I was intending for this review to be based more on an anecdote rather than give a compendium of personal accounts. The reason being because based on other reviewers, I’ve heard the same story. Most importantly this is a cautionary tale about taking the full dose. In the beginning of 2024, I went on a vacation with the family to upstate New York to get away from the distractions of the city. We were in a cabin where I was focusing more on my martial arts and calisthenics as opposed to lifting weights in a gym.

I brought with me a variety of samples from Ruesco, which if you purchased samples from them, you’d know that they come in small baggies with sticker labels attached. I brought with me Crack OG and Crack Reloaded among a couple of daily drivers. As I had unpacked my bags and used a couple of daily drivers to get through some of my routines, there came a day where I wanted something a bit more high stim. I decided on Crack Reloaded and determined that I would save Crack OG for when I made my way in town to try the local gym. The only problem here is that the labels fell off of both baggies. What I thought was Crack Reloaded was actually Crack OG!

If you didn’t know, Reloaded is more of a heavy hitter nootropic. Crack OG is a really hardcore stim junkie preworkout with DMHA, noopept, alpha yo, and three types of caffeine. As you can tell by this foreshadowing, I accidentally picked Crack OG. It was 5am and still dark out, the family was sleeping, I made my drink and chugged it. I made it through the first portion of my training with ease utilizing a deck of cards where black was designated for squats and red was designated for pushups. Each card that you flip, you take the face value of the card and commit to the repetition of that exercise. I worked through this with ease and the buzz started setting in. I still didn’t know that it was crack OG. 20 minutes in and it was starting to build. The buzz was intense and I really was amped to push myself further than I normally go. I breezed through the deck of cards, some forms, shadow boxing and various sets of exercises utilizing my body weight but it wasn’t enough. 45-50 minutes in and the intensity was continuing to build without any ending in sight. At this point I realized my mistake. I recognized the DMHA buzz and the intensity of my workout at this point. I decided to roll with it and continue regardless thinking something stupid like “it’s just two scoops and DMHA, I can handle this!”

I could not handle this.

My workout ended after an hour and 15 minutes and I was still feeling it. I was flying! By now that the workout was over I was taking a break, sitting down and letting the sweat run off me. The side effects were starting to set in, anxiety had made its way in to distract me from the euphoria and I started to feel a little nauseous. After about an hour and a half I ended up dry heaving and my mood had changed. I went from “I can handle this” to “did I accidentally overdose?” I showered and tried to settle myself down. While I was now more stationary and settled from the exercise, the pre was still booming hard and kicking my ass!

I was originally going to commit to four hours of work from the cabin to make up some extra time but as I logged onto my platform, I felt like I was speeding so hard that the idea of sitting still and typing on my laptop was terrifying! “Why am I so scared?” I thought to myself.

I sent an email to my supervisor and claimed I would make up my schedule over the weekend. After 2.5 hours it was still going strong and I had to do something. I was experiencing full blown panic by now and thinking “how long is this supposed to last!?” I decided to walk a mile to the nearest shop and grab a couple of beers in hopes of settling myself and also to hopefully nap it out. I don’t drink so this could potentially work. Even though it was just a mile, my fitbit was showing me to hit zone minutes and my heart rate was around 120 bpm. I purchased a couple of strong beers, made it back to the cabin and drank them, praying that it would give me some type of lethargy to nap. By this point it was around 3.5 hours since taking the pre. I managed to be able to close my eyes and get a little bit of a nap but my heart rate was still spiked when I had come out of my nap.

I kept thinking that day that it wouldn’t have been the same if I was in a gym and able to exhaust myself with heavy lifting. It is a good pre workout and definitely one you can use to break PRs. I ended up buying a tub for this reason despite having a nightmare experience.

Since then I have never exceeded more than one scoop and I was right. It is a damned good pre workout and one you can certainly use for the motivation to break a PR. 2 scoops is just too much! The flavor of the tub I got was grape and it’s fine. I can’t even remember what variety of flavor it was of the sample that I had purchased but the grape seems less offensive in taste because I do remember that sample to be stronger in flavor than what grape tastes like.

Take this as a cautionary tale, using 2 scoops may seem like a stim junkie hazing into the world of high intensity stim junkie pre workouts, but the side effects are not worth it. To this day, I cannot point out any single ingredient in particular that caused me to be such a mess. It was the full synergy of all the ingredients combined.