My tDCS Experience: One Year On, One Year Off

Change Your Brain, Change Your Life

I first embarked upon this journey in February 2014, and two years later, I am still alive, and doing things I would have never imagined. I had been using tDCS daily for about 12 months, and had also been experimenting with meditation and nutritional supplements. My goals were to increase my visual perception (I have a congenital optic nerve disorder), as well as cognitive enhancement. I can safely say that I have achieved long-term improvements in both areas, which I would attribute, at least in part, to tDCS.

I stopped using tDCS for the past 12 months for a number of reasons, most prominently, to determine whether the changes I was experiencing from tDCS would persist beyond the 24 hour window commonly observed in clinical studies. In terms of both my visual perception and cognitive capabilities, I believe that I have retained long-term improvements in both areas, and do not feel a need to use tDCS, as I felt I had reached a point of diminishing marginal returns.

At the time I stopped using tDCS, I made the decision to enter into deep meditative practice, attending my first week-long silent Vipassana retreat in May 2015. Over the past 12 months, I have done 35 silent retreat days, with 12+ hours of formal seated meditation practice per day, and have gone from 30 minutes a day of meditation outside of retreats to about 3 hours per day. Fortunately, I was in a position to take the time needed to do this, and was at the same time struggling with a death in my family, so I am very grateful to my family and friends who supported me throughout this difficult period.

I continue to derive great benefits from deepening my meditation practice, as well as from nutritional supplements, so will provide detailed information about these both in the following paragraphs. I went through a long period of depression over the past year, and so for those who suffer from depression or anxiety, I believe there may be a very reliable way of getting yourself out of this mental and emotional trap through a very specific and focused regiment.

Disclaimer

It should go without saying, but with this and all of my writing, I am not recommending any specific actions or interventions, I am only sharing my personal experience. We each have many variations in our genetics and neural development, and you must take these into consideration before embarking upon any experimental protocols. If you do choose to try out tDCS, nutritional supplements, or meditation, make sure you have done your research, and if something doesn’t feel right, stop, and consult someone who has more experience in the area than you. I am happy to provide advice where I can, so please feel free to reach out to me on the tDCS Subreddit or my Twitter handle.

Most Useful Montages for tDCS

While I was using tDCS, I found three montages to be particularly useful for me. First, for increasing alertness, +F3 (left DLPFC) and cathode on upper right arm seemed to work best for me. I typically used large 3”x4” sponge electrodes and experimented with placing the anode over F3 and FZ just to get current and blood flow to the PFC, and this also seemed to be effective for me. Second, +C4 and cathode on upper left arm, targeting the RTPJ in conjunction with Metta (Loving Kindness) Meditation. Third, +CZ with cathode on upper right or left arm, targeting the motor cortex before working out to improve muscle control, strength, and endurance. I typically used 2mA from 10–20 minutes on each location, and usually sat in meditation, eyes closed, not moving, just focusing on my intention for the montage and any sensations I was feeling in my body at the time.

For visual perception improvement, I found a study that showed increases to contrast perception after either anodal or cathodal stimulation to the visual cortex (OZ) so I did this about 2–3 times per week with good results. I was able to navigate dimly lit area that were very challenging for me before, due to my condition (known as Dominant Optic Atrophy, from a mutation to the OPA1 gene). This did not affect my visual acuity, although my perception of distant object has improved through other eye exercises that I’ve found. If anyone has specific questions about improving visual perception, I’m happy to discuss this more with you.

Meditation: Diving into the Deep End

Since 2013, I had started a semi-daily sitting practice with a friend of mine, 20 minutes a day, skipping days here and there due to the normal hustle and bustle of shifting schedules. I did also make time for tDCS sessions every day, and some of these I practiced meditation, others I tried different activities, like reading or eye exercises. Overall, I found meditation in small doses to be useful for focusing the mind and overall productivity. I would sometime struggle with sleepiness, while at other times I found it very easy to get into a calm, relaxed, yet focused state of mind.

Attending a one week silent Vipassana retreat is much like diving into the deep end of a swimming pool without having had formal swim lessons. Many people quit half way through their first retreat and never look back. I was very fortunate to find a great teacher who had a very scientific approach and perspective to meditation which resonated with me. So my first retreat experience was a good one. I ended up only being able to sit for about 9 hours a day, and did pull off my first ever Yaza (a Japanese Zen tradition of all-night meditation marathon). This experience essentially cured me of sleepiness during meditation, and I believe it to be largely responsible for my daily pattern of waking up at 4:30am every morning and meditating for one hour before starting my day.

