Piracetam

Dr. Jekyll, meet Mr. Hyde. I'm performing scientific experiments on myself. I picked up 800 grams of powdered Piracetam which was delivered to me last week. So, excepting weekends, I've been taking what my co-workers refer to as my "uranium salts."

The most obvious reaction: when I take it in the morning I wake up. Immediately. I'm usually rather groggy in the morning, no matter how much sleep I get, but after taking ~2400 mg of Piracetam dissolved in water, the foggy feeling in my brain is gone within 5 minutes or so.

That might not be attributable to any chemical effects, though, as the stuff in water tastes very strong. It's hard to pin down what it is flavor-wise. It doesn't smell like mothballs, but the taste sensation of drinking it seems somewhat analogous to the olfactory punch that mothballs give. Too abstract? I'm at a loss to describe it, except to say that it doesn't have a pleasing taste.

On the first afternoon I took it, last Thursday, I went bowling shortly thereafter and on the way I saw that noticed colors and textures around me more, almost as though I was beginning to trip. The greens were very green. It's an exciting effect, and nice to have my consciousness pick up on more visual details.

What's not clear is how exactly I'm going to measure its nootropic effects. I haven't come up with a way to objectively test them, so what I'll do instead is try to immerse myself in free-time studying as much as possible and see if I subjectively "feel" that I've better recall. More importantly, I hope to feel better "concept matching." I'm sure cognitive psychologists have a better word for it, but what I'm interested in here is pattern recognition and matching. I hope to better pick up on subtleties in language which make foreign languages feel more "natural" to me -- closer to a first language.

More to come as I continue my experimentation.