Biohacking my broken baseline

The Wellbutrin should work alongside what I'm already doing with my stack, more dopamine support on top of what I've been building. Plus it hits other neurotransmitters my current stack doesn't really touch.

Only real concern is the anticholinergic load from the trazodone. Already planned on adding alpha GPC though, which should help counteract that side of things.

Magtein (magnesium L-threonate) has made a difference, but I'll be honest, the severity of the initial results I reported might have been partially placebo. It has not "cured" my racing thoughts by any means. It's certainly a vital piece, but not a miracle.

Added magnesium glycinate at night, 400mg. Complementary to the Magtein, not a replacement.

Bromantane + L-tyrosine + P5P chain: about 2 weeks in now. Nothing much the first few days, then day 5 brought noticeable euphoria and tingling with the bromantane nasal spray. By day 10 or so, my baseline had shifted, noticeable even before I'd taken that day's dose. Colors are brighter. Reality feels more crisp. Word recall is easier. Motivation and executive dysfunction are still a fight though. That part hasn't moved.

Still on 5000IU D3+K2 daily, no changes there.

Lion's mane tincture is sitting on the sidelines for now. Everything I've read says tea and honey is the ideal delivery, but I'm a black coffee person and that's a lot of extra liquid to commit to every day. I chose the tincture over capsules because historically that's the form that's given me the fastest, most noticeable effects, so I don't want to switch formats just for convenience if it means losing potency. Might try powder or capsules eventually, but haven't found the right way to fold it into my routine yet.

In my last post I laid out my current stack and what's coming. I left something out. Lion's Mane extract is also on the way and will be going into the morning rotation.

I've used it before and I want to share what that experience was actually like because I wasn't expecting much.

I was working at a health food store and got a free sample. Tried it mostly out of curiosity. What happened surprised me. Everything got sharper. Clearer. The best way I could describe it to my husband was that it felt like Adderall's clarity without the stimulation. Like someone turned the resolution up on my brain. HD quality. That's the only way I can put it.

Lion's Mane (Hericium erinaceus)

Lion's Mane stimulates the production of Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), a protein your brain needs to grow, maintain, and repair neurons. Most compounds can't do this. NGF doesn't cross the blood brain barrier on its own, but the active compounds in Lion's Mane (hericenones and erinacines) do, and they trigger your brain to produce it from within. It's neurological support. Repair and growth rather than forced output.

How it fits the stack:

Everything else I'm building is focused on dopamine. Synthesis, precursor availability, enzyme upregulation. Lion's Mane works underneath all of that. Dopamine signaling is only as good as the neurons doing the signaling. If those neurons are degraded, stressed, or poorly connected, you're trying to fill a damaged container.

I've been doing a lot of research into what's actually going on neurochemically with my brain, and I'm documenting this protocol as I go.

I've begun with correcting deficiencies...

current stack:

Magnesium L-Threonate (4000mg — split AM/afternoon)

For me this has been the most noticeable addition so far — clearer thoughts, more coherent internal experience, better mood. It supports NMDA receptor function and synaptic plasticity. The difference has been significant enough that I consider this foundational.

Magnesium Glycinate (550mg — nightly)

Highly bioavailable, gentler form. Supports muscle relaxation, nervous system calming, and sleep quality without the cognitive activation of the threonate. These two forms complement each other — one for the brain, one for the body and sleep.

D3 5000IU + K2 (morning)

D3 deficiency is quietly behind a lot of mood dysregulation and immune dysfunction. K2 is essential to take alongside it to direct calcium correctly and avoid arterial calcification. Most people are deficient and don't know it.

coming next — dopamine rebuilding chain:

Bromantane

Bromantane upregulates the enzymes responsible for dopamine synthesis — tyrosine hydroxylase and AADC — meaning it supports your brain's own production rather than artificially flooding receptors. It also has anxiolytic properties via GABA-A modulation. Starting this tomorrow and will document the response.

