Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), a struggling author suffering from writer's block, living in New York, is

stressed by an approaching deadline. His girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish), frustrated with his lack of
progress and financial dependence, breaks up with him. Later, Eddie happens to run into Vernon
(Johnny Whitworth), the estranged brother of Eddie's ex-wife, Melissa (Anna Friel). Vernon, involved
with a pharmaceutical company, gives Eddie a sample of a new "smart drug", NZT-48. After taking
the pill, Eddie finds himself able to learn and analyze information at a superhuman rate and recall
memories from his distant past, with the only apparent side effect being a change in the color of
Eddie's irises while on the drughis eyes becoming an intense shade of electric blue. Under the
influence, he cleans his messy apartment and writes ninety pages of his book.
The next day, the effects having worn off, he seeks out Vernon in an attempt to get more. While
Eddie is out running an errand, Vernon is murdered. Eddie returns, calls the police and then
discovers Vernon's NZT stash just before they arrive, taking it for himself. After giving a statement at
the precinct, Eddie returns home and begins ingesting the drug daily. With the help of the drug's
amazing effects, Eddie spends a few weeks cleaning up his lifefinishing his book, getting fit, and
making friends with a group of young jet-setters, who take him on vacation to Europe, where he
mingles with the rich. During all this, Eddie tests out his enhanced learning abilities; he becomes a
proficient piano player in just three days, as well as becoming fluent in several languages.
Testing his analytical skills on the stock market, Eddie quickly makes large returns on small
investments. Realizing he requires more capital, he borrows one hundred thousand dollars from a
Russian loan shark, Gennady (Andrew Howard), and successfully makes a return of two million
dollars. He increases his NZT dosage and begins to rekindle his relationship with Lindy.
Eddie's prodigious success leads to a meeting with a finance tycoon, Carl Van Loon (Robert De
Niro), who as a test asks Eddie to advise him on a merger with Hank Atwood's (Richard Bekins)
company. Walking through Manhattan after the meeting, Eddie starts experiencing hallucinations
and the sense of time skipping forward, noticing that several hours have suddenly passed of which
he has no memory. As this effect recurs over the course of the day and night he finds himself at a
nightclub, a hotel party, in a hotel room with a blonde woman (Caroline Winberg), and in a subway
station where he easily subdues several muggers who attack him (thanks to the effects of NZT).
When this series of blackouts finally ends, he finds himself standing on the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn,
18 hours having passed for which he cannot account. He slowly limps home. Later, Eddie sees a
news report detailing the murder of the blonde woman whom he had presumably slept with, but he is
unable to remember whether or not he was the killer.
Eddie meets with Melissa and discovers that she too had been on NZT. She informs him that when
she attempted to stop taking it, she had experienced a severe mental rebound effect, as well as a

limp like Eddie, and that there are several people who have died after stopping dosing. On his way
home, Eddie is accosted by Gennady, who takes Eddie's last NZT pill. Eddie visits Lindy and asks
her to retrieve his backup stash, which he had hidden in her apartment. On her way back, she is
followed by a man (Tomas Arana) who'd been stalking Eddie. He corners Lindy in a park and kills
two random guys who try to protect her. Eddie tells her to take an NZT pill. The pill enables her to
escape and she returns the stash to Eddie.