At the time, this seemed like a pretty insane prospect, but now looking back on it, I believe it to be the best decision of my life, as it literally saved me from a lifetime of suffering from self-generated problems. In the end, this is what meditation, as well as yoga, is really about. For those who have embarked upon this path, this will resonate, for others, you’ll have to sign up for a meditation retreat in order to see for yourself.

Anxiety, Depression, and Neurogenesis

Over the past several years, I had started having significant bouts of depression. I’ve always been very resilient, and started reading everything I could about the subject, and even experimented with taking Prozac, but found that it gave me headaches, so I stopped. I found that taking Omega-3s and 5-HTP were helpful, as well as curcumin, and all three of these are now a regular part of my nutritional supplement regime.

While I was using tDCS, I was active on the tDCS Subreddit, and would also visit the Nootropics Subreddit and another forum called Longecity, as these both had interesting stack advice. One day I ran across a post about a neurogenic compound called NSI-189, which specifically increased new neural stem cell production in the hippocampus. The company that discovered this compound had been targeting depression, based on the hypothesis that traumatic events lead to stress-induced hippocampal shrinkage in some individuals. This made sense to me, so I went about getting a small sample of the compound from several sources, and trying it in small doses myself to see if it made a difference. I found that it made very subtle but significant improvements to my mood and outlook during the days I was taking it, and that these improvements seemed to be cumulative and last beyond my trial periods.

So for those who do struggle with anxiety and/or depression, it may be worth getting ahold of some NSI-189, which is still not widely available, but not impossible to procure, and give it a try yourself. I also believe it to be very useful for cognitive enhancement in general, as the hippocampus is the nexus for all of our learning and memories, and having a larger one couldn’t hurt.

NSI-189, Meditation, and Cognitive Enhancement

Since NSI-189 is still in clinical trials, I was very cautious with the amount and duration of my trials, maintaining 25mg sublingual administration per day for no more than one week at a time. I had done two weeks of these trials during 2014, and when I did my first meditation retreat in May 2015, I didn’t even think to try using it during the retreat, mostly because I didn’t consider how stressful it would be. On my second retreat, I had the bright idea to bring some NSI-189 with me and try it while on retreat, and indeed it made a very big difference in my ability to get the most out of the time spent in deep meditation practice.

I will make a separate post with more details about the stack I find is most effective with NSI-189, and for optimal cognitive function in general. I’ve used NSI-189 for a total of 35 days in 6 one-week trials in the past two years (I skipped a day or two during a few of the meditation retreat weeks to see if the effects were noticeably significant, and they were). Over the past 12 months, I’ve noticed that my cognitive capacity for focus and learning has increased significantly, so my feeling is that this is a result of the combination of deep meditation and NSI-189.

Final Thoughts

The last two years were the most challenging, and also rewarding, in my life. I feel that I went through a number of very significant stages of internal development, and have gone through many difficult transitions in terms of perspective on my life, others, and the world. tDCS certainly played a role through the first year of this process, and it’s still difficult to say whether I’d be in the same place I am today without it. The most valuable lesson I learned through my experiments with tDCS and the vast amount of reading research articles that went with it is that you can make significant changes to your brain in a relatively short period of time, and through very simple and conscious changes to your nutrition and behavior.

In the end, I think the most important lesson I learned was that anything you want to achieve in life has to start with a conscious intention. Intention is necessary, but insufficient for positive change, never the less, it’s important to begin with good intention. The only reason I am writing this is to share my experiences in hopes that it will help others who are still looking for something that can help them lead a better life. I’m now at a place where I am confident I will be happy for the rest of my life, through life’s up’s and down’s, and even if I were to fall off a cliff tomorrow, I’d have no regrets. My wish is for everyone in the world to have this kind of perspective, to live without fear, without regret, and to their fullest potential. I believe neuroscience holds the key to understanding the mechanisms that govern our perception and cognition, but it’s up to us to turn that key and open the door, and emerge from the darkness caused by our aversion, clinging, and ignorance. With time and practice, we can all learn from each other, and build a brighter future together.

I hope that my experiences will help you in achieving your dreams, and wish you all the best on your journeys. If I can ever be of service, please reach out to me, I am always happy to help when I can. :)