I was one of the first people that tried Sarcosine on this forum (back in 2010). Just within a week of taking Sarcosine I had great results, not only on negative symptoms but also on disabling and anxiety provoking intrusive thoughts and a positive symptoms I do not know how to call it and can only explain (I had this symptom where it literally felt like I had no control of parts of my body anymore). Those disabling and frightening symptoms went away for 80/90% after one week of starting with Sarcosine. Anyway, after a year I forgot about the benefits of Sarcosine and accidentally quit. Quitting Sarcosine almost caused a big crises (all my symptoms came back) until I remembered the benefits of it and started using it again after a couple of weeks. Again, within a week I was back to ānormalā and never forgot to take my Sarcosine again.
In 2015 I switched from Zyprexa to Latuda. After a while I started using Sarcosine less and less until quitting it completely. This time the disabling symptoms never came back except for days where I drink heavily and the next day I might have some intrusive thoughts and I will take some Sarcosine once in a while. My first question: Did some of you that benefited from Sarcosine ever quit? If so, did your symptoms return or are you also ācuredā of some symptoms?
Meanwhile, in those years I was on Sarcosine, I added/tried lots of other supplements and nootropics to improve my symptoms (without success), one of them was NAC. I personally never found any beneficial effects of adding NAC. But I bought NAC again to give it a retry and Iām on it for 1 week (2 grams, divided in taking it two times daily). My second question: Did anyone tried using just NAC (without Sarcosine)? If so, what are the exact benefits you noticed from taking only NAC? And how long did it take before it affected your symptoms?
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I am not sure what NAC is, care to explain a bit?
I am taking sarcosine too. Once I went on a 4 day trip and decided it is a good time to test out and quit for 4 days and see what will happen.
I got the horrible empty and alone feeling and it was pretty severe. It feels like I am dead basically, no emotions.
So I was in a large crowd when suddenly I felt like that and had to go back to the hotel and distract myself.
So yes, I notice sarcosine is helping me very much with the āempty feelingā anhedonia, and after taking it for one year, I notice also I am able to take initiative and finish tasks in a good way. Like brushing my teeth or doing other chores etc.
I am also taking omega 3 it has been 2 months.
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I used to take Sarcosine for over 3 years without breaks. There was a short period of time I took a supplement called Test Force 2, like 1.5 years before starting Sarcosine for 3.
TF2 made my negative symptoms vanish and made me have motivation like I was on speed. I remember thinking once after starting it āmy motivation is too high, itās annoying, I cant enjoy this mealā. But that lasted only about 2 days n then in a week I was back to baseline. No idea what happened there. I quit TF2 n started it again later but it did nothing.
When I started Sarcosine I wanted to give it a long try but during those 3 years I was taking it I felt it did almost nothing and only helped memory a bit, or so I thought. I decided to quit it because of the cost and it made my sleep erratic and not as deep.
After quitting Sarcosine, about a month later, I started talking or mumbling to myself. I thought it was the abilify I had started at the same time and I was not talking to myself much before starting sarcosine. This mumbling was mild and controllable at first but got gradually worse over the course of 2 years, to the point it was uncontrollable and causing me lots of embarrasment.
Recently I decided to try glycine after I got the idea that Sarcosine might have been responsible for me not talking to myself. The glycine has been a success so far and itās at a point I can easily control it, Iām hoping it will completely disappear.
So my answer to the first question is no I was not cured of any of my symptoms.
I have taken NAC as well, I found it more beneficial for negative symptoms than sarcosine, but it somehow was affecting my heart badly. Also it gave me bad heartburn. I no longer take it. I canāt remember how long it took to take effect because it was many years ago.
I have tried many other supps, if you wanna talk about them we can chat with PMs.
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NAC = N-Acetyl-Cysteine. It also a cheaply obtainable supplement which helps quite some people with their negative symptoms. I personally never found any benefit from it. Iām re-testing it right now without Sarcosine.
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Test Force v2 was also the first time I used Sarcosine. You probably crashed after a while because of the D-Aspartic acid thatās in the Test Force. D-Aspartic acid is also an NMDA agonist, however, always when I added it to Sarcosine it affected my negative symptoms and mood quite positively for 1 week. After a week I sorta had a crash from it causing me to get more depressed. If I had a list of all the things I tried we could have a chat about it, but I tried so many things, most of I do not even remember. And tbh, Iām a bit done going down the road of supplements/herbs/nootropics. The only thing that really helped me in the past was Sarcosine. I will retry NAC for a while and will also try Glycine next month. If those two fail on me then Iām done.
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