Invasion of the Brain People

MMMM! Oooh! Yes! Yes! Oh, God, yes! My mind, it feels so—I hate to gloat, but you ought to know, right off the bat—my mind feels so enhanced. Majorly enhanced. I feel great. I feel productive. I feel like an intellectual titan operating at the absolute peak of my cognitive and creative powers.

Of course, I'm on drugs right now. Lots of drugs. I've been consuming large quantities for weeks. But it's OK. It's research. We're not talking about any nasty, illicit and old-fashioned dumb drugs. No brain-shrinking cocaine, hemp, speed or opiate derivatives—your so-called recreationals. Who has time for recreation? The party's over, folks. Fun was for the Eighties. The Nineties are about survival. And to survive, you have to be smart.

It's true. No sooner did we hit the Nineties than brains became hip. Right out of the chute, the President dubbed this the Decade of the Brain. Bush even called his favorite weapons smart bombs. Lugs who had spent the last decade packing on lats and acting like Rambo started wearing wire-rims and trying to pass themselves off as Michael Kinsley. Even the Marines, not known as a font of jumbo intellect, traded in their blood-and-brio pitch for an appeal to patriotic cognition. "To compete, you have to be strong. To win, you have to be smart."

Lucky for us, here at the dawn of the Enhanced-IQ Era, some of the planet's best entrepreneurs have found an answer to America's yen for bigger brains. That answer is smart drugs.

Smart drugs, for those who haven't succumbed to the egghead rage, is the term for a vast new breed of cerebral aids. Some are high-powered pharmaceuticals; others are vitamins and nutrients, often served as beverages at smart bars set up at the hippest clubs and parties in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. They all aim to empower a populace as hell-bent on boosting brainpower as it once was on pumping iron. Say goodbye to rippling muscles, say hello to a souped-up cerebellum. It's enough to make Nancy Reagan just say yes.

Of course, Nancy would be pleased. Some of the mainstays of the brain-maker buffet are nootropic drugs, Pharmaceuticals prescribed domestically for that rumored ex-presidential malady, creeping senility.

Although nootropics—the word means "acting on the mind"—are a new breed of pharmacological treats, their legacy can be traced back to Nazi Germany. Hitler was rumored to have put his finest scientists to work on substances that fired up Aryan alertness. (Interestingly, methadone, originally called dolophine after Adolf himself, was developed at this time as a morphine substitute.) But not until the late Forties did the Swiss drug combine Sandoz stumble onto a substance that could actually make you smarter.

Hydergine, as the wonder stuff was dubbed, originates from its own freakish source—ergot, the same cereal fungus that gave us LSD. It was discovered by the same scientist, Albert Hoffman, a man known and revered forever by heads as the Daddy of Acid.

You're probably asking yourself how these miracle mind expanders actually work. Let me just imbibe a little of this tasty brain fodder and I'll tell you.

Your brain operates as a sort of intracranial Western Union. Messages zap over the wires carried by chemicals called neurotransmitters. What smart pills supposedly do is stimulate such communication by mimicking naturally occurring substances known as nerve growth factors. These spark connections between Mr. Brain's nerve cells that are essential to learning and memory. Improved neurotransmission allows for enhanced gray-matter metabolism and, equally fortunate, protection of brain cells from all manner of pollutants—both internal and external. (Don't I sound smart?)

So far, American doctors restrict the use of brain boosters to sufferers of Alzheimer's disease, dementia or serious head injuries. On this side of the Atlantic, it's not considered kosher to prescribe medicine to fix things that aren't broken. American physicians prefer to restrict their work to curing ills. European docs, by contrast, may prescribe mind enhancers to perfectly healthy and mentally sound patients who wish to become even more perfect and more mentally sound.

Not surprisingly, the prospect of a whole new batch of potential customers—the already well—has pharmaceutical outfits rubbing their hands with glee. Hoffman-LaRoche, Smith Kline Beecham, Ciba-Geigy, Parke Davis and the rest of the drug companies are investing heavily in nootropic research and development. Fortune magazine has even predicted that the biz could be worth more than $40 billion by 1994.

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Smart products fit into two basic modes: pharmaceuticals and health foods. The former require sending off to Europe for exotic nootropic treats or slipping south of the border to score busloads of IQ igniters in Nogales or Tijuana. (In a 1988 directive, the FDA permitted plain folks to import their own prescription pills, provided they don't bring in more than a three-month supply. We wouldn't want some Ivy Leaguer peddling illicit skull fuel outside chess tournaments, would we?)

