you don't need 15 milligrams and for god's sake you don't need 20 milligrams ever in your life if you take more than 10 milligrams you are me and leo can talk about how to make adderall more effective yeah go for it yeah i'll be gone so number one uh uh derek uh number one i want to mention to the audience that i'm not a some kind of amphetamine freak or something like that although i look like one i understand that i act like one and stuff like that but i'm actually not how i got introduced
to this really quickly um you know i'm not gifted at all i'm not intelligent i'm i'm really average in every kind of way and i didn't have many advantages in life you know growing up without parents mostly you know trying to struggle to do well in school got into a school shouldn't have gotten into carnegie mellon failed the first year screwed up all that kind of stuff and my father at the time my father alcoholic was depending on me didn't have a job needed help and i really wanted to work hard make money and get
a job and and so i was really trying to do my best and i had been diagnosed with adhd when i was younger because my mom's america so i got diagnosed so i said you know what i didn't think i had adhd i knew i couldn't focus well i couldn't focus i mean i would read something not pay attention but it's because i'm stupid it's not because anything else that's what i thought at the time that's what i thought so i went to a doctor and i said hey i have adhd i've been diagnosed before
they tested me they gave me 15 milligrams of adderall and they told me to take it every single day and i did that but i also changed my entire life and i did an incredible thing and in two years i completely transformed my brain my function everything i went from a failing student to a 4.0 student i became the first in the history of the undergraduate curriculum of carnegie mellon to be recommended to be a ta of the mathematical optimization course i mentioned this in an interview with benjamin uh arthur benjamin and the mathematician on
my channel before i accomplished great things and i was failing algebra in high school didn't know anything and i all did that because of amphetamines now later on i discovered that a lot of things that this doctor told me were wrong the dose i used was way too high i should have taken days off there were a lot of mistakes and along the way later on in life i as you can tell from my story i had many experiences and later on developed depression anxiety many neurological problems and i had to learn about the nervous
system and along the way i i hadn't been using amphetamines for years and years but along the way i learned some ways to optimize it some ways to make it a little bit more effective so i want to talk to you guys very briefly today about that i'm not going to tell you too many things because this is something i spend basically all my time reading about i'm going to give you some quick quick tips okay number one the dose higher doses are not better what happens is this at higher doses you get our body
has two nervous systems one is called the parasympathetic one is called the sympathetic the sympathetic sounds like it's friendly to you but it's not that's the fight-or-flight one that's the angry one so what happens is this when you take higher doses of amphetamines amphetamines do two things unlike cocaine cocaine only does one thing in your brain you have two neurons these neurons communicate a hormone between each other cocaine tells the hormone that's communicating dopamine not to let that hormone back out of the extracellular space basically so you feel more of that hormone amphetamines don't just
do that they do that but they also cause more of a release of dopamine so they do two things and they're more powerful because of that reason now what's a drug like cocaine bupropion wellbutrin it's a common antidepressant now wellbutrin actually at the actual drug by the way and i know the pro drug in this case bupropion unlike the drug we talked about last time it is actually a pro drug the drug that's mainly used in the body actually affects norepinephrine which is noradrenaline that really sympathetic driving thing it's cortisone adrenaline that drive that sympathetic
nervous drive that trend feeling so bupropion the actual drug that's in your body affects more noradrenaline but the actual bupropion drug is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor similar to cocaine now and pholumine is great because it's very dopaminergic it's one of the most dopaminergic drugs the first lesson i'll teach you is this amphetamine has two isomer forms they're like a chemist came on my show recently described it very well they're like two two hands you know your hands are the same but they're not quite the same they're symmetric opposites one is called the dextro rotation of
of amphetamine dextroamphetamine also called dexadrine one is called the levoamphetamine so level amphetamine adderall is about 25 level amphetamine 75 dextroamphetamine that's why it's a branded project product that's why brand name adderall works better than generic adderall what is generic adderall amphetamine salts equal amounts of both of them why do you want more of dextroamphetamine it has more dopaminergic effect less adrenaline effect now if you're somebody who has weird like um not weird if you have melancholic depression which means that you don't when i get depressed i get anxious some people get depressed they just
