I'm the resident Alternative Lifestyle Specialist around here (which is what I keep asking my boss to call me instead of "drug-addled wreck of a human being"), so when new pharmaceutical trends sweep through the United States like Daniel Larusso's leg, it's up to me to cover them. I'm talking about a new class of drugs called "nootropics" - though "new" is a subjective term. They've been around for decades now, but they're only just recently taking off with a drastic rise in casual use. The truly great thing about nootropics is that, by and large, they're utterly harmless; they're meant to boost mental function with little to no side effects--regardless of dosage. Because of this, most of them are available freely on the market as "supplements." So I'll be testing out and reviewing the five most popular ones. I will be regularly testing my performance on each drug using the Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test, because it looks super science-y.

The goal of the test is to select the two figures that are identical to the one on the far left, but seen from different angles. For control purposes, I took the test for the first time this morning immediately upon waking, after a completely ordinary evening (spent drinking ethanol behind the dry cleaner's and engaging in something I like to call Spontaneous Guerrilla Russian Roulette). This is that test:


So that's our control. Now, on to the reviews: