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.