DOSE:

300 - 900 mg

oral

Smarts - Phenibut

(capsule)

BODY WEIGHT:

105 lb

Note: This is kind of a cautionary tale about this drug. I used it only once per week in reasonable doses (as recommended by many people on the internet) but ended up experiencing problems regardless. Essentially, I would have a pretty good time while on the drug, but a few days later I felt a comedown that lasted for a few days and would ruin my week due to low mood. Having one good day a week was not worth being irritable for the rest of it!

I was excited to try this drug called phenibut after hearing about it on the internet. The reddit page made it seem crazy and I thought the combination of it being a GABA-mimetic, anxiolytic, and nootropic was intriguing. Furthermore, it was legal! I’m the kind of person who wants to do a lot of cool projects but doesn’t always have the mental energy to do them, so anything that might boost my productivity interests me. I also have some amount of social anxiety and don’t have a drug dealer.

I have had previous experience with other “nootropics”. For studying I’ve tried Adderall (not impressed, dosed 5-20 mg IR so maybe I needed more) and Modafinil (50-100 mg, worked pretty well 33% of the time but made me lose hair when using it too often). Surprisingly, the greatest mental boost I’ve experienced came when I took some Benzedrex (propylhexedrine, roughly 75 mg) when I was really desperate and cramming the night before an exam. Clarity, motivation, and memorization abilities were incredible and I’ve always hoped that other drugs would provide similar results. Aside from Benzedrex, I have not been impressed, although I already consider myself good at studying without drugs.

I ordered phenibut HCl online. It came in 300 mg capsules. I wasn’t taking any additional medications/supplements, and I always took them on an empty stomach and would take doses a week apart (on Fridays) because I was a little spooked by the tolerance/withdrawal/addiction issues some people have with this drug.

First time: 300 mg
Fun: *
Comedown: none

I was in a good mood and decided to try out the drug without any particular agenda. If I was really trying to feel something, I guess I felt a bit “lighter” and a bit more relaxed, although this could easily be placebo. I took a walk around my neighborhood and it was quite relaxing.

Second time: 600 mg
Fun: ***
Comedown: moderate

Took about an hour to kick in but it was fun! This is probably the most fun day I’ve had on phenibut. I work in the healthcare field and I had great interactions with my patients. I did not feel inebriated, although my body and head felt a little “lighter”, and I felt a great warmth toward everyone, which is generally absent in my day-to-day life. I was looking people in the eyes when they walked by (which I typically don’t do), complimenting people, saying hello to people I would otherwise not, and felt like a vibrant person. My boyfriend said I looked really attractive that day and I think it was because of my attitude. We sang some music together to practice for a school talent show and it was such an intimate, incredible feeling to sing together with someone. It was a lot of fun at the time, but when thinking about it afterward, the experiences I had felt a little bit distant, kind of like remembering a dream, but a little less extreme.

A few days later I started to feel pretty irritable at work and feeling lasted a couple of days.

Third time: 900 mg
Fun: **
Comedown: bad

Less fun than the second time, but still interesting. This was the most I took and it wasn’t necessarily better than 600 for me. I took it on Friday at the end of the work day and had some deep conversation with my co-workers that I don’t think I would have otherwise. Other than that, it was nice. Not necessarily super fun like last week was, though.

The next Monday-Thursday at work was really rough. I felt so attacked from any amount of criticism that came my way. I was literally crying at work and a co-worker had to listen to me. I talked to my boyfriend about wanting to quit this good job opportunity.

Fourth time: 900 mg
Fun: **
Comedown: bad

Today was the day of the talent show and even though I was starting to realize that phenibut was making me emotionally unstable during the week, I wanted to test out the abilities of this drug to kill anxiety. To be honest, I didn’t really feel the phenibut this day. I spaced out the dosing a little (maybe a bit too much?), or maybe it was just tolerance since I didn’t really feel that much from 900 mg last week. The talent show was great! When my boyfriend and I went up to sing I was definitely nervous. It didn’t turn me into the rock star I had hoped it would and I honestly just kept my eyes closed the whole time I was singing because of my nerves. I think overall we performed really well, but I was not impressed with the phenibut.

Furthermore, I also experienced the emotional lability that I was beginning to realize followed a few days after phenibut usage. This time it was pretty bad. I cried nearly every day at work that week and was pretty serious about quitting the job.

Thoughts on usage:
At this point, I am satisfied in what I had learned about this substance and realized that it simply was not worth the comedown, which for me, seemed to occur a few days after ingestion and would last a few days. Physically, I felt okay, but emotionally I felt irritable and felt very offended by criticism. I wouldn’t say I necessarily felt anxious, like I would with too much coffee, for example. What kind of struck me about this comedown was that it felt… natural? The irritability and depression did not feel unusual like a sharp comedown like one from molly would feel like, which makes this drug seem a bit scary to me. For a while, I thought my job was truly terrible and I didn’t realize I was just coming down from drugs. I can see this drug making people absolutely miserable.

As far as the positive effects go, I did not use this drug as a nootropic because I felt like the positive effects were social. Maybe I will give it one last shot and try to be productive on it, although I will probably limit myself to 600 mg and be prepared for a bad week afterward.

Exp Year: 2022	ExpID: 116888
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 29
Published: Dec 31, 2022	Views: 2,419
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Smarts - Phenibut (379) : General (1), Retrospective / Summary (11), Various (28)