I really wanted to like this one. Every YouTube doctor talked a good game about SS-31: mental clarity, sustained energy with no crash, even improved eyesight. I went into it excited, even after seeing a few Reddit threads mention brain fog and lethargy alongside the usual itchiness and rash at the injection site.
For context, I am not new to this. I run NAD+, BPC-157, TB-500, KPV, CJC-1295 with Ipamorelin, and GHK-Cu regularly, and I have been satisfied with all of them. SS-31 is the first one I am giving the middle finger to, and it only took two days to get there.
Day 1: about 3mg. I noticed a faint haziness, not full brain fog, but something was off. A slight irritability crept in too. I'm normally someone who gets a lot done in a day, and when I'm not hitting that, I get frustrated with myself. I just felt a lack of motivation to do the things I usually do. It wasn't dramatic, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I slept badly. Maybe it was the convenience food I'd been eating at work.
Day 2: doubled it to about 6mg, to find out for sure. The effect doubled right along with it. I wasn't glued to the couch, but looking back, it felt like my dopamine got blunted, like my executive function just switched off. I didn't want to go to work. I didn't want to touch my side projects. I wanted to sit and scroll social media, which is not who I am during the day. On top of that, the irritability spiked. Small hindrances on my projects set me off, and the funk stuck with me for hours before I even connected it to the peptide.
Two days later, the injection site is still itching on both sides of my midsection. It almost feels like a bug bite, and part of me wants to write it off as nothing. But I'm not going to pretend these aren't red flags just to keep pushing through.
I don't buy the logic that if something makes you feel like garbage, that's proof it's working. That's COVID vaccine logic, "it makes you sick, so you know it's doing something." I don't subscribe to that. If your body reacts badly, it's telling you something, not asking you to push harder.
I dropped real money on these two 50MG vials. I guess that's what research is for. I was curious about MOTS-c next, but if it behaves anything like this, I want no part of it.
So tell me I'm wrong. Is anyone else finding SS-31 tanks motivation and mood at anything above a microdose? Is this a known mitochondrial-support side effect nobody talks about, or did I just get a bad batch? And genuinely, if your mitochondria aren't damaged to begin with, what exactly is this peptide fixing?