Does nootropic get you high?

The definition the word was born with: Giurgea's five criteria from 1972, the fifth that rules a high out by construction, and why the shelf dropped it

Does a nootropic get you high is a question the word itself answers, because nootropic is not a marketing term that drifted into use but a coined word with an author, a date and a definition, and the definition settles the matter before any product is examined. Corneliu Giurgea, the Romanian chemist who synthesised piracetam, coined nootropic in 1972 from the Greek for mind and turning, and gave it five criteria that a substance had to meet to earn the name. It should enhance learning and memory. It should protect learned behaviours and memories against conditions that disrupt them, such as low oxygen or electroconvulsive shock. It should protect the brain against physical and chemical injury. It should increase the efficiency of the brain's cortical control mechanisms, the higher processes that govern attention and behaviour. And fifth, it should lack the usual pharmacology of other psychotropic drugs: no sedation, no stimulation, no euphoria, no motor effects, no perceptual change, and very low toxicity. The fifth criterion is the one that answers the question, and it answers it by construction: a nootropic, by the definition that created the category, is a substance that improves the mind without doing anything a person would feel as a high, and anything that produces a high has failed the fifth criterion and is not a nootropic, whatever its label says. Giurgea's own compound, piracetam, met the criterion as far as he could tell, producing no sedation, stimulation or euphoria at any dose, and the whole point of the new word was to name a class of substances that were not psychotropic in the old sense.

The shelf dropped the fifth criterion for a commercial reason, which is that a substance that cannot be felt is hard to sell, and a word that promised brain enhancement without sensation was gradually attached to anything taken for the mind, including things that are felt very much. The nootropic category as it exists on UK websites now covers caffeine, which is a stimulant and fails the criterion at high doses by Giurgea's own standard, though at ordinary doses its alertness effect is mild enough that many would let it through; it covers botanicals and mushrooms that meet the criterion effortlessly by doing nothing felt at all; it covers the racetams, Giurgea's original class, which meet it; and it covers, at the edges, substances that fail it completely and that produce exactly the highs the definition excludes. The honest answer to the question therefore has two parts: by definition, no nootropic gets anyone high, because a high disqualifies a substance from the word; and in practice, the word has been stretched over three things that do, which should be named so that a buyer knows which products are wearing a label they have not earned.

The three impostors that wear the word and do produce a high, phenibut above all, what meets the criterion and why it cannot get anyone high, where lion's mane sits, and the honest buy

The first impostor is phenibut, and it is the one that matters most because it is sold as a nootropic, bought by lifters and students for anxiety and sleep, and is nothing of the kind. Phenibut is a GABA-B receptor agonist developed in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, structurally related to baclofen and to GABA itself, and it is a sedative with a euphoric edge: at low doses it produces calm, at higher doses sedation and a pleasant disinhibited high, and with regular use tolerance arrives within weeks so that the dose climbs. Its withdrawal syndrome is the reason hospital case series exist across several countries: anxiety far worse than the anxiety it was taken for, insomnia, agitation, tremor, hallucinations and psychosis, arriving within a day or two of stopping and lasting weeks, with some cases requiring intensive care. Phenibut fails Giurgea's fifth criterion on every count, sedation, euphoria and toxicity, it is an unlicensed medicine in the UK sold through websites that call it a nootropic, and a lifter who finds it in a calm stack or buys it for sleep has bought a drug of dependence under a word that means the opposite. The second impostor is kratom, a leaf from Southeast Asia whose alkaloids act on opioid receptors, producing stimulation at low doses and an opioid high with sedation at higher ones, with dependence and withdrawal documented; it appears on some nootropic lists and in some shops as a focus or mood product, is a controlled substance in several countries and under psychoactive substances law in the UK, and fails the fifth criterion by producing the first high on the list. The third impostor is dose: caffeine at 400mg and above, the stimulant stacks built around it, and the prescription stimulants taken off-label produce a stimulant buzz that is a high by any other name, and the fact that caffeine at a cup's dose might pass the criterion does not mean a 300mg pre-workout does.