Happily, the second part of the smart revolution involves nothing so crass or potentially dangerous as drugs. Those who want to supplement their psyches sans the anti-Alzheimer's pharmaceuticals can consume what are known as nutrients. In their trendiest incarnations, these are packaged and pedaled as smart drinks, since many of the non-medical neurotransmitter enhancers come in powdered form to be mixed in beverages.

Unlike those smart drugs with somber monikers like hydergine or piracetam, smart drinks sport nonmedicinal cute names. Does anything sound more stimulating than Energy Elickshure, Psuper Psonic Psyber Tonic or Fast Blast?

Whether makers opt to color their creations electric yellow or plain old mauve, what unites these neurore-freshers are their ingredients, a combo of vitamins and amino acids, plus, occasionally, a sizable dose of caffeine.

Somewhere along the way, a schism developed among the ranks of smarties. At the square end, "cool"-wise versus "uncool"-wise, are your traditional entrepreneurs, the get-a-leg-up-in-the-marketplace guys. Call these people the slavers: the suit-and-tie wing of the smart drugs movement. For the slavers, the whole point of these chemicals is to help earnest yupsters get ahead in job land.

Helming this bankable breed is young John Morganthaler. With an ex-Navy gerontologist named Ward Dean, Morganthaler wrote the movement bible, Smart Drugs and Nutrients: How to Improve Your Memory and Increase Your Intelligence Using the Latest Discoveries in Neuroscience. As the visionary who personally dreamed up the term smart drug, Morganthaler bears as much resemblance to a drug guru as Dan Quayle does to Charlie Manson.

Morganthaler, in fact, looks like a Young Republican. His hair is parted Beaver Cleaver-style, his buttondown shirt is pressed just so. Sitting behind his computer in his San Francisco condo, Morganthaler even keeps his socks neatly balled up and stuffed, side by side, in his Reeboks. He's the Ralph Nader of mental technology. His life has been devoted to the singular proposition that stupidity, like polio or shingles, is a disease and he's been put on earth to help obliterate it.

"Our athletes have been into this for a while," he claims, his voice ringing with conviction. "I'm not just talking about steroids. There are lots of drugs that increase red-blood-cell production. It's common for athletes to use megavitamin therapy. Anything they can use to enhance their performance, to get just a little bit of edge, is critical. What we are talking about is making ourselves better than what is considered normal."

Edible mind fertilizers attract eager devotees. Take Mark Rennie, a nightclub owner, attorney and entrepreneur. Rennie is the man behind Smart Products, Incorporated, one of San Francisco's premiere nutrient companies. San Francisco (or New Brainia, as smarties call it) is the hub of the smart cosmos.

"When I think of taking smart drugs," says Rennie, who appears on the chat-show circuit in a kind of Brainiac tag team with Morganthaler, "I feel like I'm upgrading a computer. Like going from a 286 chip to a 386."

Most days, Rennie can be found silhouetted against the window of his top-floor office working deals and thoughtfully gulping down handfuls of pills and powders. Indeed, minutes into an interview, it's clear that Rennie is the embodiment of one man's enhanced ability to fulfill his potential. He's the (continued on page 148)Invasion(continued from page 88) archetype of that new northern California species, the New Age capitalist. "I was the first to market Mylar balloons. I'm always out front. I'm a trend surfer."

Riding the frothy tide of tomorrow, Smart Products' honcho carves out his piece of the Mensa marketplace by selling nutrients, often through health-food stores, where a variety of products from several companies can be found. "This is the oat bran of the Nineties," claims Arnie Cole, holding up a jar of something called Brain Pep. Cole owns Arnie's Health Food in Phoenix and now stocks a full line of brain enhancers with such names as Rise 'n' Shine and Brain Fuel. "They have pills to wake up your brain, nutrients to make you more creative and drops to improve your memory," says Cole.

"You're looking at upper middle class, probably thirty-to-forty-year-olds, professional-type people," says Rennie. "At ten dollars a day, it's three hundred a month. At twenty dollars, it's six hundred. If you're scratching to make the car payment, that's a significant amount. But to young professionals, if it's going to help them in their businesses, make them sharper, it's worth it."

Did someone say disposable income? Did someone say yuppie? By best estimate, some 100,000 earnest citizens qualify as regular cerebral superchargers, and the number is growing.

