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Best nootropics for depression?

Hello, my main interest in nootropics is help with my depression and anxiety. I've had depression all my life, but in the past 5 or so years its gotten much worse. I've become extremely introverted and rarely do anything social anymore. I've also gained a lot of weight and very little ambition to change it.

I've been on sertraline and clonazepam for years and while they seemed to help at one point, I feel I've become numb to them. Its almost like I have no emotions at all.

Since I've tried every SSRI under the sun with only marginal success regardless of dosage, I'm curious about nootropics. I've take some random things for alertness and focus such as alpha GPC, lions mayne, uridine and a few others which did help with focus, but not with depression of course.

Is there anything anyone can recommend? I have some of the racetams that I haven't tried and some NSI-189 which I took today for the first time but haven't noticed any changes so far.

Any advice would help. Thanks!

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  1. In the one study that showed any sort of effect on depression NSI-189 didn't show effects until day 28 of the study. They also show a significantly higher level of psychiatric adverse effects (table 2 in the study). Also, this was a very small data set for the study, 18 people taking the actual drug, so I'd be skeptical of any claims about it helping depression.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5030464/

    Cerebrolysin is another one that may potentially help with depression, though unlike NSI-189, it's other effects are well-researched. Check out the two cyborgs and a microphone thread for a decent overview of it.

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