r/Nootropics • u/InvalidLength • 1h ago
Discussion Isochroma (1977–2016): A Reconstruction of One of the Early Nootropics Underground's Most Unusual Self-Experimenters
Some of you will remember Isochroma, later Isochroma-Reborn: the international racetam price list, the Sunifiram discussions, the reports of up to 32.5 g of piracetam a day. His name was Jason Lalancette. He died on May 1, 2016, in Victoria, British Columbia, a little over ten years ago.
A few years ago, a user here wrote that Isochroma’s remarks about the saturation of orange sodium streetlights and the lack of “splendid dreams” described almost exactly his own piracetam experience, months after he had read them (comment). That is the kind of effect his writing had, and it is what made me start digging. After almost a year of reading, archiving and comparing material across Longecity, T-Nation, Bluelight, Reddit, Reveddit, Doom9, AVSForum, his blogs and abandoned websites, I’ve written it up (my own site):
Essay and archives
- Full essay: Isochroma: Protocol of an Uninhabitable Life
- Portal: his surviving websites, forums and projects
- Corpus: searchable collection of his posts
- Web Archive: preserved pages from his former websites
- Animescenes Backup: archive of his anime screenshot collection
- Poetry Collection: collected poems, verses and poetic passages from his writings
- Protocols: collection of his documented self-experiments, substance regimens, dosages and physiological interventions.
On r/Nootropics, his death was reported in "Isochroma is dead". A few months later, u/IsochromasSuccessor, who knew him personally, published "Isochroma's Story", still the most detailed surviving biographical account and an important source for my research.
He believed he needed piracetam simply to function. He described longstanding fatigue, cognitive difficulties and physical limitations, and experienced piracetam as a profound change in what he could think, write and accomplish. At his peak, he reported taking up to 32.5 grams daily, divided into five doses. When his supply disappeared, he described falling back into a state he considered nearly unlivable. In one post, he compared himself to a prisoner counting the hours between doses: "It's a life sentence, with me as the judge, jury, warden and prisoner all wrapped into one."
His distinction between "Depletors" and "Replenishers" ran through much of his writing. Caffeine and conventional stimulants merely borrowed energy from the organism, he believed, while piracetam, fish oil, methylene blue and eventually artificial light could restore its underlying capacity to function. The distinction was biochemically crude, but it helps explain why he regarded his experiments as attempts at repair rather than ordinary cognitive enhancement.
He combined racetams with fish oil, methylene blue, DXM, cannabis and other compounds, recording changes in cognition, dreams, visual perception and sleep. Over time he developed his own tests, including an "edge test" for the apparent sharpness of high-contrast boundaries. He examined chrome surfaces, narrow lines and door cracks, borrowing terminology from video-processing algorithms such as WarpSharp. Elsewhere he wrote that Aniracetam, Coluracetam and Sunifiram were the only racetams that had a "heart", by which he meant a particular emotional quality of consciousness that he struggled to describe. He also recorded less welcome effects: irritability, impatience, altered sleep and increasingly risky behaviour. Some he understood as costs, others as changes his improved perception could compensate for ("So there is compensation.").
From private supply problem to public infrastructure. After a piracetam supply failure in 2008, he turned his private supplier list into an international racetam price list: nine compounds, hundreds of suppliers, prices, shipping costs, payment methods and availability. He updated it almost daily, sometimes several times a day. The date doubled as a version number ("December 18.7" meant the seventh upload that day). He later wrote that he had put thousands of hours into it.
Sunifiram. In March 2012, he wrote to Prof. Fulvio Gualtieri in Florence, whose group had developed Sunifiram and Unifiram. Gualtieri's 2015 review, Unifi nootropics from the lab to the web, quotes a correspondent identified only as "John Doe" who, with high probability, was Isochroma: he wanted to order 1 g of DM235 and asked whether he would be the first human to try it. Gualtieri warned him twice that neither pharmacokinetics nor toxicology were known. About a year later, Doe told the inventors that Sunifiram was now sold online, and wrote that their dream had come true. On Longecity, Isochroma cheered when user Q became the first forum member to try it ("One small step for Q, one giant leap for mankind"). Gualtieri saw it differently: the dream had been a medicine, not a street drug. How much Isochroma actually contributed to Sunifiram's market introduction can't be established, but the movement itself is confirmed from the inventors' side.
