Has anyone tried medication/vitamins to help memory and concentration?

I toyed with some Nootropics for this purpose in years past. The thing I noticed is that a fair number of them require some time to build up, the effects may be subtle, and results vary widely between individuals. ALCAR made me more alert but that was the extent of it. The Racetams either had no impact or had unpredictable effects. Finding a good stack requires controlled testing and patience (two things I didn't necessarily always have in abundance). I am not recommending this, but the two drugs that have helped me most in combination are duloxetine (an anti-depressant which also helps with anxiety) and basic caffeine (cycled appropriately). I happened on this by chance as a result of other medical needs. The more I tried to focus the harder it became to focus. This was before I understood diffuse learning.

The most critical factors for me to learn better were mostly unrelated to medication:
1) Frequent cardiovascular exercise (I like to jog most days of the week).
2) Adequate sleep (much of learning happens during sleep and you'll notice a lack thereof).
3) Develop metacognitive abilities and study methods of 'effective thinking'
4) Learn to use concepts like focused/diffuse mode of thinking. I am willing to bet you may often try to solve problems by focusing on them when divergent thinking and diffuse learning would be a better path.
5) Deliberate practice and habits will tend to dwarf your natural intelligence.
6) Create an optimal physical environment for studying that has the right level of distraction (for me I do well on a laptop with minimal additional distraction).
7) Spaced repetition is critical for learning and you might want to read a couple of books on how memories are encoded.
8) Consider context dependent learning, interleaving practice (as a part of deliberate practice), elaborate information encoding, the role emotion plays in encoding new knowledge, also try different learning modalities.
9) Understand the relationship between ability/interest and interest/ability. One begets the other and vice versa.
10) Academic topics often build on one another. Aim for mastery and settle for nothing less.

If you are really serious about wanting to improve your memory, concentration and study skills make it a point to study 'just that'. Spend plenty of time learning how to learn and what works best for you. Be completely honest with yourself about what you don't know and learn to find negative space within your subject matter. Teach to learn.

Nofap has helped me substantially. Nofap + anti-depressant + caffeine + other listed items makes learning fun and exciting for me. Excessive PMO activity doesn't really help sharpen the mind in my experience (well it may actually but it sharpens it in ways that they just won't test us on in school).

Good luck.

 

Plenty of sleep, plenty of moderate exercise, plenty of meditation, plenty of happy thoughts, PMO abstinence, and a daily cup of green tea have greatly helped me with brain fog!

 

Also, as of green tea, just found this without even searching for it: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/275206.php

 

I've pretty much tried them all when it comes to concentration and focus.

Piracetam did nothing for me except give me a headache.
Modafinil the first time i took gave me insane focus and alertness but be warned tolerance builds so i now only take it 1-2 times a week.
Ritalin was even better but its very expensive and addictive. It can easily be abused so i now stay away from it. I've been using Kratom lately and it is good albeit expensive. Various strains have different effects so you have to try out alot of them to find a perfect one.

But before trying these things make sure your diet, lifestyle and sleep is on point.

 

Just take the classic kind, with no added flavors and stuff so you know it's pure green tea.

 

Been there, done that. I tried some b12,multivitamins with folic acid,gensing multivitamin stuff but they did barely anything to improve me. Slight effects. I learnt that exercise(running especially) ,along with meditation and keeping clean helps tremendously. It took a while and my memory,concentration is still crap but significantly better than before.