The scariest (potential) downside to nootropics to me is an increased risk of cancer. Because if your normal cells are healthier, cancerous cells are also healthier. As a younger person, cancer is less of a risk so nootropics are less of a risk too.

So I was curious, with that in mind, where the free lunch drugs are? As in, which ones did you enjoy most and why stop taking them?

In my opinion, a free lunch drug is something like lion's mane, a mushroom, which depending on the study we're looking at can induce neurogenesis, improve cognitive function and reduce anxiety. [1]

It's something I still take today.

I'm clinically prescribed modafinil for ADHD, which has immeasurably improved my life. I can guarantee I would not be employable as an SRE today without it. Low dose modafinil (50 mgs) is a free lunch for me and, if you believe the anecdotes, for tons of redditors out there. At the dose I recommend, it's all upside (I feel I must emphasize for me with a clinical diagnosis).

Those are the two I have extensive experience with that I see no downside to regular consumption of.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MushroomSupplements/comments/h090ry...

Yes, that's a real risk. Check out this thread, which /r/Nootropics has wisely kept stickied for a while: https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/pbz9mx/warnings.... It's an anecdotal report of nootropic use not necessarily inducing cancer but potentially making cancer spread much more aggressively.

One definitely shouldn't try nootropics without very thoroughly studying the risks. I sometimes take certain (seemingly) low-risk ones, like racetams combined with choline supplements. (For example, oxiracetam + alpha-GPC.)

> So I was curious, with that in mind, where the free lunch drugs are?

Nothing in life is "free lunch", not even free lunch. At the very least you have to expand time to fetch it, eat it and deal with a slightly increased risk of food poisoning afterwards.

But that is often times a very fitting metaphor when comparing the upside of a lot of drugs to their downside: It does not have to be free, to be free. If you have an infection that would otherwise kill you, an effective antibiotic is close enough to free to be a no-brainer.

The idea behind the no free lunch principle is that if a small molecule drug exists that can realistically be biologically produced in humans (ie not penicillin) we would probably have evolved that ability already, because we're very well optimized by now.

I don't think so, we don't even produce vitamin B12. The "no free lunch" only applies to things we already produce, like we already produce dopamine so getting more will have consequences for healthy people or we would have evolved to produce more.

The no free lunch idea is mostly a question of trade offs. For example Humans naturally produce antibiotics, however prescribing them in large numbers could be very risky potentially significantly compromising everyone’s immune system worldwide.

That said, it’s very possible for diseases to have very simple cures that people simply aren’t producing enough of. Evolution is great at population level optimizations over time, but it can really suck for individuals.

You can’t just evolve to produce any random molecule especially anything with actual chemical complexity. Scores of extremely complex enzymes are needed to produce cholesterol and pretty much all small molecule steroids we produce are derivatives of it. Plants have a vast repertoire of enzyme pathways to produce many small molecules which they can mix and match quickly to produce compounds of great chemical complexity but humans cannot.

Evolution is not going to evolve longer-life genes beyond a certain point. Something's going to kill you: disease, accidents, predators. Any gene that would, for example, help humans to live to 200 in the wild is useless. If it did evolve, it could mutate into a broken state and never be missed.

The phrase "no such thing as a free lunch" comes from economics — the study of making choices when your resources are finite. The insight conveyed by this phrase is that there's always some opportunity cost (the cost of the next-best-thing you could be doing, instead of eating the free lunch).

If you are not using it in that context, it loses its insight value. There is presumably some energy cost to the cell actually manufacturing the protein, but it's entirely possible that's the whole cost of the "lunch", and it is a price readily paid. Or it might not! That's really up to biology now, as you say.

The phrase comes from saloons in the United States providing free food, but requiring purchasing of drinks. You can't get"something for nothing". (And if you do there is a hidden cost or an externality.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as...

Agreed that it’s not a given that you can never get a free lunch, just that it’s rare.

Also I don’t think you’re painting yourself as a picture of confidence that you just took unapproved mind altering drugs and have come out of it with no issues so you’re logical or anything.