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One of the oddest aspects of the whole smart deal is its ability to embrace both the slavers and what we'll call the ravers. Instead of the cosmic chamber of commerce clones, the ravers are the neo-love children, enlightened 20-year-olds with names like Earth Girl and General Elektra.

These full-time funsters, all sporting retro-flower-child dishabille, comprise the party wing of the party. Earth Girl, a.k.a. Neysa Griffith, and Barbara Liu both run their own roving smart bars. At assorted venues—ranging from private parties to wide-open Happenings with such names as Toon Town and Mister Floppy—Earth Girl and Liu set up their high-concept lemonade stands to augment the usual batch of two-fisted potables. In addition to being a partner in Smart Products, General Elektra, a.k.a. Michelle Barnett, functions as the PR person for the entire scene. In this way, she serves as a perky liaison between the workaday slavers and hard-core ravers.

A typical smart-bar party features a liver-shaking sound system, black lights, mind-melting rear projections and flashing strobes. And there's the guest list: technofreaks who are so enlightened that even their drinks are smart.

"We are the kids who weren't considered cool when we were growing up," says Earth Girl. "I was a total loner, a real troubled pup, with an eating disorder, the whole thing. I was just too smart.

"The first and only time I did ecstasy. I had a vision that I wanted to make this world better for kids like me. It sounds lame, I guess, if you don't get it, but that's what I'm doing with my life, with my products, my line of smart drinks."

Earth Girl now wears only purple and green (they're on the right wavelength) and boasts red dreadlocks. With her partners, the Foxy Seven, she manufactures her own smart drinks called Energy Elickshure and Psuper Psonic Psyber Tonic. She complements, in demeanor and personal history, the new breed of Brainiacs obsessed with computer networking, virtual reality, industrial music and, most important, nontoxic cerebral enhancement.

In San Francisco, thanks to a happy accident of culture or geography, the smart movement is fused with the computer hackers. Cyberpunks are hip to the wonders of cerebral treats, from edible acetylcholine to nasal mist vasopressin. And Mondo 2000 is the magazine that caters to the smart crowd. What Guns n' Roses is to Julio Iglesias, Mondo 2000 is to Omni, Science and PC World. Issues of Mondo offer articles ranging from "Guerrilla Semiotics" to the ever-popular "Fringe Science: Does She Do the Vulcan Mindmeld on the First Date?" Not surprisingly, the magazine's San Francisco-based staff are self-declared smarties. "Are You," asks another feature, "as Smart as Your Drugs?"

R. U. Sirius, the long-haired cherub who serves as Mondo's editor in chief, once inhaled a blast of vasopressin for a BBC camera crew. "This stuff," he opined on camera, "is a real kick. Not something for building a better brain in the future. It's something for feeling very stimulated and interested at a very high bandwidth in the here and now."

This said, Sirius scooped up a plastic ray gun and fired away.

"Steroids for stockbrokers," says Sirius. "That's a phrase we use to indicate that we are moving from psychedelic, hedonistic drugs into performance-oriented drugs. We have steroids for the body and intelligence-increasing drugs for the mind. If you're climbing the corporate ladder, can you really afford not to have this advantage?"

Of course, for young and reckless ravers, shimmying up the corporate ladder is not exactly a top priority. Sometimes being smart isn't a priority, either. It's much more fun to attend mammoth blissed-out dance fests fueled by ecstasy and LSD. The conflict between mind benders and mind enhancers stands out as the proverbial bête noire of smart-drug promoters. One young raver raised his voice just loud enough over the industrial music at San Francisco's Club DV8 to explain things: "You go all night doing ecs or acid, it can really run you down. That's why smart drinks are so great. They keep you from going vampire. They keep your brain and body nourished."

At Psychedelic Apocalypse, Toon Town's much-ballyhooed New Year's Eve party at the Fashion Center in San Francisco, there are enough pie-sized pupils on parade to give William Bennett a contact high. Chris Beaumont's Nutrient Cafe—the on-site smart bar for the Apocalypse—is mobbed. "We are the coolest thing happening," says Beaumont, smiling in his jester's hat. Asked about the use of LSD and ecstasy among smart drinkers, he waxes philosophic. "A lot of ravers have evolved beyond drugs. They're not so interested in blowing their minds. Smart nutrients make people feel clear—unlike drugs." Beaumont's biggest concern is getting the word out. "It's sad that there are big-money interests who want to suppress this information, but inevitably the truth will come out. Even the skeptics admit that smart drugs will inevitably exist. We are in the vanguard of a technological revolution."

