Just now.. i am getting so frustratred. I lay in bed for an hour, thinking about loads of different stuff.

Then i will get something useful. A useful insight, some wisdom i know is important.

I bet some neurons or hormones related to "Attention, importance, alarm" are firing at the exact same time i realize this insight might be useful.

A second later i lost the entire thought. Unable to recall what i was thinking just FIVE seconds ago..

Same thing for conversations. I can barely recall the words and topics spoken.

Whenever i am in conversation and "speaking out" a train of thought. One distraction and i lost the train of thought, unable to recall what i was talking about. This might seem trivial but it is huge hindrance to my social life

Does anyone have an idea how i can relief this problem?

It is also annoying in dreams/dmt experiences. I have conversations which are meaningful and helpful to improve my life. Tips and advice is giving about how i should go about my life.. 10 seconds later, unable to recall a single word.

Emotions i can recall, just not words/memories. I think it has something to do with spending my entire childhood playing video games. High demand for INSTA-concentration/attention. Little demand for learning/recall when you are shooting people up in unreal tournament.

Right now i am thinking it may be mithochondria , perhaps i need more omega-fatties. I'm looking for biological things i can improve in my body OR physical/mental activities that will help me in solidifying and improving cognitive memory.

start journalling, writing down objective daily events, it helps.

I wish this was useful, i have tried it before.

unfortunately this is one of the most boring excersises i can think of , considering how i experience most of daily events as entirely insignificant. most of my days consists of killing time and some moderate amounts of studying. although i give attention to your advice, i have a really hard time committing myself to writing what i perceive as insignificant events. I do a decent amount of writing, mostly in the form of notes/words that serve to remind me of things at a later stage. Perhaps i will spend more time/energy putting these thoughts/notes into more coherent sentences. Writing daily about events that are deemed significant and noteworthy is my twist to your advice.

I also keep a dream journal but lately having trouble finding energy to write things down (again, insignificant memories of my dreams). I think it has a lot to do with my inability to recall crucial parts of the dream. So what i can recall makes no sense and i don't bother writing that down.

just asking, do you meditate?

Not so often. I do once in a little while. Meditating is for me a silencing of the egoic mind, listening to internal desires and most of all calming an anxious mind. Sometimes this leads to deep and enlightening thoughts forming. This i also consider an aspect of meditation and these thoughts can also be useful for calming my mind. For the last week or two I have been doing chakra meditation at least once or more each day. Trying to get in tune with my kundalini/energy body. With suprising results, it seems to be working! Part of this meditation is silencing arbitrary thought-forms because they distract from sensing the energy body. I think this amounted to an outer-body experience once, just before falling asleep. I'm not sure because unfortunately, i can not remember... lol.

I want to do breathing-meditation but i am not sure how. I do some good spontaneous breathing-meditation on dmt sometimes. My breathing can be much more intense in those states, i find it hard to return to those breathing methods in a sober mind. Long answer, i know. But here you go. I usually do not have the patience to meditate for more than 30 minutes a week.

Also, recalling memories in meditation is something i have been wanting to try. But, what i really want to achieve is heightened awareness to solidify newly made memories into my brain cells.

cognition/memory is directly associated with AMPA-1/ACh.
consider racetams, noopept is a hot one right now, and an ACh precursor like Alpha-GPC.

The advice to write things down might be helpful at training your brain to remember things - this is especially true for dream journals. And as anyone who has to write for a living will tell you, what you write is much less important than getting into the habit of writing. I accept though that this might not help you in all situations.

Your description of loosing thoughts is very familiar to me though. I have often felt like this when I sit down to try to work on my PhD. Just when I think I have a thought there will be some distraction - can be the tiniest sound - and it's gone, seemingly never to return. Th best thing that has helped me with this is practicing Mindfulness. I don't really do it while I'm writing, but it has helped me to be able to acknowledge distractions and go back to my train of thought. because it relaxes me that probably helps too. Don't stress too much and don't be so hard on yourself. If you have a good idea once the chances are that you will have it again. Being fully in the moment allows me to recall more than if I'm distracted. It also helps me to not lie awake in bed at night with my mind racing.

