You already know the solution to social anxiety: exposure therapy. You have no doubt heard before that to overcome social anxiety you should just...
Approach that pretty girl sitting alone at the cafe
Ask some strangers in the cafeteria if you can sit with them
Go to toastmasters
Find a wingman on the Internet and talk to girls together at a nightclub
Take improv classes
Introduce yourself to some strangers at a party
Just be confident in your yourself
Put yourself out there
And be yourself
This type of advice on some level infuriates you because you simply can't do these things. Your biology stops you in your tracks. Maybe you've even tried, and failed miserably which drove you into a deeply unpleasant place of self loathing.
The problem is that not all self help advice is applicable to all people, yet you hear things like just be yourself repeated ad nauseam everywhere. Everyone seems to believe it. So it must be true. Right? Probably not for you.
These self help platitudes would have you believe that your social anxiety is just a problem in your head that you have to somehow think your way out of by just staying positive.
Social anxiety is a real thing. You've probably heard before that alcoholism is a disease, the alcoholic is not just some lazy person who really likes to drink (well, maybe some are), they have a debilitating neurobiological imbalance due to some combination of genetics and environment that results in their self destructive behavior. Social anxiety is a similar yet not as visibly destructive illness and if you don't address the underlying neurobiological imbalance you can be almost certain that things won't change. This is why you are stuck and you can't think your way out of your social anxiety. Yet like the alcoholic you are responsible for you own life and your own decisions.
Is that you can Biohack your social anxiety with herbal adaptogens, meditation, brain training technology and social smart drugs. It's going to be a whole lot faster, more direct and less painful than doing a bunch of talk therapy and painful exposure therapy exercises alone.
The Biohacking tools are not going to transform you into someone who can socialize effortlessly. They are going to recalibrate your biology giving you the option to get out of your comfort zone. It's still going to require some effort of willpower on your behalf to be social, maybe even a significant effort.
This is only going to cure 50-75% of your social anxiety, you are likely going to always have some social anxiety that you will just need push through with sheer power of will. If you can commit to following the Biohacking protocol which will reduce your social anxiety by at least a half of what it is now and do some exposure therapy to deal with the rest of your social anxiety, you'll find this transformative and it will for practical purposes cure your social anxiety.
I've mentioned willpower a couple of times already, it really is important to overcoming this. You may think of extroverted people who are naturally social as carefree, relaxed, playful and sometimes kind of lazy. They make it look kind of effortless don't they? For you to get the same results, you are going to need to be very disciplined, regimented and focused.
A proportion of the people reading this may at this point be thinking:
I don't have any problem, socializing, making friends or meeting people. My social anxiety issue appears when I have to doing public speaking or presentations at work.
You have more episodic social anxiety as opposed to chronic social anxiety. You can expect probably the same thing, a 50% - 75% overall reduction in your social anxiety and you'll still have to get out of your comfort zone until you get enough positive reference experiences speaking publicly.
A friend of mine who is a very successful Internet Marketer recommended I build this protocol into a membership based product and market it to the Pickup Artist industry. My friend advised that I price it at $79 a monthly membership and do a big hype filled launch with affiliates.
I thought about this hard and I decided against that approach, instead I'm just going to open source it. I'll explain why later. Perhaps my friend the Internet Marketer or some other opportunistic person watching this will want to turn it into such a product since I'm going to explain everything here that you need to do to Biohack social anxiety. Be my guest!
It's also an anti-anxiety agent, from a 2010 paper on Piracetam:
"It was also effective in the treatment of cognitive disorders of cerebrovascular and traumatic origins; however, its overall effect on lowering depression and anxiety was higher than improving memory."
Disadvantages: It's taste is pretty unpleasant. You need to take in larger quantities. It's a bad idea to drink alcohol while on it.
Dosage: 1 - 4 grams
Suggested Use: This one you can use everyday, it has little to no tolerance curve. It's half life is about 4 hours so you'll want to dose twice a day. Usually in the morning and in the afternoon. I typically dump a couple grams of it in a glass of water and just skull it. It has a cumulative effect after about 2 weeks of daily dosing, so you actually want to take it regularly as opposed to just when you have a socially demanding situation.
Recommended Source: 500 Powdered Grams by Peak Nootropics (My Review) (Order), Capsules by Pure Nootropics (My Review) (Order) or NootropicsDepot.com (Order)
{module Adaptogens}A category of herbs that have been used since time immemorial in Russian and Chinese traditional medicine to assuage stress. The three with the strongest science supporting their use as Nootropic performance enhancers are Rhodiola, Eleuthero and Schisandra.