L-Tyrosine + P5P

Tyrosine is the raw precursor to L-DOPA and ultimately dopamine. P5P (active B6) is a required cofactor for that conversion — you can't really use one without the other. Adding these after assessing bromantane baseline to complete the synthesis chain.

L-Theanine (tentative)

Magnesium L-Threonate, sold as Magtein, is the most bioavailable form of magnesium available and the only form clinically shown to cross the blood brain barrier. Standard magnesium supplements work on the body. Magtein works on the brain itself.

Within fifteen minutes of taking it for the first time I felt a shift I was not prepared for. The multiple competing thought tracks that run constantly went quiet. My mood lifted. There was a calm I can only describe as similar to an opiate without any of the heaviness. Clarity without stimulation or overstimulation. Waves of something close to euphoria from a magnesium supplement.

That response is information. A brain that reacts that strongly and that quickly to magnesium was severely depleted. The more dramatic the response, the deeper the deficiency. This is not the supplement working unusually well. This is a deficit finally being corrected.

This tracks. Research consistently shows that people with ADHD tend to have lower magnesium levels than the general population. Given that magnesium is a direct cofactor in dopamine synthesis and affects neurotransmitter function across the board, deficiency makes every ADHD symptom measurably worse.

The effect lasted approximately eight hours. When it wore off the contrast was immediate. Static returned. Mashed potato thinking came back. Mood dropped.

My brain runs multiple thought tracks simultaneously at all times. Not organized parallel processing. Competing, incomplete, staticky threads that interrupt each other and rarely finish. It feels like trying to tune into several radio stations at once and getting mostly interference. On a bad day it is closer to mashed potatoes. Dense, slow, impossible to move through. I cannot locate a thought well enough to use it. I cannot focus long enough to complete anything. This produces a paralysis that looks like laziness from the outside and feels like being trapped from the inside.

Word retrieval is a daily failure. I know what I want to say. The word exists somewhere. It will not surface on demand. I trail off mid sentence. I lose the thread of what I was saying while I am saying it. I say the wrong word and do not always catch it. The gap between what I think and what I can express is wide enough that conversations feel like performing in a language I only partially speak.

Executive function is largely absent. I cannot initiate tasks. I cannot sequence them. I cannot complete them. I have intentions that never become actions. I have lists that never move. The paralysis is not about effort or motivation in any way that willpower can address. The bridge between wanting to do something and doing it is structurally compromised.

Anhedonia is my baseline. Pleasure is muted or absent. Things that should feel good feel like nothing or close to nothing. There is no sense of reward for completing things, no satisfaction, no ease. Nothing feels settled or right.

Anxiety runs constantly underneath everything. Not acute panic. A permanent low grade alarm state that does not turn off.

Sleep has been a problem since childhood. Before age ten I was regularly awake until 3am with racing thoughts that would not stop. The house would be quiet and my brain would not be. No framework existed for why. No one knew it was happening.

As an adult the pattern continues. Falling asleep is difficult because the thought tracks do not slow down at night. There is no natural wind down. The brain that was running all day keeps running. When sleep does come it is frequently fragmented. Waking in the night is common. Early morning waking with thoughts that are immediately active rather than gradually coming online.

The result is chronic sleep debt that compounds every other symptom on this list. Cognitive function worsens. Emotional regulation worsens. The mashed potato thinking becomes more pronounced. The paralysis deepens.

Sleep deprivation and ADHD create a feedback loop. Poor sleep worsens dopamine regulation. Worsened dopamine regulation makes sleep harder. The loop has no natural exit without intervention.

On top of all of this runs OCD that has been present since age five. Primarily religious and existential in nature. Intrusive thoughts that loop without resolution. Questions that have no answer that the brain demands an answer to anyway. The OCD does not take breaks. It runs alongside everything else.

CPTSD compounds everything. Trauma leaves a physical imprint on the nervous system. Chronic hypervigilance, dysregulation, and a body that never fully exits threat mode affect every symptom listed above and make each one harder to treat and harder to live with.