lay in bed they don't have energy for those people nor adrenaline is great they don't mind they want the level amphetamine they want to be up because by the way amphetamines used to be antidepressants the only reason they stop giving them to people is because people abuse them just like opioids they're actually excellent that i mean i'm not recommending to people they're effective antidepressants anyway back to the point first thing dextroamphetamine second thing you choose that because more dopaminergic effect less sympathetic nervous drive less raciness less heartbeat less stress on your body less taxation in
general little bit less it's also slightly weaker because of that reason you'll feel a little bit less of it second thing you don't need 15 milligrams and for god's sake you don't need 20 milligrams ever in your life if you take more than 10 milligrams you are quickly quickly down regulating your dopamine receptors dopamine is a neurotoxin what does that mean dopamine is excitatory any hormone in the nervous system that's excitatory causes neurons to to get so much energy that they may die they may die either because of pro-inflammatory cytokines reacting to it or because
of the stress of the excitation so the neurons quickly downregulate dopamine receptors that's why drug addicts have a very difficult time one of the reasons because they keep chasing that high so to not chase the high you have to do two things number one you don't take the dose so high that your body's like there's too much dopamine in my brain i really need to down regulate number two you need to take days off every week every week you have to take at least two days off my recommendation for anybody is three days off you
can't use it more than that and get it effectively but if you only do it four days a week you'll still get that great effective that great effect if you guys don't have more comments i'll go to the next one so every other day administration basically i would do i do for i don't actually take it all the time but if i did i would do four days a week and then take three days off how does it compare to modafinil because i've never really had access to adderall far superior it's a but but the
reason is this so modafinil is excellent at the wakefulness feeling just being alive dopamine why i say it's far superior why it allows people to do what i did is this what i used it for was not to focus it was to trick myself to enjoy reading i'm a person that didn't like to read i didn't like to reward system right yeah let's talk about this let's talk about this because this is the trick this is how this is how you hack this is biohacking so this is the issue dopamine gets released when you're supposed
to be enjoying something how you get addicted to food and carbohydrates is dopamine now i my dopamine might have came from i don't know what i used to like to do party with friends or chia chick or whatever the hell i used to do or watch tv or watch tv or even pick up girls so my problem with that now some people they grew up with a parent who was a biologist they taught them things when they were younger they said the world is like this the sun and the moon and they got interested they
realized from a young age wow learning is fun curiosity all that i didn't get that so i'm looking at a book trying to pass the exam i'm not interested so what i did was number one starve myself of dopamine remove all the dopaminergic as much as i could around my life i quit music for years i quit listening to music i quit watching tv for months and then i started watching tv for like one hour at the end of the day and i could maintain that i stopped seeing any friends like i said i took
the bus to school every day like it was sort of partially by choice by partially by choice partially not i could have gotten a crappy car but i took the bus in pittsburgh with interesting people every day just to feel like crap really everything was like sort of down regulated and then when i was studying i would take that adderall and while i was reading i got two things number one i enjoyed it number two i got a habituated to it i got habituated to that practice and then what happened now i don't need any
amphetamine to read a book i can read a book all day i can read 600 pages i can read from morning to night and stay focused and i have no problems and i'll get into why later actually let's do it now so this is one of the problems i've talked about my channel before people don't really know about this in the drug addiction community drugs make the brain plastic amphetamines in fact by the way another reason you should use a low dose since we're talking about it at lower at one dose of amphetamines rodents brain
derived neurotrophic factor which is a growth factor in the brain will increase at double that dose it will decrease because of the toxicity of the excitement so what happens when you take adderall every day you're not just habituating yourself you're reorganizing your brain and that's why there are so many studies so many that show that people with adhd that take amphetamines for a period of years no longer require them they're actually healed because not only that but by the way the that the dopamine transporter it organizes the dopamine system in the brain so affecting that
