Semax and Selank I administered nasally and did nothing. Felt more from nasal BPC at first try in terms of mental recovery from stims.
NothingNasal
Users report
Consensus is 'real but subtle': clearer head, better recall and resistance to mental fatigue, quieter mind; not an Adderall replacement. Roughly 35-50% of experience threads report feeling nothing even at 1-2 mg, often blamed on route (nasal vs subq disagreements) or bad vials. A minority of long-term users (one reports ~10 years daily) swear by it; standout reports come from stroke/TBI users (stammer, memory).
Best effects
Clearer thinking, less brain fog · better word recall/verbal fluency · resistance to mental fatigue · quieter mind, calm focus · potentiates stimulants/caffeine
Downsides
Headache (sometimes hours) in some users · anxiety/jitteriness at higher doses or in blends · nasal irritation · tolerance after ~10 days for some · occasional drowsiness/fog paradoxically · sleep disruption if taken late
Evidence
Approved drug — approved in Russia (Semax 0.1% nasal, on the Russian essential-drugs list); small human trials (stroke, cognitive disorders), mostly Russian
Caveat
Decades of Russian clinical use with no serious safety signal; upregulates BDNF modestly in animal work, which is not regarded as a credible harm path at these doses. FDA's July 2026 compounding panel voted 8-5 to allow it. Main real-world risk is vial quality (grey market).
Typical use
200-600 mcg/day nasal or subq (community range up to 1-2 mg), mornings, 5 on/2 off or 2-6 week cycles.
Getting it
Pharmacy drug in Russia (0.1%/1% drops); elsewhere research-peptide vendors, a few US clinics compound it.
Stacked with
Selank: The most common pairing, often in one spray; Semax in the morning for focus, Selank for calm or at night. · Bromantane: Taken alongside Semax for drive and motivation by NooTopics regulars. · ADHD stimulants or modafinil: Users say Semax potentiates them; one ER visit was reported when it was combined with 150 mg armodafinil.
For semax I had intense tunnel vision but only in week 4 when my vial was about to reach its 30 days. The focus was more than anything I’ve tried. More than modafinil or phenylpiracetam.
I’m currently on 750mcg intranasal, has virtually eliminated my ADHD. I don’t feel wired or stimulated, the best way I can describe it is that my attention goes wherever I choose to direct it
first time doing semax felt like i was on adderall off just 250mcg, was wondering why it felt so potent until i recalculated and realized i accidentally did 2500
Rest day, tried 600mgs of Semax with microdose (2.5mg) of methylene blue. Was subtle and enjoyable, plan to continue for 3 weeks. Helped my Grik lesson today- did better than usual.
The hype around Semax (and most cognitive stuff) is ridiculously overblown. I do notice a positive effect on my focus, but nothing even remotely approaching “life changing”. It’s very subtle.
The tolerance is the major negative point. After 10 days of using it, the effects become less noticeable. I have adhd and it has clearly made my life better.
Semax does have an effect for me, but it’s extremely subtle. I use it more when I wake up a little foggy, tired, or mentally hazy. It clears some of that background haze and makes me feel a little more awake without pushing me into a wired state.
My experience with it is positive: better cardio + strength output in the gym (less air hunger, I get more reps out) and it gives a slight cognitive boost/increase in endurance.
My mind feels clearer, calmer, and more motivated at the same time. I’m less emotional and more rational. I inject 300mcg subcutaneously every day. It took about 10 days for me to notice the results.
Last time I took two pumps in each nostril and I was too focused to focus which is what happens if you use too much Adderall. I don’t like that feeling. One pump per nostril and my vibing is amazing!
I notice nothing nasally. Subq takes about 30 minutes. ... Way easier to multitask which is a big deal for the day job. ... And before and after max reading for comprehension scores went from 500 wpm to 720 without causing me stress like it used to
Tried semax intranasaly and sub-q. I was using it for musical performance. Difficult to determine efficacy intranasaly but I felt more locked in going sub-q.
When my energy was low on a GLP-1, I tried MOTS-c, 5-Amino-1MQ, and Semax. ... I've since stopped MOTS-c and 5-Amino-1MQ. Semax is the only one I still use, as needed.
I ran Russian pharma (or quasi pharma, don’t remember ) semax drops maybe ten years ago for a few months. Memory boost was great, legitimate long lasting effects etc. Felt a bit wonky for a week at first
It wasnt until consecutive daily dosing for a period of 4 weeks until I could feel any major cognitive differences. Sharper mind and speed, like a stronger Lion's mane.
The first couple weeks were incredible🏴☠️ Sharper focus cleaner mood the mental edge everyone talks about was very real🏴☠️ Then it started to fade🏴☠️ By week five the effect just did not hit like they did at the start🏴☠️
while it helped with ADHD symptoms to some extent, it also made decision-making worse (kind of less thoughtful, more impulsive), it's especially seen when you look back at that in "normal" state. And higher doses gave me a sort of brainfog, so I decided to stop using it
with Semax I felt more energized than ever so energized, in fact, that I couldn’t sleep. I also began to notice thinning in my hair, with the amount of hair I shed in the shower increasing rapidly. That’s when I decided to quit Semax.
The first day I took 1 mg of it and I noticed that my brain wasn't as foggy but not the same as being on Vyvanse. The second day and after, I felt nothing. A week later, I upped my dosage to 2 mg and it did nothing.
after taking Semax, I started feeling drowsy with mild brain pressure/fog. My thinking went from "sharp needle" to "fuzzy cotton ball." Had to take a midday nap to somewhat recover.
