Which stimulants should I rotate to reduce tolerance?
Stimulants are great for working, but obviously they come with consequences.
A question I’d been wondering about for a while: what combination of stimulants would be optimal to rotate through and reduce (not eliminate) tolerance?
If you ask a regular LLM, it’ll tell you what you’d expect: don’t do it.
Better to go without stimulants and have coffee every now and then.
Okay, sure. We all knew that already.
But my scientific curiosity isn’t satisfied with so little.
❌ Kids, don’t try this at home ❌
At some point, I think I read Gwern saying he used caffeine + modafinil + nicotine. Alex Hormozi also mixes nicotine and caffeine to work.
So I’ve always been curious. Last week I asked uncensored Qwen what it thought, and this was the answer:
- Caffeine + L-theanine
- Modafinil
- Nicotine (not smoked)
- Methylphenidate
▶️ Caffeine + L-theanine was to be expected.
It’s a staple that everyone uses, it’s legal, etc. The less well-known part here is “L-theanine,” which is usually found in tea and is responsible for it not causing as much agitation and nervousness as coffee. That’s why a lot of people prefer tea to perk them up.
Anecdotally: I took “L-theanine” with coffee for a while and couldn’t notice anything.
▶️ Nicotine is widely misunderstood.
A lot of people associate it with tobacco and think it’s terrible, but by itself it’s much less harmful than people think. In general, it’s a good stimulant. Obviously it’s addictive, but it’s not as bad as people think.
My subjective experience is that it’s not bad, but it’s different from coffee. And if you don’t have a tolerance, it’s easy to overdo the dose and feel sick. So be very careful.
Fun fact: if you swallow it, it gives you hiccups.
▶️ Modafinil is pretty unknown to the general public (and to me), though it seems to be legal with a prescription for treating narcolepsy and similar conditions.
It’s not a classic psychomotor stimulant, but a eugeroic; it seems its mechanism isn’t fully understood. Subjectively, it’s less of a wave of energy and more of a reduction in the feeling of sleepiness.
A pretty interesting concept.
▶️ And methylphenidate (Ritalin or Concerta) is what people usually use for ADHD. It seems like the most potent one, and the one I’d be most wary of out of the four.
The whole topic is pretty interesting.
It feels good to be able to ask an AI this question and get an answer that it dares to give.
❌ Obviously this isn’t a recommendation for anything, the AI could be hallucinating, etc... Don’t be stupid.