may be directly organizing that just even specifically the dopamine system forget about all the other systems that are now plastic while you're studying they're now clouded plastic means new neurons developed agile it's changing your brain is changing can't teach an old dog new tricks now you can because you have plasticity [Music] that five milligram prescription right whereas typically what is the lowest dosage format for adderall prescribed like is it even under 10 milligrams can you even get a five milligram so they do yeah they sometimes give women it's based on like size of body i've
noticed some women get five milligram but you most men i know are their first prescription is 15 which is i really believe uh irresponsible of doctors that's how you get addicted to it i exp i went through not addiction but i went through periods of i would i didn't know i used to think i had seasonal depression because i would get sad when the sun went down i didn't realize it's the 15 milligrams of amphetamine i'm taking in the morning that's wearing off that's too much that's way too much that's a burst where you you
should never feel euphoric euphoria is neurotoxicity just a little bit lower than that what do you think about adderall instant release first extended release because most people are getting extended demon the demon of life extended release ruins listen to this guys dopamine agonizes adrenaline receptors also so if you have extended release while you're in bed at night your brain is recognizing your adrenaline receptors there is no possible way your sleep is right so it's like i don't even know if they prescribe instant release in canada anymore so i'll tell you why they don't do it
why they do extend it there's two reasons number one addiction potential extended is you feel it less but the thing is i don't believe there's a big addiction potential because you're taking one pill it's not a habit like snorting or smoking cigarettes it's different you don't attach it to an action as much but number two bipolar disorder the the danger first of all dopamine can be very dangerous some people so schizophrenia there's a dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia there's a dopamine hypothesis or bipolar disorder most people who use stimulants famously like like rock stars and stuff
develop bipolar disorder so the concern would be that the cyclothemia this up and down and up and down could be dangerous and that's why they're trying to tell you not to take days off and all of that but it won't work if you're trying to hack your body like we are you're not actually a diseased person and you're trying to be super physiologic that's the way to do it so what do you do if you're adhd but you can't even get access to the thing that you're supposed to be using because that seems like the
majority of what scenario people are in then you need to get friends okay i don't know what it is you have friends you have friends but everyone else should get friends you should all we should all become friends no but really look i mean i don't know how it is in canada i can't imagine that they could ban dextroamphetamine short release in canada i mean they do in dubai but you're talking about dubai i mean even in oh england they don't have it god you might be right british system maybe it's it's food they're very
difficult to get certain yeah it's not available here either you know prescription but it's impossible to get without it i was once put on 36 milligrams of methylphenidate concerta the long release in england that thing was a horrific nightmare i i didn't because at the time i still didn't know i was like adhd medication i didn't know anything i went through guys i went through every mistake you can do this is like through trial and error this is the way like i'm telling the audience this is the way to do it never never go above
10 milligrams in your life there's no need and if you did there are ways to undo it you can you can like block your dopamine receptors take time off desensitize and it'll work all better now there are more tips that are more interesting that people haven't heard of so the next one is the sigma 1 receptor you have to agonize the sigma 1 receptor you have to if you're not doing this you're lazy or you don't know what you're doing so one way you can do is you can take a dhea supplement like steve does
steve loves dhea one of the reasons no not now i'm drug free guys besides the growth hormone and the selenium you really not take dha also no not now i don't need it i'm in the middle top of the reference range oh no no i take it for this reason so so dh is healthy dha sulfate is an agonist of the sigma 1 receptor in the brain and this receptor is very not well under not well understood recently discovered the sigma 1 receptor agonism up regulates dopaminergic activity in the brain so instead of taking more
drug more amphetamine and getting more sympathetic nervous drive what do you do you go take the sigma one receptor agonist also so you up regulate that dopaminergic effect without taking more amphetamine so that's where the adrenal fatigue response or reduction comes from from dhea supplements you know that's why i put it on most of my guys protocol it's like you know you're in the paris sympathetic stage all the time it's time to relax that's how you recover so one thing so another so so so so um you have a couple choices you could take dha
