Drugs to build up that mental muscle

For example, weed relaxes you and if you take it enough you can sustain a relaxed lifestyle. But then you become, to a certain extent, dependent on weed for this relaxed state and I'd rather work on something bereft of such an external dependency, like meditation as previously mentioned.

[edit] I am, of course, still assuming that this supposed drug takes over from your internal mechanisms that induce concentration, as opposed to strengthening them, meaning once you stop taking the drug you lose your enhanced concentration. If the drug does strengthen these mechanisms on a long term basis then I'm all for it.

"In the central nervous system, ACh has a variety of effects as a neuromodulator, e.g. for plasticity and excitability. Other effects are arousal and reward."

Do you remember Andro (androstenedione, used to be available in stores, used by Mark McGwire)? It's a testosterone precursor. Your liver converts it to testosterone (and also some amount converts to estrogens). So a neurotransmitter precursor would seem to be a bit like steroids for the brain.

Not sure how external supplementation affects endogenous neurotransmitter production, but with hormone precursors the biofeedback loop tells your endocrine system to stop its own production. E.g. if you take testosterone, your body shuts down its own production (when your testosterone level hits a certain point, your body thinks "oh, that's enough for now" and hits the off-switch on your testicles. This turns off ALL their functions, so it's actually also a form of birth control. And since they aren't doing anything, they atrophy).

Fun note: Your body tries to keep your testosterone:estrogen ratio at about 50:1 (for young men). So if you take androgenic steroids, your body increases its own estrogen production. Once you hit a certain absolute amount of estrogen, you're growing breast tissue.

Then you are a man. With titties.

(Bodybuilders combat this by using certain steroids that don't aromatize into estrogen as much, and also using anti-estrogens that either bind to the aromatase enzyme to stop conversion into estrogen, or bind to the actual estrogen receptor sites like Clomid. One interesting effect of Clomid -- that makes it attractive to male porn stars -- is it causes big pop shots.)

Your brain produces acetylcholinterase which scavenges excess acetylcholine. Arricept, Huperzine, and other chemicals inhibit acetylcholinesterase formation (and therefore increase acetylcholine levels). If your brain acetylcholine levels are low then certain substances may help in the formation of additional acetylcholine (e.g in addition to DMAE there are other compounds like choline, CDP choline, Alpha GPC, and PPC). If your equilibrating mechanisms are working then small amounts of precursors shouldn't cause a derangement. Athletes taking steroids are attempting to overload the equilibrating mechanisms to build muscle. Choline precursors don't seem to have these same "down-regulation" harmful side effects when taken in moderation to bring brain acetylcholine levels back into "normal range." I am not advocating steroids or supplement use, but it seems to me that they have two different usage patterns: steroid use involves intentionally boosting levels outside of the normal range for "performance enhancing" results, where the DMAE use described by Hexayurt was in response to "programmer burnout" which likely involved depleted acetylcholine levels in the brain and was in his own words "performance restoring."

In terms of the hacker news angle, I would think all things in moderation in the context of development plans that rely on efforts that are sustainable over a long period of time.

A references on choline for memory formation improvement:

http://sciencenewsmagazine.org/articles/20031122/food.asp

http://healthlibrary.epnet.com/GetContent.aspx?token=e049880...

None of these listed have found the rebound side effects. I am not saying that you couldn't cause yourself problems at a high enough dosage, but in the dosages used in the studies it's not mentioned as a side effect.

This is not true for acetylcholinterase inhibitors (things like huperzine, arricept, galantamine,...) which can cause a significant excess of acetylcholine because they inhibit the down regulation process.

You are correct that I was speculating what might cause "programmer burnout." I agree with you that there are people who believe in "mental performance enhancing drugs" but I am not one of them. I do think that folks with ADD may be able to take substances that limit their ADD and I think that you can take things as you age to limit the effect of age related cognitive decline, but I don't think you can "supercharge" someone in their teens or twenties.

One of the great discoveries of the last decade has been that we continue to add new brain cells (at a much lower rate than in early childhood) all of our lives and that lifelong learning and stimulation does in fact encourage the formation of new connections and delay the onset of diseases like Alzheimers.

Our brains are plastic and respond to how they are used. In that sense my answer to the original question of "how to build mental muscles" is: I don't know of any drugs but I do believe that mental exercise helps.