Smart Drugs

An Interview By David Jay Brown

John Morgenthaler is responsible for coining the term "smart drugs", for writing the first books on the subject, and for much of the public's awareness about how certain drugs and nutrients can enhance cognitive performance.

Morgenthaler co-authored the books Smart Drugs and Nutrients, Smart Drugs II: The Next Generation (both with Ward Dean, M.D), and he edited the book Stop the FDA: Save Your Health Freedom. He has appeared on many popular radio and television shows over the years--such as Larry King Live, 20/20, and The Today Show--talking about how people can enhance their mental performance by adjusting their neurochemistry.

Morgenthaler is also largely responsible for popularizing the notion that certain drugs, herbs and nutrients can be used to enhance sexual desire and performance. He co-authored the books Better Sex Through Chemistry (with Dan Joy), GHB: The Natural Mood Enhancer (with Ward Dean, M.D.), and The Smart Guide to Better Sex. John has been researching brain-boosting and sexually-enhancing substances for over a decade, and he has used what he's learned to educate the public, and to design an array of herbal and nutritional formulas for Health Freedom Nutrition, with which he is associated.
I met John backstage on the set for the Montel Williams Show back in 1990, right after his book Smart Drugs and Nutrients was first published. I felt it was essential to include an interview with John on this site, because he's the person who first inspired my interest in the subject of prosexual drugs and nutrients, and a large portion of what I know about these substances I learned from him. I interviewed John on October 5, 2003.

David: How did you become interested in drugs and nutrients that enhance physical and mental performance?

Smart Drugs & Nutrients:
How to Improve Your Memory and Increase Your Intelligence Using the Latest Discoveries in Neuroscience

John: I originally became interested in this like many of the people who are seriously involved in it on the research level; my motivation was driven by a personal interest in healing myself. This goes way back, to my early college days. I was doing well enough that I made it to college, and I was getting good grades, but I knew that there was more brain power up there than I was able to tap into. My concentration and attention weren't as good as I felt they should be.

David: When did you first encounter the notion of smart drugs?

John: The idea originally came out of a book. The book that got me started in nutritional medicine was Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw's book Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach.

David: It was a very influential book for me as well. In fact, there's an interview that I did with Durk and Sandy on this site.

John: Quite a few people in this field had that book as their original inspiration. In the book Durk and Sandy talked about hydergine, and a few other substances that they referred to as having cognition-enhancing effects. But their book, of course, was about life extension. The theme of cognition-enhancement was just a minor aspect of the book, but that's were I picked up on the idea.

Then, in college, I started using a substance called Pemoline--which I don't use anymore, and haven't used in a long time. In fact, I believe it's now illegal. A lot of people started using it for recreational purposes, and that was the beginning of the end of that. It's a drug that, like Ritalin, is used for kids with attention-deficit disorder--or was anyway, as it fell out of favor. But, for me, at that time, that substance vastly improved my concentration and mental energy. I was very very impressed, not just with the effect of that drug, but impressed with the fact that a change of that magnitude could take place.

Mind Boosters:
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In other words, I realized that it's possible to take a brain that is working at a suboptimal level, and use a drug or nutrient and get improvement gains ten, twenty, thirty percent--because I was experiencing that. And I sailed through the final years of my computer science degree with flying colors. I was very very impressed with what this could do. So that's how I got started, and one thing lead to another. Pemoline fell out of favor, and I started researching the field of, what they called in the research, "cognition-enhancing substances". Later on I coined the phrase "smart drugs".