that's an easy one you could take fluvoxamine the ssri i think why do i take fluvoxamines because it's a sigma one agonist but what can you take also that's very effective an acetyl-cholesterol inhibitor called donopazil donapozil is not only the alzheimer's disease medication that is given for people with memory issues and not only potentially it's not given to them to slow down the progression of disease but potentially it could slow down the degradation of cholinergic neurons in the hippocampus or in other areas but it's a potent stigma one agonist so i take 20 milligrams of
donapozil every time i take my five milligrams of dextromphetamine together and nonsense but a natural alternative that might be decently effective would be what about ginkgo biloba who parasite et cetera they're amazing of course and your product contains them cr amazingly that's absolutely right i'm just talking about the sigma one i take i don't take those i don't take those in the morning i still take them also yeah but i no and ginkgo has way more benefits also than just that and so does superze and mda blockade so so anyway continuing on past that ghrelin
receptor agonism one of the reasons i gained a lot of weight recently i didn't mention to anyone i've been using mk677 oh [ __ ] oh yeah i didn't know i didn't even know that so the ghrelin receptor also amplifies dopaminergic activity in the brain now growth hormone is not the same way growth so i have some notes on this about growth hormone i don't know if i wrote it down here no i didn't write it but ghrelin so the gs the growth hormone gag receptor which is really the ghrelin receptor agonism there directly causes
upregulation of dopaminergic signaling but ag but agonizing dopamine receptors down regulates growth hormone but it's not through the ghrelin receptor so this is a separate pathway so i've been experimenting with this the last two months sometimes i do experiments i don't know what those twenty-five wow you did the full-blown were you going through how was your blood sugar level in the morning i didn't measure it honestly it was ridic it was probably i'm in fact the uh the studies showed i think it was like 12.5 was almost as effective gh increase wise but the igf
increase was substantially lower if i recall correctly maybe maybe you read a study that i didn't read all of the studies that i read used 25 and all yeah so that's that's the dose they use in the trials i believe but when they were doing dose response comparisons i have a i recall fairly vividly writing an article in like 2017 where they compared 12.5 versus 25 and it was like 80 the gh increase or something but like a fraction of the igf-1 which for you sounds like it may be more ideal because you want less
of the igf-1 right i mean also it probably just means less ag no i don't necessarily want less well i guess yeah that's true yeah yeah that's true you're right you're right yeah i do i do want less igf-1 but uh it increases cyclic adenosine monophosphate that's what it does exactly and that's how it increases dopamine now that's not the shocking one the third one i want to mention probably your audience has never ever heard of it's a monoamine oxidase b inhibitor there are two enzymes that break down what are called the monoamines serotonin norepinephrine
and dopamine these are the three hormones most known in the brain i used to have hordinine in our product as a mao inhibitor this was to like extend the half-life of pea but this was like a primitive one of the first formulas i made but anyway just a side note so they may sort of know what you're talking about but anyways continue oh really oh great no no i know they know about meo i mean every yeah monoamine oxidase inhibitors most people know about the interesting thing about this is this amio a uh breaks down
all of the monoamines right the reason why i've never i've never even experimented with one of them was just because i knew that synthetic effects of inhibiting the breakdown of those catecholamines will affect my heart and other kinds of things because i have higher serotonin levels in my body but it's not concerning for the audience it's not like high levels i'm just you know freak freaked out about longevity so it's it's not like that like like like steve for example would take five http but i won't take it because i don't want higher levels of
certainty in my body i'm just too scared of it but because i think so much in my brain yeah you have an ssri so yeah you know at least like i get a systemic effect and you'll get a localized effect i might actually i might actually switch to uh that's what i'm trying to do so that's what i'm talking about the maob so the meob is different because it only breaks down dopamine it's very selective okay and there's a new drug no there were also mao b inhibitors before but i never thought to use them
either there's a new drug that is very interesting this drug has two effects that i really like number one it doesn't really matter that it's a reversible amiob inhibitor but what's really interesting is is it reduces glutamatergic activity in the body by lowering the activity at calcium channels now there's a class of anti-epileptic drugs which i'm really into researching because i don't want to use gabaergic drugs and i have a lot of client well not a consultation clients who have anxiety issues and they don't want to use ssris because of sexual dysfunction so i'm often
