, I got hit by COVID the worst compared to my father and wife (I wasn't taking any selenium back then). I would also often get sick, and always wondered why the hell my immune system was really bad, even though I supplemented vitamin c, zinc, and vitamin d. Afterward I learned NAC may exacerbate a selenium deficiency as NAC is used in the glutathione process, and also there was a link between selenium deficiency and COVID severity. So when I started taking selenium after my COVID incident, I definitely felt my thyroid ramp up, my libido shot through the roof the first few days, and I eliminated daytime tiredness. However 200mcg was too stimulating for me and would cause insomnia. I cut the dose to 100mcg, and I haven't been sick since my COVID April (touch wood). But I also feel because of this deficiency, I was lacking glutathione levels in my brain. I remember if on the rare occasion I ever ate deep fried foods, like fish and chips or KFC (has to be their normal fried chicken), I would always experience brain fog afterward, which I think could have been due to low glutathione levels in the brain. I really need to test this again though to confirm I don't get brain fog from deep fried foods. But the one thing I can say selenium has continued to provide, is the elimination of daytime tiredness.
Benfotiamine - I use to get this extreme weird painful nausea in my stomach whenever I smoked weed. It's hard to explain. It's not like feeling like I was going vomit, just really uncomfortable. Well benfotiamine or sulbutiamine seemed to cure it. I noted previously benfotiamine didn't cause insomnia like sulbutiamine does, but that's probably because it doesn't cross the blood brain barrier.
Insomnia - One thing I will note, is I always feel like I want to reduce my stack if I can to prevent insomnia. While I think forskolin, selenium, cocoa, and even befotiamine might contribute to my insomnia because of their stimulating properties, I actually wonder if it really does. Because the insomnia I get from taking ALCAR or DMAE is different, it's like a complete insomnia, can't fall alseep at all until 5-7am, and I wake up less refreshed. While my stack without these two I do still fall asleep around 3am I believe, but wake up refreshed. So while these supplements are stimulating, it's a different league of insomnia all together compared to DMAE or ALCAR. It might just actually be sleeping pattern I'm use to instead of insomnia with my normal stack.
Anyway I wrote a lot. I've only taken the lions mane supplement this morning to test it, and not my stack (take a break today) because of the insomnia I got last night from the ALCAR, so I contribute lions mane to the brain energy I have right now. I also rang my wife up, and while she didn't experience vivid dreams last night, she says she's not in her head like she gets sometimes at worked when under stress. So along with my brain energy and her positive effects, and the fact I learnt it's manufactured in the UK, I'm thinking this brand is legit.
Pressured speech/hypomania vs controlled brain energy - As you see from above with all this writing, one could assume I'm experiencing hypomania/pressured speech right now. Apparently I started this post at 12:40pm (according to longecity auto save), so it's been 2 hours with the occasional cigarette breaks, and I still have more to write. But I can tell the difference between pressured speech/mania and controlled brain energy. Pressure speech/mania is I have to talk a lot, my breathing speeds up, it's hard to get my words and thoughts out, and I don't think clearly and my thinking and what I'm saying switches a lot. But what I'm experiencing right now is what I like to call controlled brain energy. It's more logical, I have energy to write, but I can think clearly in what I'm writing. It's like the energy of mania but with the control. With pressured speech I can't stop even when I want to, but if I wanted to, I could stop writing right now (but I have more thoughts I want to extrapolate on right now). Also you don't recognise the mania/pressured speech at the time it occurs, or recognise it as clearly, and if I was experiencing it while talking to someone such as my wife, I just wouldn't be able to shut up even if I wanted to. The best example I can give you is I deliver prescriptions as a job, and I always work with someone else (I drive, they deliver), and I've experienced pressured speech plenty of times when talking to my partner. However literally this week, the same time I started taking lithium, someone new started working for us and has been my delivery partner this week, and they talk a hell of a lot and I'm just there being quiet, listening, maybe giving my input now and then, but the speech ratio has flipped entirely; also it doesn't bother me either how much this person is talking and me not being able to talk.
My original mini pop - So I was looking back and found some posts I wrote two months after my mini pop. I was taking high doses of ALCAR and tyrosine (and other supplements I didn't write about) at the time, and was practicing amygdala tickling for long periods at the time also. So what this tells me, even though I was taking ALCAR and tyrosine at the time, I was also practicing amygdala tickling also only two months after my pop, and it didn't cause another mini pop. But I wrote about alcohol acting as a catalyst, but I'm pretty sure it was the day I was drinking, but also dancing loads to sweat the alcohol out, to make me feel more sober. I can't be sure it was that same day as I didn't note the dancing when I wrote about my experience the next day, but I'm pretty sure. So I feel the drinking + lots of dancing to sweat out/sober me up, was the day I came back in a taxi and experienced the mini pop.
