I recently saw the movie 'Limitless' and was very intrigued by its concept - a miracle drug which allows its users to use 100% of their brain by fully employing all mental faculties and giving the user a high sense of mental acuity, a deep synthesis between the conscious and subconscious minds, and a deep, penetrating insight into causal relationships.
Wouldn't it be nice to have such a drug and enjoy limitless mental powers? The ability to re-access virtually unlimited knowledge stored somewhere in the mind's subconscious database, a super high IQ and an impenetrable drive and focus, would all be pretty sweet things to have.
Some muse that the movie is really about "adderall" or "ritalin", but these are really just focus-enhancing drugs which barely scratch the surface of the idea of "100% brain use".
Within the study of nootropics - the study of smart drugs or drugs that enhance cognition and mental skills, there is many interesting choices available for someone who wants to mentally process things with more efficiency. Nothing even comes close to the prowess of "NZT", however.
Would such a drug even be possible? Clearly current nootropics aren't even close, and ADD drugs only help with focus improvement. Could the answer lie in the realms of psychedelics such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) whose users report philosophical and transcendental understanding? Perhaps, although LSD is a psychedelic, while NZT, as portrayed in the movie, does not induce hallucinations, rather simply elucidates one's mental vision.
I do think that such a drug may be (already is) possible, although obviously not to the extent of the one in the movie. If steroids are possible, why can't 'mental steroids' exist? Surely, it's not that simple and that's a faulty analogy, since neurology is more complex than muscle hypertrophy. But... I still maintain that there is undeniable demand for such a drug, and there are many individuals with boundless wealth who I'm sure could put resources together to produce or mimic even only 10% of the mythical NZT.
Until then, though, I can dream...
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