I trawled recoop's website for specific claims they make about ingredients and their possible effects. I searched "$ingredient adhd", "$ingredient amphetamine", "$ingredient stimulant" on pubmed and looked at the first two pages of results. I scanned all titles and summarized abstracts to gauge relevance.
Claim: Vitamin C helps accelerate excretion of stimulants, increasing recovery.
Literature: (note, i used "ascorbic acid" as an additional search term)
Lots of research on concurrent administration of vitC and amph, not much research on afterwards.
- 1987 - studied pharmacokinetics of 1g/kg vitC on 10mg/kg AMPH in rats, found no effect. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3628833/)
- 2020 - studied striatal dopamine depletion impact of 100mg/kg vitC using 25mg/kg AMPH in mice. found a 40% reduction in the depletion of dopamine. this is an interesting study because they use only two injections, and study the depletion three days after administration. that's also a lot of amphetamine, holy shit. they consider this a "low dose" in the pharmacoresearch community. i'm not joking. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32459674/)
- 1994 - an indian paper that i cannot find online, claims 1g/kg vitC on 5mg/kg (in humans?) delays development of tolerance to the appetite suppression effect but NOT the reverse tolerance of the locomotor enhancement effect. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7959933/
- 2001 - vitC protects against oxidative stress, and MDMA causes a lot of it. irrelvant for the current purpose but good to note. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11170222/)
- 1984 - studied effect of 4mg/kg dAMP in rats. found increased extracellular vitC for two hours post administration. indicates to me that this is probably a resource that does get strained by stimulant use. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6728876/)
Comments: some more vitC doesn't hurt. not good evidence in favor though. i'm skeptical. there are a bunch of metabolic loops involving ascorbic acid that are relevant to AMPHs but the effects seem really mild. it seems like there might be benefits to taking vitC concurrently with AMPH instead of afterwards? possibly worth some self-experimentation.
Verdict: insufficient evidence, no harm.
Claim: useful for reminding your body what its sleep phase is supposed to be.
Literature:
- 1987 - AMPH dependent males have lower serum melatonin at relevant times than a control group. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31463419/)
- 2016 - melatonin protective against METH neurotoxicity (review article). there's some pretty powerful effects on inflammation and neurogenesis here, this seems like a great antioxidant. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25248807/)
- 2021 - studied effect of 1mg/kg METH for 7 days followed by 10mg/kg melatonin for 14 days in mice. Melatonin administration recovers some of the impairment in learning in memory. this is the first evidence i ran into that post-administration melatonin has a noteworthy effect. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33278389/)
- 2007 - melatonin is an antioxidant in yet another neuron cell type (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17614837/)
Comments: i initially did not agree with the inclusion of melatonin. everything i have read about melatonin and from talking to some of my friends with sleep disorders, correctly tweaking the melatonin curve comes down a lot to timing. idk that "after i'm done with my adderall for the day" is the right time to introduce it. 3mg also is a lot i think. BUT, the non-sleep-phase effects of melatonin seem like they might be worthwhile.
Verdict: insufficient evidence, low harm.
Claim: "supports calm and evenness of mind"
Literature:
2017 - studied effect of AMPH on a calcium-concentration-related metabolic marker that causes a cell death cascade when too much intracellular Ca+. Tyrosine hydroxylase phosphorylation is decreased in AMPH, maybe this helps replete the feedstocks? (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29149481/)
Comments:
Verdict: insufficient evidence, no harm.
Found these while researching, are interesting but not directly relevant to above study.
2002 - L-Carnitine has significant effects on a metabolic byproduct of dysfunctional mitochondrial states induced by METH, indirectly providing evidence that METH causes mitochondrial dysfunction. worth investigating this area more. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12105098/