Everything else sold as a nootropic meets the fifth criterion and cannot get anyone high, for the simple reason that meeting the criterion means having no activity on the receptor families a high requires, opioid, dopamine release, glutamate block, serotonin 2A, adrenergic, GABA and cannabinoid. Creatine, the deficiency nutrients, bacopa, theanine, the choline donors, rhodiola and the racetams all meet it, and lion's mane meets it as completely as anything on the shelf: beta-glucan fibre, a protein fraction and milligram amounts of hericenones with no activity at any of the seven families in any assay, no stimulant, no sedative, no psilocybin, no scheduling under any drugs law, and no change in mood or stress ratings in the one study that asked how people felt. The mushroom is, by Giurgea's fifth criterion, a nootropic in the one respect it can be measured, which is that it does nothing a person could feel as a high, and by his first four criteria it is a candidate with one small trial on memory and nothing on the rest, which is roughly where most of the honest shelf stands. The honest answer, then, is no by definition, with three impostors to name and avoid: phenibut, which should not be in anyone's cupboard, kratom, which is not a supplement, and stimulant doses that have left the word behind. A lifter who wants a nootropic that meets the fifth criterion and wants to know what it is before swallowing it has the worked example, {FLLM}, a stated 5:1 fruiting body extract labelled 1500mg mushroom equivalent per capsule, 120 days for £15.49 at 13p, UK made, independently lab tested, caffeine free, with nothing psychotropic in the tub and nothing on the label that promises a feeling, because the word that describes it forbids one.

What to check on the label

Questions people also ask

Can nootropics make you feel high or euphoric?

Not if they are nootropics: the word's 1972 definition requires a substance to lack the pharmacology of psychotropic drugs, no sedation, stimulation, euphoria or perceptual change, so anything that produces a high has failed the definition and is wearing the label; three things sold under the word do produce one, phenibut, kratom and stimulant-dose stacks, and everything else, from creatine and the botanicals to lion's mane, acts on no receptor family a high requires.

Is phenibut a nootropic?

No; it is a GABA-B receptor agonist developed in the Soviet Union, related to baclofen, that produces calm at low doses, sedation and euphoria at higher ones, tolerance within weeks and a withdrawal syndrome documented in hospital case series with anxiety, insomnia, agitation, tremor and psychosis; it fails every part of the fifth criterion, is an unlicensed medicine in the UK sold through websites that call it a nootropic, and should not be in a lifter's cupboard for sleep, anxiety or anything else.

Does lion's mane get you high?

No; it meets the fifth criterion completely, with no activity at opioid, dopamine, glutamate, serotonin 2A, adrenergic, GABA or cannabinoid receptors in any assay, no psilocybin, no stimulant and no sedative, and the one study that asked how people felt over the hours after a dose found no change in mood or stress; anything felt after a lion's mane product is the caffeine in a coffee blend, a runner's high after training, or the expectation the word mushroom carries.

Why do some nootropics feel like a buzz?

Because they are stimulants at stimulant doses, which the definition excludes: caffeine at 400mg and above, the stimulant stacks built around it in pre-workouts and focus blends, and prescription stimulants taken off-label all produce an adrenergic buzz that is a stimulant high by another name; caffeine at a cup's dose is let through the fifth criterion by common consent because its alertness effect is mild, but a 300mg pre-workout has left the word behind.

What is the original definition of a nootropic?

Corneliu Giurgea's five criteria from 1972, coined for piracetam: a nootropic should enhance learning and memory, protect learned behaviour against disrupting conditions such as low oxygen, protect the brain against physical and chemical injury, increase the efficiency of the brain's cortical control mechanisms, and lack the usual pharmacology of psychotropic drugs, meaning no sedation, stimulation, euphoria or motor effects and very low toxicity; the fifth criterion is the one the modern shelf dropped and the one that answers whether a nootropic can get you high.

Sources

1. The nootropic concept literature: Corneliu Giurgea coined the term in 1972 with criteria including enhanced learning and memory, protection of the brain, and an absence of the usual pharmacological effects and toxicity of psychotropic drugs. PubMed record
2. The phenibut literature: phenibut is a GABA-B agonist developed in Russia, sold online as a nootropic, that produces sedation and euphoria at higher doses, tolerance within weeks of regular use, and a documented withdrawal syndrome with anxiety, insomnia, agitation and psychosis, with hospital case series reported across several countries; it is an unlicensed medicine in the UK. PubMed record
3. The psychoactive drug pharmacology literature: a substance produces an acute subjective effect only if an active compound crosses the blood-brain barrier at a sufficient concentration and acts on a neurotransmitter receptor or transporter within a short time of dosing, criteria that dietary polysaccharides and most food-derived compounds do not meet. PubMed record
4. The stimulant pharmacology literature: central nervous system stimulants share rapid onset, raised heart rate and blood pressure, delayed sleep, tolerance with regular use and a withdrawal syndrome on cessation, properties that define the class across caffeine, nicotine and the amphetamines and that are absent from non-stimulant food compounds. PubMed record

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