Advantages: Workaholics and studyaholics alike chronically work their nervous systems into states of perpetual stress. The Adaptogens restore elasticity to the nervous system and allow you to actually relax.
A 2008 california pilot study demonstrated that 340 Milligrams daily of Rhodiola had a significant effect in 10 human participants dealing with generalized anxiety disorder.
Schisandra in particular helps maintain liver function which is a bit of a concern to Biohackers who are consuming a bunch of novel molecules, like the Racetams mentioned above.
Disadvantages: Powdered Adaptogens can be a little messy. Some find them overly stimulating so you may have to cut back on the coffee.
Dosage: Rhodiola 200 milligrams, Eleuthero 300 milligrams, Schisandra 200 milligrams
Suggested Use: Take them once daily, in the mornings or early in the afternoon about 30 minutes before a meal. Their taste is good enough that you can actually consume them as a tea. Don't take them to late in the day or they may affect your sleep.
Recommended Source: Superman Herbs (Order) or NootropicsDepot.com (Order)
What about the original cure for social anxiety, booze? Well, of all the problems with alcohol, the really insidious one is that if you get in the habit of drinking whenever you are being social, then you powerfully associate your social mindset with alcohol. It becomes impossible for you to get social without alcohol and there's a word for that; dependency.
Some of you are saying: Wait but if I start using these Nootropics to get social doesn't that present the same issue? I won't be able to get social without them?
Not really. Alcohol is a really strong experiential anchor whereas the Nootropics are not. With alcohol there's the strong tastes and scent, the burn in your belly, the social experience of raising your glasses or taking shots with friends along with the distinctive aesthetics of the bottles, cups and drinks themselves. You also spend hours actually consuming the alcohol; whereas the Nootropics are almost all none-descriptive powders or tasteless capsules. It will take you just a moment to consume them alone in private and their effects are very subtle compared to alcohol.
Although, I think you'll find that the Phenibut imbues the advantages of booze with almost none of it's downsides. It does have a stronger effect, which is why in the protocol you only use it through week 6.
The Racetams, Kratom and Phenibut do not go well with alcohol, taking them within 3-4 hours of each other can result in rapid intoxication and an epic hangover.
The bottom lines is that if you're really serious about overcoming social anxiety go off the booze for at least the 10 weeks of the protocol. You'll feel better, look better and your wallet will thank you!
There's some Biohacking tools you are going to be using over the course of this protocol that are going to make it all the more effective. They are downloadable, free and really will help with your social anxiety.
This might seem a little weird but you are going to be recording yourself speaking, you want to record yourself in a variety of social situations like:
I like Miidio Recorder for Android, you just pull your phone out (which is totally normal in social settings nowadays), tap the record widget and none nonchalantly leave your phone on the table. This requires just a little stealth, make sure whoever you are with does not see that you are recording your conversation. Then listen back to your conversation, before you go to bed or whenever, so you can hear how you sound objectively and establish a baseline of your verbal ability.
https://vimeo.com/130894693
Is one of my top lifehacks for discipline. It's an App/website for tracking and gamifying practicing positive habits a whole lot more consistently. It's free (and ad free) and takes just a few moments a day to check into your winning habits.
There's a couple of habits I recommend highly for overcoming social anxiety:
Plan Social Life - Spend 10 minutes a day in the middle of the day texting people and scheduling your social life.
Gut React - The Adaptogens are going to improve your intuition by hacking your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. See my video about Hueristics as a Productivity Strategy.
No Booze - It's important to keep track of how many days running since you've had a drink.
No FAP - Get a new grip on life by keeping track of your No Fabbing. Make sure to set this habit to private!
Checkout my full review of Coach.me, it is one of the very few Apps I've used that have actually improved my life, made me more productive and happy.
Training with this software App upgrades the RAM of your conscious mind and seriously exercises your focus muscles. It's one of the few software training tasks that's actually been demonstrated to have transfer effects; it benefits you in real life outside of the game. According to research out of Harvard University:
"...extraverts have better working memory skills than introverts."
Working memory is exactly what the Dual N-Back task exercises, 10 minutes of training will improve your IQ by 10-15 points after 30-60 days of training. Since Dual N-Back requires such persistent focus it actually helps train you to silence negative mental self talk - that persistent, critical voice in your head. You've heard people talk about how meditation is useful to overcoming anxiety, because it teaches you to dissociate your identity from your anxious thoughts. Dual N-Back has a similar effect actually, while at the same time exercising your focus muscles.
As transformative as these Biohacking tools, strategies and drugs can be they won't do much for you if you don't actually combine them with getting out of your comfort zone and practicing your social skills.
