Life is full of decisions, and sometimes it’s difficult to know if you’re making the right one. But a drug that blocks the rush of noradrenaline through your body can boost your confidence, and may also lead to new treatments for schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder.
How much we trust our decisions is governed by the process we use to assess our own behaviour and abilities, known as metacognition. Our judgements shape how we’ll behave in future. For example, if you play Frisbee and you think you played badly, you might be less likely to do it again, says Tobias Hauser at University College London.
Having low confidence in our actions can play a part in mental health conditions. “We see many symptoms associated with poor metacognitive judgement in schizophrenia and OCD,” says Hauser. “In OCD, for instance, people may constantly go and check whether they’ve closed a door. They are poor at judging whether they have done something correctly or not.”
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Here is the drug they used for this study - its already on the market for Blood Pressure:
I’ve taken that drug too for tremors. It’s a bit of a wonder drug as I’ve read it can also help with ptsd and fear. The idea is to take it while doing the thing you fear and it prevents you from feeling fear so the next time you do the fearful thing your emotions have changed and you don’t feel fearful anymore.
gaba does this for me… my doc calls it a false sense of well being… but whatever it is the confidence boost is very much welcome… found a vitamin supplement that has the same effect… but im afraid of sharing the name of it as ninjastar said every brain is diff… what helps me may cause an episode in another…
I have never tried beta-blockers - they sound like they would be good for me, since I am restricted so much by fear avoidance. Then again, I’m learning to overcome this naturally anyway.
Propranolol didnt do ■■■■ for me except give me diarriah. I’m skeptical when ppl try to psychoanalyze problems, especially ones they dont personally experience, and try to explain them away with shortcut logic. They see the pixel not the picture.
I was taking metropolol but my dr switched me to the propranolol just to see if it controls my high blood pressure as well and gives me the added benefit of less sza/ocd symptoms. It’s been a week, I don’t notice anything yet