looking at anti-epileptic drugs that slow down basically general activity in the brain what is called in in neuroscience is the excitatory to inhibitory ratio so changing the e to i ratio so this drug which i'm about to mention so i should name it it's safinamide which is exadago thatigo actually lowers the basically general glutamatergic activity in the brain slightly why is that great for adderall or amphetamines or dexadrine because dexedrine not only increases dopaminergic activity which is excitatory can kill neurons but it does that to glutamatergic activity also but we want the habituation we don't
want to slowly damage our brains without with amphetamine toxicity over our lifetimes and we don't want our heart rate to rise so this lowers that a little bit and enhances the dopaminergic effect tremendously at 50 milligrams the max dose is hundred tremendously so now you're at five milligrams of dextrophetamine you're not using more than that then you've got and now i'm not done would you take that at the same time or alternating days no i take it every day yeah so then then then uh oh i wanted to mention another thing it also ameliorates the
blood-brain barrier this is a very interesting thing about it it fixes the blood-brain barrier in older people a little bit you see as you get older your blood brain barrier weakens which is one of the ways that your brain gets damaged quicker it also by the way reduces uh what's called dyskinesia which happens among parkinson's these patients when they're given a lot of dopamine which which may indicate and it worse it slows the rate of their parkinson's disease which is the biggest concern if you're taking dopaminergic drugs you don't want to end up like muhammad
ali our hero who has had parkinson's disease and he suffered his whole life because dopam when dopaminergic neurons die that's what happens but you need to lose like 70 of yours so it might not happen to you but you don't want to happen at all well this drug slows it down on even them so it may totally inhibit the damage that the amphetamine is doing to you and you know continuing on just very briefly i just wanted to mention like some people think of neural inflammation when they think of amphetamines they think like the amphetamine
is causing a lot of damage and then the nervous system the microglia are releasing inflammatory cytokines so there is some evidence i should probably put this on my blog somewhere but there's some evidence that it's not that that's causing amphetamine methamphetamine toxicity in the brain when they do the methamphetamine toxicity studies it's actually just the excitation it's not the immune system attacking it so you don't really have to worry about that that's why we bring up that other point of just reducing glutamatergic activity in general now that'll slightly lower long-term potentiation memory formation but not
that much another thing i want to mention i take an arb guess what uh blockade of the at-1 receptor nullifies apoptotic effects of methamphetamine in rodents and this has been studied quite a few times using arbs on the a1 receptor because there's some vascular issues that come from that excitation and that's some of the remodeling that happens in the supposed amphetamine toxicity finally i wanted to mention just this last thing yeah the drug-induced plasticity i just wanted to mention for people who are drug addicts like i used to be an alcoholic back in the day
it's very very difficult to get out of addiction because when you're in addiction your brain has a lot of neurogenesis and that means your brain is producing a lot of new neurons so an old dog is learning a lot of new tricks and then what do you do to get sober you go to aa and aa tells you don't do anything and come and talk to us and what happens is your brain goes suddenly totally frigid and it you can't adapt there are no new neurons building and what are you stuck on the drug addict
brain so so just for people to know i just wanted to mention amphetamines cause plasticity generally when you're in addiction you can never stop addiction without increasing plasticity if you want to do it easily that's why we're experimenting with cerebral lysis which we could talk about also and while you're on amphetamines if you increase neuro neurogenesis even more you'll protect those cells from cell death if they experience any potential death because neurogenesis growth factors in the body don't just grow new cells they also stop old cells from dying so that's a key fact so if
you're using like an ssri like fluvoxamine that agonizes sigma one receptor with your adenophysial like i am and then you're protecting your cells a little bit you're not so afraid of the dopamine that's that's my that's my piece for now but there's many other tips i can offer later that's awesome yeah i'm sure it could be relevant for a decent amount of people in here hopefully um i don't know how easy it is to get the instant release for the majority of people but um extremely easy very easy oh is it very very very i
can't get it i can get the glucon like one pepto receptor agonist but you know those i can get but you know the appetite suppressants and the and uh you know the uh peptidase peptideal four inhibitors which we should discuss in another episode um because that inhibits the breakdown of all growth factors you know one thing i did want to discuss before we cap it off is
