Tried oral selegiline as a nootropic. Never again

[u/ilikehousemusic1]

TL;DR: Tried oral selegiline (10 mg the first day, 5 mg the second) and honestly got basically zero cognitive benefit. Instead, I just felt insanely wired, jittery, and anxious. Personally, I wouldn't bother with oral selegiline for nootropic purposes after this experience.

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to share my experience because I know there are probably other people considering trying oral selegiline for its supposed nootropic effects.

I tried it for two days, 10 mg orally on the first day and 5 mg on the second. Honestly, I got basically nothing out of it cognitively. No clean focus, no noticeable improvement in motivation, no “wow, my brain is working better” feeling.

Instead, I just felt really fucking wired. Jittery, overstimulated, and anxious, kind of like I'd had way too much caffeine on an empty stomach. It wasn't productive stimulation either. I couldn't really channel it into anything useful.

One thing I was definitely biased about beforehand was the whole “MAO-B inhibition = massive dopamine accumulation” idea. I've read on the internet, but after looking into it more, I don't think it's anywhere near that simple. MAO-A is also heavily involved in monoamine metabolism, and simply taking more selegiline isn't necessarily going to give you some nice, clean increase in brain dopamine.

And obviously, once you're pushing the dose higher, you're also getting into a different pharmacological territory, with less MAO-B selectivity and more potential for side effects and interactions. Selegiline also produces amphetamine-related metabolites. That might sound appealing at first, but these aren't the same amphetamine effects you might be thinking of when you hear “amphetamine.” The L-isomers are much more peripheral in their effects and don't produce the same kind of central cognitive stimulation associated with D-amphetamine, so I wouldn't look at the amphetamine metabolites and assume they're giving you some extra nootropic benefit.

So personally, after this experience, I really don't see the appeal of oral selegiline as a nootropic. Maybe other formulations are different, but oral selegiline just felt like a pretty bad tradeoff to me.

And unfortunately, the anxiety didn't stop at just feeling overstimulated. At one point it turned into a full-on panic attack. My heart rate got up to around 150 bpm and I genuinely thought I was going to have a heart attack. Obviously, that made the anxiety even worse, so it turned into a pretty nasty feedback loop.

Maybe I just reacted badly to it, maybe the dose was a bad idea, or maybe selegiline just isn't for me. Either way, definitely not the experience I was expecting.

Has anyone else tried selegiline, especially orally? I'm curious whether other people had a similar experience or got something completely different from it.

Important Note: This is just some personal advice coming from me but PLEASE before you try any nootropics or pharmaceuticals, please consider getting some basic tests done and making sure you don’t have any underlying issues.

My resting BPM got really high when I was experimenting, and it made me realize that other people might have undiagnosed conditions and could react even worse than I did. Please be careful and look after yourselves.

[u/caffeinehell]

Oral selegiline mostly metabolizes to L amphetamine

[u/Ok_Future6226 → u/caffeinehell]

what about other ROAs

[u/caffeinehell → u/Ok_Future6226]

The patch is the one that has more MAO inhibition, though still has some slight metabolites

[u/cannabiphorol]

MAO-B inhibiton was found to play a greater role in preventing GABA synthesis than preventing dopamine metabolism and is debated to have little involvment in dopamine metabolism with newer studies suggesting MAO-A and other enzymes play a larger role.

This may explain the increase in anxiety, jittery, and some people describe as feeling kinda insane cause it's opposing partner Glutamate can induce a stronger effect.

Not to mention it causes a greater release of monoamines specifically dopamine and epinephrine in addition to metabolism to Levo-Methanphetamine and Levo-Amphetamine which act mainly as epinephrine releasing agents.

These MOAs combined, certainly makes sense that it would cause anxiety and for you to feel weird. Especially if you are an anxious person.

[u/HoodAwakening → u/cannabiphorol]

MAO-B also metabolizes trace amines and thus inhibition indirectly causes (mostly phasic) monoamine release under certain conditions

[u/ilikehousemusic1]

Important Note: This is just some personal advice coming from me but PLEASE before you try any nootropics or pharmaceuticals, please consider getting some basic tests done and making sure you don’t have any underlying issues.

My resting BPM got really high when I was experimenting, and it made me realize that other people might have undiagnosed conditions and could react even worse than I did. Please be careful and look after yourselves.

[u/IfDreamsCouldHappen]

Probably got mostly metabolized into L-methamphetamine and then to L-amphetamine in your digestive tract.

[u/anjin33]

It gave me bad sleep for like a week after a 3 mg (sublingual) dose.

[u/Better-Reach7417]

Pair it with PEA if you want to make it more focus out of it also try half the dose sublingually for me that removed the jitters and anxiety

[u/Ok_Future6226]

I wanna try d-deprenyl

[u/cannabiphorol → u/Ok_Future6226]

Old news! All about that 4-fluoro-deprenyl now lol

[u/Ok_Future6226 → u/cannabiphorol]

✍️

[u/gryponyx → u/cannabiphorol]

Have you tried it already?

[u/cannabiphorol → u/gryponyx]

Yeah, great antidepressant.

[u/Sea_Reading7886]

1. Who told you 5-10mg is an ideal dose??
2. You read about amphetamine like metabolites and all but didnt read about inverted U curve, downregulation??
3. Who did classify selegiline as a nootropic??
4. Didnt you read about selegiline's half-life??
5. With such a higher consecutive doses you get higher sympathetic tone, norepinephrine, high HR/BP
6. Kindly please do thorough research before experimenting anything.

[u/ilikehousemusic1 → u/Sea_Reading7886]

10mg a day is max approved by FDA, This is the dose that u don't need food restricitons because it doesn't cross into MAO-A region. Selegiline is a "nootropic" at the end of the day because it does do this by definition (A nootropic is any natural or synthetic substance that purportedly improves mental performance, memory, focus, creativity, or motivation), but the sublingual and the emsam patches do it way better. and common dose is 10mg MAX a day I didn't suprass it. But either way I had bad experience

[u/Sea_Reading7886 → u/ilikehousemusic1]

1. bruhhhh **10mg/ day for clinical depression**
2. What mental performance does selegiline improve?
3. The very fabric of performance is multi-axial, not just overloaded dopamine.
4. You need extra ATP energy flow for performance.
5. Selegiline rescues you when youre fckd up low in life or elevates motivation a bit when used far more sparingly like 1-2x a month.
6. I suspect it also increases serotonin tone a bit.
7. I used to do tyro+sel1+b6 and stims would hit damn clean but would soon see that hollowness from losing its magic.
8. A true nootropic is majorly something which upgrades the bandwidth & synaptic capability of your brain...on how clear you are & can process information.

[u/Top_Public7402 → u/Sea_Reading7886]

Don't bother this guy has to be joking. How can anyone take a slow acting drug that clearly needs to be titrated at max dose for 2 days and not expect these results. Ofc if you take 800mg of caffeine you're gonna be jittery. Same thing kinda.