Comment · Thu, January 21, 2016 · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
Gaba-B agonists, dopamine feed back loop, NMDARs, BDNF... Help me connect the dots
Original post in this thread
Yoyomamahh · 24 points
TLDR at bottom
-Background-
To make a long story short, I tried phenibut and it changed my life. It made my mind clear, my mood sharp, my emotional intelligence skyrocket, and just gave me a "happy to be alive" type feeling. Up to that point I didn't even know how amazing the gift of life really was. I thought my Aspergerger symptoms were just my vote personality. I didn't realize my emotional instability, sensory problems, social anxiety, brain fog, low energy levels, irritability, and a shit ton of other symptoms could be resolved.
During this time I was a freshman in college. Never been on a date, socially awkward as fuck, couldn't make eye contact, and would turn red as a pepper any time attention was brought to me. I had tried recreational drugs to try and help, none of which I really enjoyed. Phenibut changed all this for about 12 hours.
Unfortunately we all know about its tolerance and withdrawals. But shit I just knew that somehow, someway, this random Russian gem cured me and set my soul free. I could walk anywhere with my head up, joke around, freely express my opinion, flirt with girls, and face my fears.
The most convincing thing (and what made me believe this…
What they were answering
PragmaticPulp · 2 points
Very interesting points, but as I mentioned in my other post I think the simpler explanation for the heightened reward response here is the sleep deprivation. The OP mentioned pulling an all-nighter prior to this experience, and total sleep deprivation is known to amplify the effects of rewarding stimuli on mesolimbic pathways.
From this fMRI study http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/12/4466.short :
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), here we demonstrate that sleep deprivation amplifies reactivity throughout human mesolimbic reward brain networks in response to pleasure-evoking stimuli. In addition, this amplified reactivity was associated with enhanced connectivity in early primary visual processing pathways and extended limbic regions, yet with a reduction in coupling with medial frontal and orbitofrontal regions. These neural changes were accompanied by a biased increase in the number of emotional stimuli judged as pleasant in the sleep-deprived group, the extent of which exclusively correlated with activity in mesolimbic regions. Together, these data support a view that sleep deprivation not only is associated with enhanced reactivity toward negative stimuli, but imposes a bidirectional nature of affective imbalance, associated with amplified reward-relevant reactivity toward pleasure-evoking stimuli also.
There are also several studies showin…
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
Yep, that throws another variable into the equation as well. There are just too many variables in OP's case to make a meaningful consensus on the mechanism of the effect he was describing. However, the reason Phenibut and Baclofen work for him under normal circumstances could be GABA(B) mediated. It sounds like they worked very well for him/her, till tolerance set in.