My 16-month theanine self-experiment

This is nice. I love that people can be so rigorous and honest as well.

I just want to add that what brings my stress down (although I didn’t research it so thoroughly) is small rituals. Things to focus on, to do well, to “take a moment”. For me it’s making morning coffee. Making/baking bread, filling the dishwasher.

Maybe I’m borderline OCD. But maybe many people are and just the rituals of taking pills (actually) relieves some stress. It seems so based on the study.

Edit Fwiw, being about 20 years into my scientific career I’ve also come to prefer just looking at the data.

> It seems so based on the study.

I would argue that it does not, as we have no "no pill" baseline.

All it shows is that if the author is stressed, chances are he is less stressed one hour later.