DOSE:

200 mg

oral

DMAE

(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

50 kg

At approximately 2 pm, after eating, I took two DMAE tablets, a total of 200mg. I was at work at the time, and my intention was to harness the extra energy to motivate myself to get through the work I needed to get done. I'm interested in finding a nootropic cocktail that works for me, makes me feel 'optimised', 'tuned up' and so on, so I decided to test out DMAE.

Within about half an hour, I started to feel the effects. There's a feeling of 'speeding up', and I felt more efficient at doing whatever I was doing. I had a mild headache, and became slightly irritable, but nothing serious. I was able to get through the work, and able to concentrate, but not consistently. It's hard to describe, I felt like my mind was an engine being revved - there's extra gas, and the engine is accelerating, but I can't change gear. I had the impression I was damaging myself.

Nonetheless, I was in a good mood, and the DMAE definitely helped with that. Because I could concentrate well for short bursts, I would get a lot done in a short time, then quickly lose interest. I got up to talk to coworkers, and started babbling a little, and then lost interest in the conversation, and returned to work. I was happy, but it felt like a 'dirty' happiness, like wearing your favourite shirt, but with a sneaky suspicion that it hasn't been washed and that you smell. The headache got a little bit worse.

Eventually, the work was finished and I went home. I started to get contemplative, wondering about nothing in particular. I felt as though I was deep in thought, but I had no particular thought come to mind. My brain was busy, but I didn't know what it was doing. I didn't like the feeling.

I cooked and ate, starting to feel a little resentful about nothing in particular, then watched a movie. The movie was absorbing, but my eyes felt very tired, so for much of the film I had my eyes closed and just listened to the dialogue. With my eyes closed, I began to notice how much I wasn't enjoying myself. No particular reason for this, the film was good, and generally my life is in a good place right now, so I'm blaming the DMAE, I felt depressed - apathetic, miserable, insignificant, and just generally moody. My thoughts became difficult to pin down, scattered. I was definitely thinking about different aspects of my life, but in short bursts too fleeting to be of much use.

I became thoroughly upset, about nothing. I just wanted to not feel the way I felt, nothing else mattered. I lay on my bed, trying to work out what I was so miserable about - what I wanted to change, but mostly I was just lying there, moping. My housemate came in to my room and asked if I was ok, I would normally tell her exactly what was going on, but I felt isolated, as though she wouldn't understand. I lied and said I was tired. She left and I felt abandoned and betrayed, which is just stupid.

Eventually, I realised that the only thing that was different about that day was the DMAE, otherwise it had been a perfectly normal day, like yesterday, when I was happy. It must have been the DMAE that made me feel miserable. I threw away the rest of the bottle I had bought.

Interestingly, as soon as I had thrown it away, and I had a reasonable explanation for my emotional turbulence, I started to feel better. I even went and found my housemate, and explained what had happened. For the rest of the evening, the headache persisted, and my eyes felt 'scratchy', but my mood steadily improved.

All in all, the experience lasted about 8 hours, half of which were 'accelerated', but not controlled, and half of which were dampened, but not focussed.

Overall, I would say that the experience was not pleasant. It doesn't make me smarter or more motivated, it just made my brain overwork itself for a while, then left me tired and grumpy.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 87891
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 24
Published: Jan 28, 2011	Views: 20,880
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