Game Changers: What Leaders, Innovators and Mavericks Do to Win at Life

You also can’t expect to pop a pill and suddenly possess new levels of self-awareness. When used appropriately, these drugs can activate an elevated consciousness that triggers new insights, but to truly cultivate self-awareness, you still have to do the work. In other words, drugs in and of themselves won’t make you more aware, but they can give you the opportunity to see the things you need to work on. It’s up to you to then take action and work on them!

But microdosing psychedelics is far from the only way to benefit from certain drugs. I have actively benefited from another class of drugs, nootropics, since 1997, when I was grappling with a steep decline in my cognitive performance at work. When my doctor was ill equipped to help, I took matters into my own hands and ordered almost $1,000 worth of smart drugs from Europe (the only place where you could get them at the time). I remember opening the unmarked brown package and wondering whether the contents would actually improve my brain. They did, and I’ve been a big fan of certain cognitive enhancers ever since.

Like psychedelics, smart drugs won’t automatically blanket you in self-awareness. Finding self-awareness takes energy. Anytime you can give yourself better cellular function, more energy, increased neuroplasticity, and improved learning abilities (which many of these drugs do), it makes gaining self-awareness easier. You can progress more quickly if you’re running on high power.

The trouble with using a blanket term such as nootropics is that it lumps all kinds of substances together. Technically, you could argue that caffeine and cocaine are both nootropics, but they’re hardly equal. With so many ways to enhance your brain function, many of which have significant risks, it’s most valuable to look at nootropics on a case-by-case basis. Below are just a few of the nootropics I’ve had the most success with over the years.

RACETAMS

Perhaps the biggest supporter of the racetam family is Steve Fowkes, a biochemist who wrote and edited a newsletter called Smart Drug News starting in the 1980s. It was his early work that brought nootropics to my attention and inspired me to order that umarked brown package of smart drugs. Imagine my delight when he ended up becoming a guest on Bulletproof Radio twenty years later! Steve explains that the racetam family of pharmaceuticals contains dozens of related compounds, including a few well-known nootropics. The best studied one is piracetam, but the most effective racetam nootropics I’ve found are aniracetam and phenylpiracetam. I like aniracetam more than piracetam because it is fast acting, reduces stress, and increases your ability to get things into and out of your memory. Phenylpiracetam is highly energizing and stimulating, which helps with some tasks but hinders some others. It is also a banned substance in some sports.

When I take 800 milligrams of aniracetam, I find I speak more fluently and don’t ever grasp for words. This effect is likely due to the fact that the racetam family improves mitochondrial function and sends extra oxygen to the brain. Most of the research has been done on people with neurological problems (with amazing results), but there is plenty of good evidence to support its use in healthy individuals. In studies, 400 milligrams of phenylpiracetam taken daily for a year significantly improved brain function and cognition in people recovering from a stroke;

(#litres_trial_promo) 200 milligrams of phenylpiracetam taken for thirty days improved neurological function by 7 percent in people with brain damage

(#litres_trial_promo) and by 12 percent in people with epilepsy.

(#litres_trial_promo) In studies on rats, aniracitam improved memory and countered depression.

(#litres_trial_promo) A single small study of piracetam in healthy adults found that after fourteen days it significantly improved verbal learning.

(#litres_trial_promo)

The side effects are minor—mostly racetams can amplify the effects of caffeine or use up a nutrient called choline, which you can easily replenish by eating egg yolks or supplementing with CDP choline or sunflower lecithin. The risk/reward ratio of this family is very good. They’re legal in the United States and widely available online. Do not start with a “stack” of multiple racetams. Try each one separately and note how you feel; the effects of each are highly variable. You’re as likely to get angry, develop a headache, or feel nothing from a stack as you are to get what you’re looking for because of cross reactions.

MODAFINIL (PROVIGIL)

Have you ever seen the movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper? It’s loosely based on modafinil. This stuff gives you superhuman mental processing powers with few to no downsides. Studies show that in healthy adults, modafinil improves fatigue levels, motivation, reaction time, and vigilance.

I used modafinil for eight years—it helped me with everything from studying at Wharton to working on a start-up that sold for $600 million. I wouldn’t have an MBA without it. I’ve recommended it to countless friends with great results, and you may have seen me on ABC’s Nightline or CNN talking about using it for executive performance. Nightline sent a crew to my house for two days because I was the only executive they could find who would publicly admit I was using it to get ahead at work and school. I was public about it because I wanted to drive a national conversation about smart drugs and remove the stigma. It worked, and smart drugs are much better known now.

