What do you guys think of nootropic drugs?

**holetoledo** · 06-06-2010 07:34 AM

According to Wikipedia (which is, I know, a not very reliable source):

Nootropics, also referred to as smart drugs, memory enhancers, and cognitive enhancers, are drugs, supplements, nutraceuticals, and functional foods that are purported to improve mental functions such as cognition, memory, intelligence, motivation, attention, and concentration.[1][2] [...] Nootropics are thought to work by altering the availability of the brain's supply of neurochemicals (neurotransmitters, enzymes, and hormones), by improving the brain's oxygen supply, or by stimulating nerve growth.

What I thought of doing is taking a nootropic drug so that my brain might safely recover from weaning from Lexapro. I read that the "brain zaps" I've been getting is due to nerve damage, since the body experiences a lot of shock from stopping or reducing the recommended dosage (which I have been taking for a little more than two years). Or should I just get off my antidepressant all clean-like? I'm also planning on talking to my psychiatrist about weaning, never you fear, but I just thought a couple of opinions would do me good.

**ItsASecret** · 06-06-2010 09:27 AM

A huge number of these products do absolutely nothing significant on the scientific level, they will work as a placebo because basically anything can these days when it gets put into pill form. If anything is going to work for a cognitive enhancement it is going to be something from a plant, at its source, not from synthesizing 100 times in a lab to get one pure chemical that is then placed into a pill. Right now the big one that is said to work great is Ginkgo Biloba, its an ancient tree with extensive history of use for memory and cognitive enhancement and so on.

However with these drugs there is a lot of evidence for them being good at cognitive enhancement there is going to be just as much or more evidence against it (you can search any big name research site like PubMed or ncbi to see the thousands of papers). Taking anything of the sort will not actually cause neuronal growth per se, if it did then the whole section of medicine that deals with Alzheimer's, brain injury (any degree), and spinal cord injury would have nothing to worry about because things could be cured quite easily. But that is obviously not the case. What these drugs may actually do is increase the rate at which the current neurons fire leading to the possible increase in cognition but again that is no guarantee. Nothing is going to completely reset the brain outside of maybe electrotherapy which is quite scary. For coming off of drugs the only thing they would do is slowly decrease the dose, or put you on another med that could help with the elimination of the Lexapro-not sure if one actually exists for Lexapro. You would need to have a long talk with your psychiatrist because he/she would have the answers to your questions.