Tobacco and clicking noise - I also remember when I was 16 and I first started smoking tobacco but in a pipe. When I tickled while I was smoking, I heard an audible constant clicking noise in my head. I've heard this clicking noise, as well as pops and water drops, when practicing a lot of tickling last year (when I was going through major highs and lows from lots of tickling), but they weren't as loud as that experience when I was 16. I don't experience that while smoking now.
Weed and tickling - I've had several experiences with weed and tickling, especially when I did tickling a lot the in late 2018. I'm going to sum up all my experiences here, most of these experiences were happening when I was tickling the most. The first one I remember of my early experience back in 2018, was feeling my amygdalas really swirling for like 10-15 minutes, and I just didn't want to speak, and my cousin and wife was trying to talk to me and I just ignored him. The other experience I got was painful electricity shooting up my leg and into my brain a few times when walking, and also when I was sitting and my whole body was sort of convulsing to it; I've read an experience on Slades old forum of someone else experiencing the same thing (but without smoking weed). The other thing I've experienced is getting lost in a train of thought, like lots of thoughts/images coming one after the other super quickly, and then snapping out of it and being like wow what was that; from what I've read from some experiences on Slades old forum, this happens as a normal experience for people from tickling, but can last hours. Also hearing firework pops, water drops, and clicks. Now there have been a few auditory phenomenon I've experienced too, for example I remember my ps4 controller rumbling, and the sound was so in my mind, it sounds like a dragon fly. I actually experienced this phenomenon recently on my weed binge a few weeks ago while listening to music or hearing the sounds of the TV programme my wife was watching, the audio comes to the forefront of your mind. Weed does seem to amplify some effects of tickling, but tolerance happens, and is not a long term solution to go about it. But it makes me wonder how much amygdala tickling experiences and their amplification, are related to the cannabinoid receptors.
Driving & Flow State - Recently while I've been driving and doing amygdala tickling using the feeling method. I've been able to access the flow state at times. You become more present, the journey becomes super smooth, and you notice the leaves on the trees blowing in the wind and the birds flying around. It's a cool state with an attached joy to it, and journeys feel longer because rather than being in the mind (driving on autopilot), you receive and process the reality around you more. I remember even just this Tuesday, the colours of the leaves seem more interesting when I looked at them close, and I found joy from my cat drinking water out of a tap the other day, and all his behaviours seemed more cute and gave joy.
Which brings me to my final point.
My theory on amygdala tickling, the brain, and what can be used to enhance it -
I came up with this metaphor the other day since I've been able to compare controlled brain energy vs mania brain energy. It's like a balloon you fill up with water. Mania is like a balloon with holes in it, you fill the balloon up with water (brain energy), but because of the holes in the balloon, this energy spills out and causes mania. While controlled brain energy is like a balloon without any holes in it, you fill it up with water (brain energy), but because there are no holes in it, the energy is controlled. The easiest way you can compare it, is me writing this post for the last 3 hours while not being in mania, this is controlled brain energy.
When I had my mini pop, one thing I distinctly noticed, is your brain really wakes up, like we've been half asleep all this time, and I believe this really all comes down to, receiving the reality around you more. It's just like driving in the flow state, the flow state naturally comes when you receive the reality around you more. But a better way to explain it is increasing receptors vs raw material, i.e. having more receptors to make use of the material you already have. For example taking l-carnitine to increase your androgen receptors in your muscles to make more use of your circulating testosterone, or lithium to increase the dendrites on your neurones to make more use of the circulating neurotransmitters; as opposed to taking testosterone/steroids or neurotransmitter precursors like tyrosine or 5-htp. So when you increase these receptors in the brain, you make more use of your circulating neurotransmitters, and end up receiving reality around you more and the joy that comes with it. While I don't know much about BDNF, I think this is basically what I'm talking about or relating to. Which also brings me to the thought, is this why some people that jog experience the flow state and euphoria, ie. they increase their BDNF, and they grow more receptive to the reality around them?
So how does this all tie into everything; my theory. Since taking lithium (after trying everything else), the brain energy is finally controlled, i.e. no more bipolar symptoms. So by using lithium, along with other neural growth supplements like curcumin, lions mane, forskolin, etc... I should be able to increase my BDNF. But that's not where it stops. Lithium while great, can slightly dull the increase in mood, which is what it's meant to do. But the next step is to increase the brain energy/mood while still being in control, and the way to do this is drinking cocoa and tickling. While both I believe probably have an effect on neural growth/BDNF, it seems like nothing puts more oomph into brain energy than these two. So basically it's a combination of increasing the brain energy without it leaking out into mania by taking lithium and increasing the receptors/BNDF. I feel like BDNF helps in a certain way, but isn't the full picture, you need to stress them with brain energy as well. It's like people who respond well to caffeine without side effects, you may function perfectly well without it, but caffeine gives your brain that little bit of extra energy to function at peak performance, the right amount of stress needed to push your brain.
Anyway I've finished writing up all my thoughts after 4 hours 20 minutes later. But basically the only things that needs changing in my stack, is drinking cocoa in the morning everyday (to increase that brain energy), and adding lions mane for BDNF. If I'm right, I think that should complete it.
