I'm sure many of you are interested in trying new medicines, supplements, nootropics and psychoactive compounds on a daily basis. Placebo is hard to fight and you often want to be sure your getting your monies worth.
Here is a simple way to test the efficacy of any new compound you intend to take regularly.
In medicine they have what they call "The N of 1 Trial" where if you are going to research a compound in a group size of N people then the N of 1 Trial is when the test is done only on one person.
Quote:"An N of 1 trial is a clinical trial in which a single patient is the entire trial, a single case study. A trial in which random allocation can be used to determine the order in which an experimental and a control intervention are given to a patient is an N of 1 randomized controlled trial. The order of experimental and control interventions can also be fixed by the researcher."
So what you could do is get 16 non-see-through weekly pill boxes. Find a non-psychoactive vitamin or supplement that looks identical to your Trial Compound. In the first 8 weekly pill boxes put all your individual days of Trial Compound. In the second 8 weekly pill boxes put the same # of pills but of the inactive vitamin/supplement.
Put the 8 Trial Compound boxes in a bag and put the 8 inactive boxes in a bag.
Have a friend choose which bag to give you first without you seeing then have them take out all the pill boxes and put them on the table before you come back in. Have them create 2 piles of pill boxes. Pile A has 8 weeks of Unknown A and Pile B as 8 weeks worth of Unknown B. Make sure your friend knows which pile is which and logs it in a secret journal.
--Choose one, take it for 8 weeks, pre-fill your mouth with water, close your eyes as you open the containers + pop the gelcaps so you don't ruin the blind nature of the test.
--Take notes each day of the effects & side effects. Make note of any health changes. Make note of emotions, motivation & behavior. Make note of drug or cannabis or alcohol or caffeine use. Make notes of things that bother you. Make brief notes on the quality of the day. If your savvy, you can create a scale of 1-5 for these things and log them in Excel so you can make pretty graphs for yourself and any interested parties. Brief daily commentary would still be appropriate even if using Excel for most of it.
--After 8 weeks is up do it again with the other pile and compare notes.
--Repeat this process multiple times to compound efficacy
An Experiment of One... Its truly the only way to really know.
-Eternally Romping the Astral Savannahlands-