You are going to start attending public events, the purpose of this is to split test or A/B test the different social smart drugs. You really don't know which of them is going to fit your neurobiology and make a difference for your social anxiety until you've got about 50 statistical data points. If you only go out to social events once a week that's going to take almost a whole year, whereas if you go out 4-5 times a week, it's only going to take you about 10 weeks to get through this and for practical purposes overcome your social anxiety.
You may think: I get enough of an opportunity to practice my social skills at my job, my school or in my existing social group. Going to a bunch of public events seems like a waste of time.
I encourage you to do it anyways for a few reasons:
1) You can take more social risks; which is essential for internalizing confidence, outside of your normal social environment.
2) To really increase your baseline confidence you will need to get out of your comfort zone, which is more likely to happen with complete strangers at public events than within your current social environment.
3) To get a statistically significant number of reference experiences on the Nootropics you will probably need to supplement the amount of times you are going out.
Every week search these websites and select a few events you might like to attend
Facebook Events (Near You)
Couchsurfing.org Events
Meetup.com
Eventbrite
My criteria for selecting public events is...
Attendance - I look for an event with at least +30 people RSVP'd, any less and I'm taking a chance that there won't be enough social opportunity for me to really flex my social muscles.
Inviting - I look for events that are going to be socially inclusive, where people are going to be open to making friends. The Vodka launch party at the swanky nightclub downtown is probably not really what we are looking for.
Proximity - Close by where I live, so I can't make the excuse the day of that I don't want to travel across town to attend.
Interesting - Something that actually piques my interest or connects to a passion of mine.
Free or Inexpensive - About half the time I stay at these public events less than an hour, so I don't really want to pay more than a few bucks to attend.
What important is that your attendance of these events is NOT contingent on anyone else. You'll likely go alone, if you are not solo I encourage you to not go with more than one other friend. If you go with two or more friends you are all the more likely to just socialize with your little group. The purpose of going to these public events is to get out of your comfort zone and practice your social skills.
You'll quickly find that free, public events have a little lower caliber of people at them. You're not going to meet the really the badass, alpha male type dudes, successful entrepreneurs, super smart engineers, the B-list local celebrities or beautiful women at these events. You're going to be meeting the very average Joe and Jane. You're going to be meet a lot of backpacker travelers, who are broke kids that are traveling through your city and just want to get drunk on cheap beer. These events are going to kind of become your social training ground, you'll take risks and make mistakes but it doesn't really matter because the people at these events are probably kind of dorks themselves and will be very forgiving of your social faux pas. The larger the attendance of the public event, the more likely you'll meet some higher caliber people who you actually want to connect to.
The Social Anxiety protocol should take you about 10 weeks to complete. It's going to take 5-10 days for the Nootropics to get shipped to you so in the interim get started with the downloadable tools mentioned: Coach.me, Dual N-Back and recording your conversations.
Week 1
Start with the Phenibut
Limit your usage to 4-5 times a week. No booze. Resist the temptation to brag on social media or to your friends and family about your new personal development endeavor. Have fun!
Week 2
Add Piracetam
Use the Piracetam 5-6 times a week. If you get headaches as a result of the Piracetam, add some Choline either from a supplemental or dietary source.
Stack: Phenibut, Piracetam
Week 3
Add Oxiracetam
You're probably hitting a motivational dip around now; you've been going out and getting out of your comfort zone and most likely you're a little disappointed with the results. Adding the Oxiracetam is going to give you an extra degree discipline to keep going. Stay consistent with Piracetam as it has cumulative positive effects on the memory after 2 weeks of regular dosing. You've been working on your personal development mission for a couple weeks now so if you want to brag to your friends a little about what you are doing, now you can without it killing your motivation.
Stack: Phenibut, Piracetam, Oxiracetam
Week 4
Add the Aniracetam
You can use it daily, it has a pretty subtle effect compared to the other Nootropics, although you may notice yourself being a little more creative and witty.
Stack: Phenibut, Piracetam, Oxiracetam, Aniracetam
Week 5
Add the Adaptogens and the L-Theanine
Which you'll find somewhat stimulating so keep the dosages low because you are already consuming a stimulant in the Piracetam.
Stack: Phenibut, Piracetam, Oxiracetam, Aniracetam, L-Theanine, Adaptogens
Week 6
Add Kratom
Cut the Phenibut
At this point you should have established some positive reference experiences that you can draw on for confidence so we are dropping the social intoxicant, Phenibut from your stack. We are adding the Kratom though which you will likely find has a similar tranquilizing effect.
Stack: Piracetam, Oxiracetam, Aniracetam, L-Theanine, Adaptogens, Kratom
Week 7
Cut the Piracetam
We are going to remove the Piracetam, not because you need to cycle it but to wean you off the stimulants, to de-anchor your social confidence from the buzz. If you really like it (which you probably will) you can go back on it when you finish the protocol.