Modafinil improves memory and mood, reduces impulsive decision making, increases your resistance to fatigue, and even improves your brain function when you are suffering from lack of sleep. A recent peer-reviewed analysis from Oxford and Harvard of twenty-four studies of modafinil since 1990 found the same things I’ve been writing about based on what it did for me: it significantly enhanced attention, executive function, and learning in healthy people who were not deprived of sleep while they were performing complex tasks—with just about zero side effects. The authors concluded that “modafinil may well deserve the title of the first well-validated pharmaceutical nootropic agent.”

(#litres_trial_promo) Bam!

Unlike many other smart drugs, modafinil is not a stimulant; it is actually a eugeroic—a wakefulness-promoting agent. That means it doesn’t make you speedy or jittery like most classical stimulants do, and it doesn’t cause you to crash or go through withdrawal because it is not addictive.

(#litres_trial_promo) I found that I could actually decrease my dose as my health improved and I needed less of it to function optimally. At this point, it’s been four years since I’ve had a use for it. When I apply all the other hacks, there is no meaningful measurable difference between my brain on modafinil and off it. But I keep it in my travel bag in case I want to pull out all the stops in an emergency. I don’t think I’ll ever need it again because I have built energy reserves beyond my wildest expectations, but I’m glad it’s in my bag of tricks if I ever do.

Actually, screw that. After rereading all the research that went into writing this section, I just decided to take 50 milligrams in case it makes the rest of the book better. I’m kind of excited to see what happens.

If you deal with jet lag or intense fatigue or occasionally really want to get something done, this can be a powerful nootropic and a life changer. It’s not risk free—some people develop headaches when using it, and about five in 1 million people can develop a life-threatening autoimmune condition—a risk similar to that of taking ibuprofen. If you know your genetic sequence (from 23andMe or a similar service), you can check to see if you have the genes that put you at risk. They are listed on the Bulletproof blog. Modafinil does not mix well with alcohol.

You can buy modafinil online from India without a prescription from a US doctor, and most of it is real. However, to get a prescription in the United States, it really helps if you can claim to have symptoms of shift worker sleep disorder, which most insurance companies will reimburse. Since this is a medical drug, it’s best to get a prescription. Your doctor may recommend a more expensive, sometimes more potent, form, called Nuvigil.

Holy crap, the modafinil from two paragraphs ago just kicked in. Why have I been writing this book without it?

NICOTINE

I have never been a smoker, and smoking is gross and bad for you. But nicotine, separately from tobacco, is just one of the thousands of chemicals in cigarette smoke. And when you use it orally at low doses in its pure form—without toxins and carcinogens wrapped around it and rolled into a cigarette—nicotine can be a formidable nootropic. It’s reportedly the most widely studied cognition-enhancing substance on Earth, even more than coffee.

When you take the right amount, nicotine can do a lot for your performance. For starters, it gives you faster, more precise motor function. People show more controlled and fluent handwriting after taking nicotine, and they’re also able to tap their fingers faster without sacrificing accuracy.

(#litres_trial_promo) Nicotine makes you more vigilant and sharpens your short-term memory. In a study, people who were given nicotine via patches and gum better recalled a list of words they’d just read and also repeated a story word for word making fewer mistakes than people who took a placebo.

(#litres_trial_promo) You can even speed up your reaction time with nicotine. Both smokers and nonsmokers reacted more quickly to visual cues after a nicotine injection,

(#litres_trial_promo) although I’ll save my injections for vitamins, thanks.

Of course, there are some real downsides to nicotine, the most infamous of which is its addictive potential. Nicotine activates your mesolimbic dopamine system, which scientists have aptly nicknamed the brain’s “pleasure pathway.” The pleasure pathway is a double-edged sword. Food, sex, love, and rewarding drugs all cause this part of your brain to light up, sending a euphoric rush of dopamine through your system and leaving you in bliss. If you indulge on a regular basis, though, the constant stimulation dulls the pathway. Your receptors start to pull back into your neurons, where they are very hard to activate, and you start to feel physically ill unless you get more of whatever you were enjoying or something else equally stimulating. That’s how dependence starts. The good news is that the physical symptoms of nicotine withdrawal peak three to five days after quitting. It’s the psychological withdrawal from smoking (not just nicotine) that is famously hard to resist. So don’t smoke or vape. Lozenges, gum, spray, and patches work better and are less habit forming.