Call it smart chic. The real thrill of the movement lies not just in the possession of some exotic pills and powders but in the knowledge of them. As one wild-eyed technobohemian likes to point out: "If the authorities tried to tell us we can't possess and develop these things anymore, we're so wired into international computer user networks, we could relay any information they want to suppress before Big Brother could do anything about it."

Jack in! Boot up! Rave on! The trend-generating aspect of marrying computer hacking and all-night dancing is clearly here now, in a real-life revenge of the nerds. Smart drinks are tailor-made for cruising both the dance floor and the discount software outlet. "I take this stuff," says General Elektra, "and I only have to sleep two or three hours a night. I can work, communicate, dance hard until eight in the morning, then basically go straight to work."

Which isn't bad, so long as you're not a brain surgeon. (More specifically, my brain surgeon.) But General Elektra boasts no such esoteric post. "My parents were hippies," she says. "Mom was in est, Dad did Gestalt. It's not like drugs hold some big thrill."

Whatever claims smart-drug takers may make, for some smart barhoppers, the whole point of brain beverages is that they keep you going. (Kind of like coffee, but fruitier, without that bowel-clutching edge.) General Elektra looks down her nose at those who use pharmaceuticals. "Everybody I know who takes the pills is, like, completely humorless. They may be little Einsteins, but they're dull as dishwater."

Hey, I don't want to be dull. So I decide to slurp a few. Liu, proprietor of Go Girl Concessions, offers me her own particular potion. "Drink a couple of these, buster, and your motor stays revved," she says. "Keeps you humming, know what I mean?"

And it does. They all do. It's been weeks, months, I don't know, and I'm still awake. Maybe I'm smarter, maybe I'm not. After as little as two weeks of what Morganthaler calls an "attack dose" of piracetam and hydergine, supplemented by alternating doses of Beaumont's Renew-U and Earth Girl's Psuper Psonic Psyber Tonic, I notice that I hardly sleep at all. There are moments when I might be a teensy-weensy bit sharper, quicker or brainier. But what I really notice is the energy. I have a lot of it. Too much, perhaps. But energy ain't brains. Duracell batteries have energy. So when I stop taking things after a month, I feel, in my ignorance, no stupider. I just sleep more. I also don't talk as much. And I remember that dumb drugs can make you feel somewhere between enhanced and omnipotent, too.

So what happened to me, and why? A peek at the ingredients in these supplements proves illuminating.

Beaumont's Renew-U label claims that it's a "renewing and alerting brain neurotransmitter mix created to revitalize an overstimulated body and mind." The key word, I think, is "overstimulated." One of the key ingredients is l-phenylalanine, an amino acid favored by veteran health-food shoppers as a potent up. It's the chemical in chocolate and aspartame that accounts for that rush you get from candy bars or diet soda.

And speaking of overstimulation, caffeine—usually held in worse repute than bacon among health-food lovers—is actually an important ingredient in at least three popular smart drinks. Blast, Fast Blast and Energy Elickshure all pack 80 milligrams of caffeine, slightly less than your standard cup of coffee.

Earth Girl's Psuper Psonic Psyber Tonic features another amino acid, choline. The label defines the concoction as "a neurotech tonic and imaginative enhancer of cognitive consciousness. It illuminates your mind with the magical workings of Ginkgo Biloba, the oldest species of tree known to WoMankind, and the mind-massaging properties of choline, an amino acid which maintains and repairs mind fabric."

Earth Girl's concoction offers Cracker Jacks-style prizes inside. (I plucked a pink plastic lotus-flower ring.) Beaumont's consciousness juice is heavy on the amino acid precursor tyrosine, an item about which he's amassed a stack and a half of scientific papers proving its effectiveness in curbing cocaine addiction. Choose your antipoison!

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Either way—drinks or drugs—if you are the type who wants to hear what hard-core science has to say, you may be less than encouraged. Scientists on both sides of the Atlantic have applied themselves to the fundamental question of whether we can actually gulp something to make us smarter. The answer from the no-nonsense world of academia is a resounding "not likely."