Now I can't say I've applied this to DMT, so I could be wrong, but I think it worth a try. Heaps of stuff available if you google it or I can point you in the right direction

I tried Brahmi and Ach precursors when I was younger, but Mindfulness worked better for me.

http://supplements.minda...y-1-get-1-free-sale.html

I love this stuff.

Thanks a lot people. I have decided on trying out Noopept + CDP-Choline see how that goes. I have some other ACh supplements like Galantamine and Choline bitartraat , but generally i do not like them.

Also, some dietary changes are in order. And some more mindfull approach of living needs to be made. Hopefully, this will also result in more lucid dreams.

In addition to the advice given to try nootropic stacks and practice some meditation (30 min a week is not enough... sometimes the best effects don't get started until you have been sitting 30 - 40 min in a stretch) I will suggest you check out a memory course. There are many available, but this one is effective http://improve-memory.com/gms-manual.html and the manual linked on the page is free to read.

Reading that book alone will help a lot. This is just a blog about the system, but there is a paid course that provides some impressive results. My elderly father took it and went from not remembering names and phone numbers to being able to recall long strings of random numbers with ease.

I've only read the book, but I use some of these mnemonic devices... a few I have known for quite some time. It is mostly about getting in the habit of locking in the important new information, taking that little extra bit of time/energy/attention to etch it into your dome.

All this said, and despite very longstanding use of nootropics, vitamins, meditation and memory tricks... I still can slip into the kind of cognitive brainfarts you mentioned. Trying to remember the high energy, multi-dimensional mental epiphanies of dreams or entheogens is tricky at best, and even when you can reliably remember quite a bit of this stuff... you always know there are vast oceans of things you are not remembering (accessing). The kinds of "flashes of insight" stuff we get is also slippery, and any creative person will tell you that there are legions of lost gems for every treasured and polished jewel we manage to hold on to and bring to fruit

... and some days it is hard to remember even what film I am in, let alone trivial or insignificant information. Perhaps some degree of cognitive difficulty might simply go with the territory of being a psychonaut? Even if this is the case, the tools we have at our disposal can more than compensate for it, and I do think it is possible to train your memory to a very high degree... eiditic even.

Good luck man, I know how you feel.

HF

You're probably right about the cognitive difficulty being part of being a psychonaut.

I saw recently that caffeine has been shown to decrease creativity. It improves focus and takes away from the semi-random connections that creativity requires. When you spend a lot of time deep in the creative, associative parts of your mind it wouldn't surprise me if focus inherently suffers.

That said, I don't see any reason that the mind can't be creative and focused, at least to a degree. Just like a martial artist needs to be strong and flexible. It just takes time spent in training on each and not allowing over-focus on one area lead to imbalance.

Have you tried www.lumosity.com? I've gotten some benefits from joining them.

Yes, i have checked out lumosity.com . It is nice, i liked the games they offer when i tried them out. That said, i think i am exceggerating my problems a little bit. I am a wee bit troubled that i can not remember a single dream. Yet some psychedelic memories are still vibrant and engrained into my consciousness. Just a brainfart once in a little while And sometimes when i go out with friends i experience a complete shutdown of cognitive function. Unable to utter a single word, hurrying to get out and flee back to my bedroom.

I have tried some games of chess in an earlier period to motivate the numerical part of my brain. My thought was that practicing sequential thinking and thinking in several moves at a time would help to increase this part of my brain. A few days into that i remember having a dream where i was looking at a chess board and associating pieces with people. in this dream i was working out social problems as if it where a chess game. Interesting development i did not expect to happen at all.

