I wouldn’t recommend regular caffeine at all unless you know from experience that you won’t develop a physical dependency. In my experience you get more like short term gain until your body adapts then requires coffee to function normally.
If you do want to try caffeine I recommend trying to pair it with L-theanine (either in pills or green tea) which is supposed to smooth the experience and makes for a cleaner high (YMMV).
If you’re looking for a stimulant that you don’t take regularly and with shorter half life, consider nicotine gums. Again ymmv, I think gwern has tried it with little effect. Beware the addictive potential (although lower than with cigarettes or vapes)
i’m not sure i’d recommend nicotine even in gum form. you’ll notice an obvious boost the first few times you do it — and the shorter half-life is nice for working in the evenings — but like most other drugs you build dependence quick. after a couple weeks you literally won’t notice any effect from taking that same initial dose. overcoming that by bumping the dose is, obviously, unsustainable.
if you do go the nicotine route, try both the gum and the lozenges. gum is more effective at quickly weening you off of cigs because it replaces one ritual (smoking) with another (chewing), whereas the lozenges are really just about physically delivering nicotine to the body without much ritual (i.e. they’re less “habit forming”).
Yep all good points. I think I didn’t emphasize enough that you should not take it every day (maybe not even every other day).
The gums are less addictive than cigs because they taste bad and because the feedback/reinforcement is slower. Lozenges sound like a good alternative too, to be extra sure.
I wouldn’t recommend regular caffeine at all unless you know from experience that you won’t develop a physical dependency. In my experience you get more like short term gain until your body adapts then requires coffee to function normally.
If you do want to try caffeine I recommend trying to pair it with L-theanine (either in pills or green tea) which is supposed to smooth the experience and makes for a cleaner high (YMMV).
If you’re looking for a stimulant that you don’t take regularly and with shorter half life, consider nicotine gums. Again ymmv, I think gwern has tried it with little effect. Beware the addictive potential (although lower than with cigarettes or vapes)
i’m not sure i’d recommend nicotine even in gum form. you’ll notice an obvious boost the first few times you do it — and the shorter half-life is nice for working in the evenings — but like most other drugs you build dependence quick. after a couple weeks you literally won’t notice any effect from taking that same initial dose. overcoming that by bumping the dose is, obviously, unsustainable.
if you do go the nicotine route, try both the gum and the lozenges. gum is more effective at quickly weening you off of cigs because it replaces one ritual (smoking) with another (chewing), whereas the lozenges are really just about physically delivering nicotine to the body without much ritual (i.e. they’re less “habit forming”).
Yep all good points. I think I didn’t emphasize enough that you should not take it every day (maybe not even every other day).
The gums are less addictive than cigs because they taste bad and because the feedback/reinforcement is slower. Lozenges sound like a good alternative too, to be extra sure.