The last day of June, 2007, I took off to climb the Sandia Crest, starting at the tram station and aiming for the 10,678’ top. I’d been riding the tram to the top daily to hike in the thin air, getting ready for an attempt on Mount Elbert. Despite being acclimated, at nine miles in, around 9,000’, I got a demon case of altitude sickness and had to turn back. I ran out of water three miles short of the tram parking lot, and stumbled in, dangerously dehydrated. The Lyme that had been lurking in my body up to that point took off like a rocket. I haven’t been right since.
Lyme treatment for me meant thirty months of oral antibiotics. The disease is gone, but the harm to my gut microbiome has left me with something akin to type two narcolepsy. The plot device in My Own Private Idaho is type one, people just fall over at random. My trouble announces itself clearly, giving me two to five minutes to find a safe place to recline.
Things started getting better in 2019, and I’m going to share what I did, in hopes that someone else here can benefit from it.
Progression:
After years of begging I finally got Modafinil aka Provigil, a potent narcolepsy med in January of 2019. It did NOTHING to fix my extremely erratic schedule, but it immediately shut down about 90% of my digestive trouble and I could sort of think again. Prior to this I would be trying to read, turn the page, and I was unable to retain what I had just read on the prior page.
One of Modafinil’s side effects from long term usage is tardive dyskinesia, which I got in December of that year. I immediately stopped taking the drug, but in my reading about it I learned that dopamine was a powerful anti-inflammatory for the gut, so I got a bunch of L-tyrosine. I needed massive doses, three times the RDA for a guy my size, but it worked.
Don’t think I haven’t tried a dozen other things, including the Visbiome probiotic. That is a component of my recovery, but it is not a cure on its own.
I continued reading whatever articles about microbiome trouble as I saw them on MedicalXpress, and I learned that digestive trouble is often mediated by histamine producing bacteria. I cut the L-tyrosine, took big doses of Benadryl, and this also helped, at the price of being in another sort of fog bank. I’ve tried HistaminX, alone and in conjunction with other measures, and I don’t think it does much for me.
Serendipity:
The human gut has roughly as many neurons as a cat’s brain and it’s literally a silent partner in all that we do. I had been reading articles in a neurogastroenterology journal, which sounds made up, but it’s a real medical discipline. Your gut normally resurfaces itself every five to seven days and that apparently includes nerve growth into the affected tissue. If you’re constantly inflamed in terms of digestion it’s a bad scene.
I was still very frustrated with my cognitive decline and I’d been talking to a friend who was into nootropics. He recommended phenyl piracetam, but at the time Nootropics Depot was sold out of every recatam due to the pandemic. I was looking on Amazon and kept getting Noopept in search results, so I decided to try it. The results were astonishing.
Mahjong:
I am a demon Mahjong Solitaire player, have been since my late teens. When I started my first sixty day course of Noopept in 2022 I’d been playing the same Kindle Fire game for two and a half years. My scores had stabilized right around three minutes. The year prior to treatment I had scored just a single one second improvement in one level. And then, during the first 72 hours of Noopept usage THIS HAPPENED:
An average improvement of twelve seconds per level was an undeniable sign of improved memory working set size and spatial capabilities — a straight up IQ boost. Since then I did another sixty day round in May/June of 2023, and again this year.
A twelve second gain there on Level 4 is another OMG improvement. I am pushing sixty. There are tournaments for this game and with times like those I’m nipping at the heels of champion players a third of my age.
Mechanism:
Noopept, which seems to have the proper name Omberacetam, is a faintly chemical smelling white powder available for roughly $1.50/gram. I use 30 milligrams three times daily, taking it sublingually and letting it sit for at least ten minutes. They sell capsules but that’s pointless, because it doesn’t do well against stomach acid. The aftertaste is no worse than burnt coffee.
Despite the illicit drug vibe of white powder on a digital scale, it’s perfectly safe. I’ve been sober twenty nine years and I have zero concern on this stuff. I monitor my blood pressure, it’s neither a stimulant, nor a depressant. It has no effect on my equilibrium or judgment. Noopept is a neuropeptide, its mechanism of action is fostering higher levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor.
Noopept is available over the counter in Russia and they use it for age related cognitive decline and recovery from brain injuries. It basically turns your adult brain back into a late twenties kid brain for a little while.
I got that 25 gram container and the scale off Amazon for about $65 back in 2022, I’ve given some to friends, and at the rate I’m using it I will probably need to resupply in 2026 or 2027.
My results were extraordinarily rapid. The friends who’ve taken away enough for treatments of their own report some benefits but it took a couple weeks to become apparent to them.
Conclusion:
So there you have it. I had a seemingly hopeless condition for about a ten year span, but I was mindful, the clues piled up, and then things got enormously better. I am still stuck with a really erratic sleep schedule, but when I am awake, I am fully awake, able to read, write, code in Python, and otherwise solve complex problems in hours that would have previously taken weeks, if I’d been able to complete the tasks at all.
I just looked on Amazon and the very same Noopept I have now costs just $28.
If you try this stuff I’d love to hear about your results.