Dr. James McGaugh, director of University of California-Irvine's Department of Psychobiology, stands out as a leading, highly visible detractor of cognitive enhancers. Known among pro-smarties as "the rat guy," Dr. McGaugh has spent much time studying the effects of neuropharmaceuticals on rodents. But, alas, his findings are decidedly different from General Elektra's or Earth Girl's. "Nothing is dumber than the subject of smart drugs," he says. "Some of these drugs have been around for decades. There have been a few published studies showing they may have some mildly enhancing effects in animals. But there's no known mechanism of action, and the effects on lab animals are, at best, weak. The effects on humans border on nonexistent. Of course, the field of investigation is legitimate, but the book Smart Drugs and Nutrients is not a legitimate science book. It's not a balanced view of the literature in the field.

"Their whole approach is about as serious as astrology. Some of the drugs being promoted as cognitive enhancers are just the opposite—they are cognitive impairers," explains McGaugh. "That's why so many of my colleagues are bitter and angry. It cheapens our field."

Scientists suggest that whatever enhancement smart-drug enthusiasts claim, it is less a product of brain chemistry than of wishful thinking. Steven Rose, of the Brain and Behavior Research Group at England's Open University, offered a withering assessment of nootropics and any claims made for them. "These drugs," Rose said during a television interview, in a voice that dripped with a rational man's contempt for those ninnies who think wishing makes it so, "are supposed to work by speeding up synapses. If a normal person takes drugs for this purpose, the best that can happen is the placebo effect. Nearly all drugs, however, work under those circumstances."

Worse, according to Rose, if the desired results are imaginary, the undesirable ones are all too real. "All these agents have a whole range of side effects," Rose insisted. Take vasopressin, Mondo man R. U. Sirius' favorite hormone. Try this stuff, we learned, and you're in for "pallor, nausea, belching, cramps, desire to defecate, etc."

Smart-drug and nutrient believers nevertheless claim they feel great, no matter what the pesky men of science say. After all, as General Elektra likes to remind us, certain results are undeniable. "People ask me, after I've been dancing all night and getting wild and drinking smart drinks, if I think I'm actually smarter, and I have to laugh. I mean, what the hell? I see people gulping down dumb drinks, snorting dumb drugs, smashing their cars and acting like complete idiots. Meanwhile, I don't smash my car, feel great the next day and do more with my life than I ever imagined in my wildest dreams. You tell me, who's the smart one?"

"Cyberpunks are hip to the wonders of cerebral treats, from edible acetylcholine to nasal mist vasopressin."

get smart

The new brain boosters and what they do

Feeling heady? Ready to step up to cerebral supercharging? Then prepare to face a bewildering new terminology. The following glossary should help when discussing smart drugs with aficionados or trying to decipher the labels on packages of smart drinks.

Smart drugs

Piracetam: A popular nootropic (pharma-talk for drugs that improve learning and memory skills). Taken daily, it is supposedly a brain waker-upper, improving the flow of information between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

Hydergine: Big-time mnemonic miracle is the claim by those who experience a flood of memories from decades gone by as if they had just happened.

Vasopressin: First smart nasal spray and a pituitary hormone. If you believe the smart-drug devotees, a few whiffs can replenish your pituitary deficiency. Rumored to be a genuine hangover helper.

Smart nutrients

Dimethylaminoethanol: Touted for its brain-expanding properties when ingested over several weeks. Present in sardines and anchovies. A low-key stimulant.

Choline: The precursor of acetylcholine, which is the neurotransmitter that supposedly plays an important role in memory. To oversimplify, the more choline, the more acetylcholine, and the more acetylcholine, the better the memory.

Ephedra: An ancient Chinese herb, ephedra might also be called nature's oldest speed. Sometimes sold as ma huang, a dose of this stuff can be every bit as teeth-grinding and anxiety-provoking as a dose of a real amphetamine. Smart drinks can contain large amounts; in its more mundane manifestation, ephedra is a standard ingredient in nasal decongestants.

L-phenylalanine: A ubiquitous amino acid that produces epinephrine, which is popularly known as adrenaline for your brain. Professional smarties also claim that l-phenylalanine produces norepinephrine, a so-called excitatory neurotransmitter that is crucial to alertness, concentration, motivation and aggression.

Thiamine and pyridoxine: Vitamins B1 and B6, respectively. Both are mainstays of smart drinks. Thiamine is an antioxidant that can reportedly protect nerve tissues from alcohol, drugs and other neuropollutants. Pyridoxine is essential to optimal mental funtioning. It's said to be particularly valuable for people who eat high-protein diets, which result in an elevated need for B6.