As for meditating. I should really find patience to do this more. About a week ago i was intending to smoke dmt. I was afraid to smoke some right then because there was a heavy thunderstorm. I meditated for maybe an hour and a half using a video of chakra tones on youtube. As i worked my way up to smoking i was feeling intense pre-flight anxiety. As soon as i hit the pipe and DMT effects kicked in , quite heavily. All my fears instantly vanished and i link this directly to the fruits of my meditation. Then the elves let me in on their spaceship and i had a wonderfuly inspiring experience.

I've just recently run into this problem. I feel your pain its like the engine just stops working for no reason. I have a hard time talking to people like I used to or even writing. While I was using Cannabis it seemed like a lot of my problems were alleviated and I was almost like a complete different person but once I stopped (job) I feel empty and my brain is now just a void. I try and recall things that I knew like the back of my hand but it just makes me more frustrated.

Id be very curious if you find something that helps.

Good luck my friend

Perhaps this is needless to say, but as I haven't seen it noted, I like to cover it. I have found that on this forum (as well as any other drug-related forum), there are a lot of people regularly smoking weed. Maybe this includes you.

Smoking weed weakens your memory, escpecially the memory of your dreams, your ability to focus, your energeticness (?) and, for some, your social abilities. This effect will slowly go away after some time.

My advice, if you do smoke week at least once very two weeks: try to not smoke any for more than a month.

For me this is very visible in my energeticness and social abilities. If I stop smoking weed for 2 weeks, I feel much more energetic and am much better in being socially active.

By the way, thanks a lot for showing me lumosity.com! I will definately try to keep this training up!

Smoking weed has a brutal effect on (my) memory and attention span. Especially in individuals with ADD/ADHD tendencies.

While I'm not an MD or neuroscientist from what I gather heavy smokers have less short term memory slots which has a direct limiting effect on IQ.


Countermeasures I employ, when I remember:

- Meditation - helps with attentionspan, counteracting damage done by smoking and multitasking at a computer or smartphone

- Noopept/Choline or the Intellect Tree Seeds - great help for memory.

- Omega 3-6 - helps in those situations when something you KNOW that you KNOW just slips from you tounge.

- Rosemaryn essential oil - supposedly improves memory storage during learning

- Not smoking weed.

That said, it's 4:20 over here ....

^ for both posts, good points. It is imperative to state that cannabis, while with its positives (as everything), has tremendous effects on memory, particularly short term mechanisms and working memory concepts. There are quite a lot of studies on mice and water mazes and needless to say, all specimens performed poorly while under the influence of THC.

I am aware that some of these studies may have been biased in their interpretation by agenda-driven journalists, but the findings of the studies still stand. THC is certainly detrimental to certain types of memory, but we still do not know anything on the reversibility of its effects.

Until today, most anecdotal reports (including many members here, and myself), show that memory improves after ceasing the chronic administration of THC. That's positive at least. But memory during the intoxication and the after-effects, is the issue at hand.

So if the administration of THC is a factor in the OP's lifestyle, that would certainly be the one to try to eliminate to see a significant improvement on cognitive memory. Or memory, "cognitive" is not really a term that differentiates types of memory.

For me, absolutely nothing has been as productive as Modafinil

If you don't play a musical instrument, get started! If you do, get practicing more!

Oh yea, i tried playing snares on my guitar. like... once.. Got frustrated. Went to sleep. When i woke up, i actually mastered the move at first go!

Been thinking about picking it up again. Have to finish some chores first. And watch the meteor rain tomorrow. I do have a good teacher, my dad is actually a professional guitarist/lead singer. There is no good excuse as to why i am not picking it up.

Also, i quit cannabis for some months now. I have smoked daily between age 14-20. Needless to say most of that memory is a blur. I am actually a tad bit worried i might have fried my brain. But i presume it is not so bad. It is however, pretty cool that smoking cannabis actually spurs certain type of memories. (The way i termed cognitive memory, is memorizing my own thoughts) And cannabis does just that, it helps me remember wild thoughts i was having when sufficiently fried on cannabis.

Oh yea, coconut oil. I want to try that one. Also smoke a fair amount of tobacco. Not sure how the nicotine has an effect on my ACh system.