Ashleigh Young trials brain supplements
I once had a job as a receptionist for a company that sold computer parts – actually, you know, I don’t even really know what they sold. A few months in I was given a talking-to and instructed to be "more bubbly". I said I would try, but I couldn’t manifest any bubbles, and a few weeks after that I quit. In my defence, there was no natural light in the office, and all the carpets made small voices smaller, and the break room was encased in glass. I would sit in there for my break and drink instant coffee and eat a box of raisins – things that nobody should have to be seen doing.
In some ways my lack of bubble in life has been a source of shame to me, a shame which sometimes feels like a repressed rage against a world which prefers the bubbly woman to the sluggish one. I’ve always remembered that moment of being told off, and wondered what bubbliness would look like for me. Everything I imagined seemed grotesque, like a DALL-E Mini version of myself: hands missing, mouth a ragged hole. Also, it was beside the point: I was bad at that job, constantly enraging clients by accidentally sending them ‘Your Account Is Overdue’ emails, and taking too long to retrieve whatever bunch of cables they’d come to collect. Shouldn’t these failings have been the focus – as I think they would’ve been if I were a man – and not my bad personality? Still, not for the first time, I wanted to be someone else.
I was thinking about that again recently, because I took some brain supplements that did turn me into someone else. I was the bubbly receptionist of my own life, welcoming the world in, headset blazing. I felt like I had emerged from a long hibernation in damp soil. I rose up and soared, and I sat down and wrote a lot of work emails. Then it was over, and although I tried to get her back, she returned to dormancy.
Should I have thought more carefully before taking the brain supplements? Yes. Should I have been more careful later, too, when I would broaden my experimentation with nootropics and take the rainbow dust, the lion’s mane, the turkey tail, the chaga, the capsules called, simply, ‘Brain’? Yes. Should I have consulted with a doctor on whether these pills and powders would interact with anything I was already taking? Also yes. Instead, wanting to see if I would feel different, sharper, happier, I gulped them back – initially out of curiosity, later out of desperation.
I first came across Ārepa when my mum gave me a couple of bottles of their brain drink, saying they "seemed interesting". I drank them – a viscous, reddish-purple liquid – and felt nothing and went on with my life. A few weeks later Mum visited again with more of the brain drinks. "Have you heard about these drinks," she said. She showed me an article about the inventors, two young men who were "doing interesting things with berries". Yes, the men were young and successful and healthy-looking, and their lives had been changed by three ingredients in particular: a variety of blackcurrant, L-theanine (an amino acid found in tea and some mushrooms), and something extracted from the bark of pine trees and patented as Enzogenol.
All of these are nootropics, an ever-expanding umbrella term that refers to any natural or synthetic substance, from caffeine and various fungi to creatine and Adderall, that might enhance your brain’s workings – your cognition, mood, alertness, creativity and memory. In other words, we are in the massively vague and contested territory of ‘smart drugs’ or ‘cognitive enhancers'. Different substances can be used to ‘target’ the brain’s functions, like ginkgo for memory and lion’s mane mushroom for mood. But the companies who sell these things seem to focus the most on cognition and productivity; their favourite word is ‘brain’. I drank the brain drink once more and did some high-speed vacuuming, then the show was over.
But late last year, a jar of Ārepa’s brain capsules arrived as a present from my partner’s family. I took two a day, then four a day. I started to feel better. Then a lot better.
The main thing about Ārepa (meaning, roughly, ‘alpha’ in te reo Māori) is the blackcurrant. It’s a variety that the inventors have trademarked as ‘the neuroberry’, a name which almost prevents me from taking it seriously. Luckily, on the Ārepa website under ‘Our Science’ there is a photo of a haunted-looking man with little electrodes all over his head, which tells me that the science is robust. To be fair, the research on the neuroberry does seem promising, if still emergent, still hedging its bets. There are studies suggesting "small but significant" improvements to athletic performance, possible protection from age-related neurodegenerative diseases, slight improvements in "peripheral muscle circulation during typing work in humans" (this is of interest to me), and so on. I don’t know whether it was the blackcurrants making me feel good, or the L-theanine, or the extract from pine trees. I wanted it to be the pine trees – the least bubbly trees in New Zealand. There weren’t as many studies on them as on the famous blackcurrant and the trusty, calming L-theanine. Were the trees even meant to be in there?
Whatever it was, after a few weeks on the brain capsules I walked around and I wasn’t as nervous to bump into people I knew. At times I had a bright, burning focus, less grinding anxiety and dread about the future, more energy to cycle and run, less rage towards slow walkers. I wasn’t fossilised by tiredness in the afternoons anymore, or in the mornings and the evenings. I liked to look at the sky more; was this ‘the moment’ I’d heard about? Sometimes I even sat down to write. Was what I wrote any good? No! But it wasn’t nothing. Helen Garner’s hair suddenly felt significant, so I wrote about it. I wrote about shirts and tried to liken the shirt – an undefinable form, meaningful to some, meaningless to others – to Jesus. For better or worse, my fear of writing badly was gone.