Nicotine by itself (separate from tobacco) also promotes cancer in rats and mice. This cancer link has never shown up in human studies, even after lots of tries. What is known is that nicotine promotes angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels.

(#litres_trial_promo) If you have heart disease or are exercising or training your brain, angiogenesis is a good thing because your body is supposed to be growing new blood vessels as part of its self-repair. If you have existing tumors, this is a very bad thing.

If you don’t have cancer, nicotine, taken orally, is kidney protective, and it mimics the effect of exercise on the body through a protein called PGC-1 alpha. Researchers believe this compound may have played a key role in differentiating humans from apes,

(#litres_trial_promo) and it is the master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis.

(#litres_trial_promo) In other words, it makes your cells (including brain cells) build new power plants. It’s also a key regulator of energy metabolism and upregulates thyroid hormone receptor genes and mitochondrial function. If you read Head Strong, you know that almost anything you do to make your mitochondria function well is going to help your brain. Nicotine fills the bill!

(Pardon me while I take a writing break to enjoy an unreleased early version of a “clean” nicotine product. It seems that a great many works of literature have been written under the influence of caffeine and nicotine, including this one.)

You can get addicted to nicotine, so it is good for occasional use unless you decide that it’s okay to be addicted to something that grows new blood vessels and increases mitochondrial function. It is profoundly helpful for writing, and the test product I mentioned earlier contained 1 milligram of oral nicotine, compared to the 6 to 12 milligrams you would find in a nasty cigarette. Gums, patches, and oral lozenges or sprays are the best forms because oral (not smoked or vaped) nicotine provides different benefits. Most oral nicotine products have bad artificial sweeteners and chemicals in them. If you’re using nicotine for your brain, why add in crap that moves the needle in the wrong direction? I’m a fan of start-ups such as Lucy gum (www.lucynicotine.com) that are working to release nicotine products with clean ingredients. Gum chewing never makes you look cool, so it’s a good thing that you use nicotine gum by tucking it into your cheek instead of smacking it.

I’m so glad nicotine is in my brain. And smoking is gross.

CAFFEINE

Few people know this, but the first commercial product ever sold over the internet was a T-shirt that read, CAFFEINE: MY DRUG OF CHOICE. I know this because in 1993 I sold it out of my dorm room, resulting in a photo of my three-hundred-pound round-faced self appearing in Entrepreneur magazine wearing the shirt in size XXL. So of course, caffeine is my favorite nootropic of all time. Actually, coffee is. Coffee is made up of thousands of compounds, and caffeine is just one of them.

By itself (not just in coffee), caffeine is an energy booster and cognitive enhancer. Caffeine may even help ease cognitive decline and lower your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by blocking inflammation in the brain.

(#litres_trial_promo) You already know that this book is powered by coffee (and just a few additional nootropics).

One reason caffeine is in this book is to give you pause. If you think cognition-enhancing substances are something too crazy to try, put down that coffee cup and pick up a glass of nice, bitter kale juice. See how long that change lasts! If you’re like most people, you’ve been taking one of Mother Nature’s greatest nootropics for years, without knowing that you were on nootropics. The truth is that mankind has sought out cognitive enhancement since the beginning of civilization, and the technologies in this chapter are just a continuation of that long and noble tradition.

The bottom line is that all cognitive enhancers carry some risks, but top performers decide whether those risks are worth the rewards. It’s up to you to weigh the benefits against the potential downsides and determine if it’s worth it to you. If you do decide to experiment with any nootropics, please be safe, know your local laws, and follow the recommendations of a medical professional.

Smart drugs make you more of what you are, and they can be important tools in your self-awareness arsenal. They won’t make you an enlightened, loving human overnight. If you’re an asshole generally, you’ll be a bigger one on smart drugs. But the experience of taking these drugs can help you to see your asshole tendencies when you would ordinarily be blind to them. The goal is to observe yourself and use your newfound smarts to do important personal development work if you haven’t done so already.

Action Items

Use psychedelic drugs only with intention, supervision, and solid legal advice to make sure you’re not breaking the law. These are powerful tools, not toys. And do it after age twenty-four, after your brain’s prefrontal cortex is fully formed.

If you’re going to microdose anything—from nicotine to LSD or anywhere in between—do your research first and know what you’re getting. Start slow. Don’t break the law. And don’t do it for the first time before you go onstage, into a big meeting, or even behind the wheel of a car.

Consider trying aniracetam or phenylpiracetam, the entry-level, very safe, quasi-pharmaceutical smart drugs.