Stack: Oxiracetam, Aniracetam, L-Theanine, Adaptogens, Kratom
Week 8
Cut the Kratom
The Kratom is slightly intoxicating and as you've discovered by now has a steep tolerance curve, so lets cut it.
Stack: Oxiracetam, Aniracetam, L-Theanine, Adaptogens
Week 9
Cut the Oxiracetam and the Aniracetam
8 weeks of Oxiracetam and the regimen of brain training will have leveled up your baseline of focus and discipline by now. So we are going to cut the Discipline Molecule, you may miss it!
Stack: L-Theanine, Adaptogens
Week 10
Cut the Adaptogens
In the final week of the Protocol you're going to eliminate the stimulating Adaptogens so you are just running on the L-Theanine.
Stack: L-Theanine
Upon finishing the protocol you should have gathered about 50 reference experiences socializing while on the Nootropics and you should have a pretty good idea of how they effect you differently.
We do have a private, invitation only Biohacker community, the Secret Society. How it works is that I do a 25 minute Biohacking consultation with you over Skype which kind of doubles as an entry interview.
If you order all the Nootropics mentioned from the recommended sources via the links on this website you'll qualify for Secret Society membership, pending the entry interview, of course. There's some pretty high level entrepreneurs and peak performers in there, the kind of people you wouldn't normally find on a public messaging board. Since it is a private community, I personally vet everyone to maintain a curated membership and high quality of respectful discussion.
Of course your participation in the Secret Society is totally none-obligatory, you may just want to work on your social anxiety. I mention it though because I anticipate there's at least a handful of other people in the Secret Society who are going through the Social Anxiety Protocol or have overcame some of the same things you are struggling with and you may find value in connecting with them.
{loadposition Pricing} PHENIBUT (50 grams) $23.99
PIRACETAM (500 grams) $39.99
ANIRACETAM (50 grams) $17.99
OXIRACETAM (50 grams) $29.99
L-THEANINE (50 grams) $14.99
Rhodiola (100 grams) $39.95
Eleuthero (100 grams) $34.95
Schisandra (30 grams) $19.95
Kratom (3 bags White/Red/Green) $36
$258+Shipping for a 6-10 Month Supply**Depending upon your personal stimulatory set point, the dosage used and how often you use them.
It's not exactly cheap. Right?
You've probably already tried to apply other methods and solutions for overcoming your social anxiety. If you've read this protocol to this point you're probably sick of beating your head against the wall trying the fluffy, feel good mainstream self help stuff. This is an all in, burn the boats multi pronged approach.
It's also fundamentally different than the mainstream self help solutions in that it's success does not depend entirely upon your will power. Upon you having the iron will to get and stay outside of your social comfort zone for weeks or months. The Social Anxiety Protocol is about hacking your motivation on a biological-pharmacological level. This approach assumes you don't have will power to overcome your social anxiety on your own, or else you already would have and you would be leading a fun and fulfilling social life instead of reading this. You would be out there having fun and making friends as opposed to listening to some weird, cross-eyed guru guy on the Internet! Right?
By actually investing the +$200 dollars in this 6-10 month supply of social smart drugs you are communicating in a powerful way to your subconscious that this is something you are committed to following through on.
As I mentioned earlier my friend recommended I build this into a $79/monthly or $89/monthly product which included the supplements I've mentioned above and membership in a private social accountability community. As lucrative as this would be for me I ultimately decided against it for a really important reason, it wouldn't be asking people to take responsibility for their own lives. I suspect that such a product would attract a lot of people expecting a true magic pill cure for social anxiety, they would take the supplements for a few months, wouldn't really do the exposure therapy exercises, wouldn't really make an effort to get out of their comfort zones and as a result would end up not really improving their social anxiety very much.
By Open Sourcing this protocol the responsibility for overcoming social anxiety and improving your social life is totally on you. You can order the Nootropics I've talked about, use the Biohacking tools daily and follow the protocol to get out of your comfort zone or NOT. It's your life and it's totally up to you.
I tried to really address this issue in depth here but I'm sure there's still some aspects of this that remain unanswered for you. If so leave a comment and I will try to address it thoroughly an addendum or an upcoming podcast.This article is getting a little long, and there are a couple of other things I need to address in regards to Biohacking Social Anxiety, so I'm going to release a couple of addendum articles to address them. You maybe experiencing some cognitive dissonance right now that hopefully the addendums below will assuage.
The inventor of the most clever cocktail toast ever, former participant in a bank robbery, almost died underwater twice, raconteur & smart drug dealer.
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