I went on Reddit to see if I could learn more about nootropics, and mainly what I learned is that many of the people interested in them were horrible. Theirs was the meanness of a people who are too healthy, a people who have optimised their central nervous systems and now see the world with a vicious clarity. They were downvoting one another at every turn, calling each other’s concoctions "garbage", sourly dismissing any kind of "blend" over the purity of the individual substance. "This guy drinks a Gatorade and thinks he found the limitless pill everyone has been looking for," someone replied to a guy who posted about how great he felt when ingesting trace minerals "from the Utah ancient sea bed." When asked to elaborate on dosages, another user screamed, "DO NOT ASK ME FOR ANY LINKS YOU MORONS. I GAVE YOU ENOUGH INFORMATION."
The problem with talking about what might help with a bad mood or anxiety or sluggishness is that no one can be trusted, because they don’t know you. You don’t even really know you. There are so many variables to how we feel in ourselves, and with nootropics the placebo effect can be immense (but some would argue: who cares? If you feel better, you feel better). You can also find pretty much any small study to suggest that a nootropic has benefits, though there aren’t many large, controlled studies. And you can find lots of anecdotal stuff, like this: As I continued with these brain capsules, there seemed to be a deeper, weirder shift, one that made me feel more kindly towards the surly receptionist I once was – and still am, somewhere underneath.
It was the idea that I didn’t need to berate myself all the time, or not as harshly. It’s almost embarrassing to say it, especially from this distance, when it is no longer the case. Each day, the idea of being less scathing – of being gentler, slower to judge – presented itself a possibility. I didn’t have to agree with everything I did or said, but I could see that if I made a mistake or blurted some nonsense, it didn’t mean I was a useless scumbag who should be run over by a ute. Maybe this doesn’t sound so radical, but to me it was thrilling, like I’d been rescued somehow. "I’ve had a revelation," I said to friends, after demanding that we all drink more beers. "I’ve realised I don’t have to kill myself all the time." We cheered and clinked glasses, and I felt even better.
Of course it couldn’t last. First, because the only way to get the brain capsules was online, and the courier driver began to refuse to drive up the steep narrow road where I live. Courier drivers were stretched to the limit delivering brain capsules around the city. But secondly, I just don’t believe I am wired to feel really good for a sustained period of time. The fireworks of the good mood were dissolving, leaving glowy wires in the air, like before a migraine. My morning dread was back, my free-floating unhappiness. It was time to try something new.
In my desk drawers at work I found some stuff called MitoQ Brain. MitoQ had sponsored the best first book prize at the 2019 Ockham New Zealand book awards, and at the after-party, people were urging free bottles of Brain into the hands of writers. At the time, I was sceptical, and drunk. I got three bottles anyway, and now I was glad I had, because they were not quite expired. What was in them? Zembrin, Ginkgo, Sharp-PS, Huperzine A – who cared! If I wanted to soar again, I reasoned, I had to take some risks. I also decided to try Flow State, a local company that sells pills and powders of mushrooms like reishi – the "mushroom of immortality", taken by Taoist monks to help them meditate – and lion’s mane, the bulbous fungi that looks like the back of a white cat hunkered over its food, famous for its focus-giving qualities. A fungus called cordyceps militaris, which looks like Crispy Noodles, was said to improve endurance and stamina. I wanted all of it, and at the same time I didn’t know what I wanted. Companies that sell nootropic formulas promise such a litany of benefits to body and brain – energising, calming, regulating, balancing – that it’s hard to protest that you’re fine, just fine to move through the world raw. I bought a few blends.
It’s at this point that things got blurry. With each supplement, I tried to sense myself, like a cave wētā putting its feelers out into the darkness. Was there something there? Some dramatic new formation? Was I just inside the mouth of the nootropics industry, too blind to know it?
When I ordered a blend of mushrooms from SpaceGoods, a UK company, there was some kind of hiccup and I kept being delivered bags of the stuff – more and more of it. The courier drivers had a new and fearless energy as they sped up the driveway. Three bags, four bags, five. I glugged the stuff down each day, until the company sent a bewildering promotional email in praise of Elon Musk ("From expensive rocket launches to controversial tweets – he’s managed to always stay calm and deal with the risks. While I can’t feed you the same ambition that drives Elon Musk to take over our solar system, I have something that’ll nourish your brain to unlock your super, natural self . . ."). I cancelled my subscription immediately, after emailing back to say that Elon Musk was a dangerous loon, for which a customer service rep emailed back to thank me.
I don’t know where to go from here. Some mornings I look at the shelf full of bags of nootropic blends and feel tired. Other days, when I try to figure out if I feel any different, I think I feel the heat of a sparkler, one of the tiny ones you hold in your hand. But I also think of Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life, who said, "Sometimes, writing a book, you can be too well for your own good." Maybe that’s true for life as well – maybe it’s better for humanity if we’re all slightly ragged, rather than blazing with productivity, convinced that all of our ideas are great. I know, secretly, that the bubbly woman was insufferable. I miss her though, and her revelations, so I keep searching.
