CSH: We were just talking about the Web Nutrients website and its encouraging message: All it takes is balls. Namely, the balls to:

1. Read articles and forums about racetams to figure out dosages, vitamin cofactors, and relevant amino acids (neurotransmitter precursors).
2. Make a website and sell the shit—for a huge markup over what the individual ingredients costs. The website is totally disorganized, the grammar almost garbage, and some of the pages are meaningless ads. But the packaging is attractive: the powder and even the pills are sold in fake plastic test tubes that are Reanimator fluorescent green.

And he has over 9,000 customers. Amazing!

Rich: So it’s basically a 5-hour Energy with some nootropics.

CSH: If there is a plausibly effective smart drug in 2013, it would have to be some configuration of racetams, phenylalanine, dopaminergic agonists, etc. We don’t know about real cognitive effects, but it is definitely a stimulant and a focus prolonger.

Rich: When you stop taking it, to you return to your previous level of intelligence or does your focus and intelligence actually decrease, due to tolerance?

CSH: Have you read Flowers for Algernon? The main character goes from dim, to bright, to super genius, to super dim, to dead.