Phenylpiracetam Hydrazide. In 2011, Isochroma mentioned a BrainMeta post of his on Piracetam Hydrazide, now apparently lost. Three years later, a Ceretropic co-owner recalled that a thread by Isochroma-Reborn had drawn his attention to the compound. He considered adding a phenyl group, suggested it to a supplier, and Ceretropic eventually sold Phenylpiracetam Hydrazide, without animal or human studies. How much of this development can be traced directly to Isochroma's original proposal remains uncertain.
His experiments also became increasingly physiological. Confronted with low measured testosterone, persistent physical limitations and what he understood as premature aging, he investigated and administered hormonal substances, documenting his endocrine self-treatment on Longecity and T-Nation. Later he constructed high-output artificial lighting systems and began treating indoor illumination as another physiological intervention, capable of changing sleep, mood and everyday functioning:
"The PHOTONIC DRUG is the best Nootropic: it's measured in LUMENS instead of MILLIGRAMS."
His writing is worth reading beyond the experimental reports. Especially in his later years, a discussion of receptor pharmacology or dosage calculations could suddenly turn into political argument, speculative technology, elaborate prose or verse. Some posts are inventive, others obscure, contradictory or difficult to follow. The language can become extravagant, full of technical imagery and peculiar turns of phrase, sometimes barely resembling an ordinary forum contribution. Whether the substances had anything to do with this is impossible to establish. His fascination with unusual ideas and his experiments with language had begun years before his nootropics use.
His life outside nootropics was almost as unusual:
- Court records, 2000–2001: a cannabis cultivation case in which he challenged the proceedings ("under protest"), plus a contemporary letter to the editor defending bodily autonomy.
- Video business, 2004: IsoChroma Video Compression, a small video-processing business in Victoria.
- Doom9: years of scripts, codec tests and bug investigations. For a single episode of Noir, he spent fourteen days manually working through 35,089 anime frames, selecting the best among nearly identical images.
- Anime projects: the work fed into ChromaSubs, a release group, and Animescenes, an archive of screenshots of ruins, cities, technological environments and artificial light.
- AVSForum: meticulously organized threads tracking LCD, plasma and OLED technology, manufacturing capacity, prices and industry developments. The OLED thread he opened in 2006 was still being linked in 2025.
- Blog: World of Decline: The Beauty of a Declining World, on Peak Oil, abandoned infrastructure, technological decline and artificial environments.
- Other experiments: unusual technical devices, video-processing methods that other users received with open scepticism, and dreams in which he inspected imaginary display technologies down to their pixel structure.
The essay is divided into three chapters and a coda. Chapter I reconstructs his biography, video work and technical projects. Chapter II follows his body as an experimental apparatus, from Longecity and piracetam through racetam procurement, experimental substances and endocrine self-treatment to artificial light. Chapter III examines Isochroma-Reborn on Reddit, his political writing and his attempts to diagnose the wider world. The Coda looks at what survived him and how I found him in the first place.
What I'm still looking for. Much of his biography survives only through scattered posts and second-hand recollections, and I've tried to distinguish documented facts from uncertain details. Specifically, I'd be grateful for:
- his lost BrainMeta post on Piracetam Hydrazide, possibly relevant to the later development of Phenylpiracetam Hydrazide
- the original Bluelight posts
- logs or screenshots from his IRC channel #ARTTherapy on Rizon
- his posts on 1Fast400 and BrainMeta (Smart Drug Resources)
- anyone who knew him, corresponded with him or had direct involvement in the early racetam supply networks (including u/IsochromasSuccessor, if you read this)
Memories, corrections and missing sources are all welcome, especially material that never made it into the public archives.