Negative2 drops per nostril of 0.1% (~200 mcg) · Nasal
I tried semax today for the first time. 250mcg nasal with bacwater. I have a strong headache since 5 hours. Inbetween I felt unwell, a bit dizzy and sick.
I always taken half a tablet fine with semax and I decided to take 150mg with it instead. Hours later this had put me in A&E. Luckily no serious event occured during my extreme hypertension and BPM.
Semax is the closest thing to a limitless pill I've ever taken. It has 40 years of safe Russian clinical use behind it. I've been using it for a few months and the cognitive benefits are insane.
Semax. Personally haven't noticed much difference when taking it. Will be experimenting further, but I've struggled to identify any clear benefit I could attribute to it.
I loved Semax. Then I started losing enough hair that I stopped taking it. My hair grew back afterward. I can’t prove the connection, but I wasn’t willing to keep testing it.
Bad reactionvendor-adjacent
Safety
Tier by safety barStrict CautionBalanced CautionEvidence only Caution
Seizure disorders (label) · Acute psychosis or anxiety disorders (label) · Combination with stimulants such as modafinil or amphetamines · Pregnancy or breastfeeding (label) · Children under 7 (label)
Each bead is one amino acid in the peptide's chain, coloured by its side chain: grey for non-polar, cyan for polar, blue for positively charged and fuchsia for negatively charged. Length and mix tell related peptides apart at a glance, from a two-residue dipeptide like carnosine to a 43-residue protein like thymosin beta-4. The colours describe chemistry only and predict neither effect nor safety.
non-polarpolarpositivenegative
Report grades
Every first-hand Reddit or X report is graded on its own, from glowing through positive, mixed, nothing and negative to bad reaction, and the bar shows how those grades split. Posts that look vendor-adjacent stay on the peptide's page but are left out of the counts.
GlowingPositiveMixedNothingNegativeBad reaction
% positive
The share of a peptide's graded Reddit and X reports that are glowing or positive, vendor-adjacent posts left out. A peptide with few reports is pulled toward the average of all reports, as if it had eight average ones besides its own, so two glowing posts cannot top the list. Kept peptides rank by the same reports' mean grade, shrunk the same way, and excluded ones follow in that order.
Researcher estimate
No first-hand report of this peptide has been graded yet, so the figure is the researchers' own rating out of 10 from what they read about it. It ranks alongside the computed scores until reports arrive.
Safety tier
Each peptide is tiered clean, caution or excluded from its five risk axes under the chosen safety bar. An excluded peptide has a plausible route to serious harm, so it stays listed with the reason but ranks behind every other entry, however good its reviews.
Safety bar
The safety bar sets how much risk it takes to exclude a peptide. Strict: out on any serious mechanism with little human data, or any documented serious harm. Balanced: out on documented serious harm (unless it is obvious, reversible and from a regulated product), or a serious mechanism whose harm would be silent with no human data at all. Evidence only: out only on documented serious harm in humans that is lasting, delayed or from grey-market product.
Seen harm
Documented serious adverse events in humans, from 0 for none despite real exposure to 3 for deaths or several well-documented serious harms. Serious means a hospital or emergency visit or harm lasting weeks, so a headache or a bad night does not count.
Mechanism
A plausible biological route to serious harm at the doses people use, such as growth-factor signalling, hormone-axis suppression, heart or blood-pressure effects or immune activation. It runs from 0 when none is known to 3 when a dangerous pathway has been shown in living animals.
Data gap
How little human safety data exists for the molecule actually sold, from 0 for an approved drug with large trials and years of use to 3 for no human safety data at all. A modified analogue does not inherit its parent's trials.
Silent harm
Whether the feared harm would show quickly or stay hidden, from 0 when it is obvious and goes on stopping to 3 when it is silent and delayed, like tumour promotion or slow organ damage. User reports cannot reveal a harm that takes years to appear, so a high score here limits what good reviews can tell you.
Product
The risk of what people actually buy, from 0 for a regulated pharmacy or supplement product taken by mouth or on the skin to 3 for a grey-market injectable. In one dataset of 6,441 grey-market samples, 42–71% failed basic quality criteria and 15% carried endotoxin.
Evidence
The strongest kind of study behind the peptide's effects, from an approved drug through human controlled trials and small human studies to animal work or nothing of its own. Animal results often fail to carry over to people.
Access
How people get it: as an approved drug, a compounded prescription, an over-the-counter supplement or from the grey market, where nobody checks the vial. The channel decides both the legal position and the risk of a bad batch.
Price per month
Thirty days of the typical dose, from its low end to its high end, priced at the listing a careful buyer would choose: in stock, from a shop scoring 4 of 5 on trust (third-party tested where no score is set), failing that 3, a pure pack before a blend, a European shop first, then the cheapest per mg. The range is the dose's, not the shops'. A per-dose amount counts once a day unless the dose says otherwise. Prices are in euros at ECB rates of 2026-10-29, before shipping; the shop table keeps each listing's price per mg, per gram for bulk supplements. Where no listing can be priced the researchers' own estimate stands in, and says so.
Dose users report
The middle half of the daily doses stated in at least five first-hand reports, vendor posts left out. Where its middle sits more than twice above or below the declared dose, the month is priced at it as well, since what people take is what they pay for.
Testing
Whether the shop publishes lab results: third-party tested means an independent lab checks each batch, own COA means the shop's own certificate of analysis, and no public tests means neither. A certificate shows purity, not safety.
Added peptide
Some packs sold under one peptide's name hold a second one, such as 5 mg GHK-Cu in a nasal kit, stated only in the description. Sprayed in the nose or injected it reaches the blood like an injection, so it carries the risk of that route and is tiered as the injectable form, whatever its tier on the skin. A pack whose page gives no contents list may hold more than its name.