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An Experience with Modafinil

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Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#71

Post by strken »

noah_buddy wrote: post #45
capitalsigma wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took modafinil for years, through college and my first few years of work. I realized once I stopped that my pretty-intense social anxiety was basically 90% caused by modafinil, and I think I am a more effective person now. YMMV.

Modafinil was a bandaid for me when I had neglected what I had to do. Paired with the fact it seriously depressed social awareness and made me an unfeeling robot for 12-16 hours at minimum, I don't miss it. There are no wonder drugs better than good eats, good sleeps, good work time, and good breaks. Do all those things and you'll realize that (unless you're clinically in need of e.g. ADHD meds) you just haven't been…

People tend to view drug use as a lazy alternative to healthy living, but I think it might be better to flip it around and say that drug use (ranging all the way from caffeine and nicotine through to heroin and meth) is a symptom of something wrong. Schizophrenics, for example, are known to self-medicate with nicotine prior to their diagnosis.

I think it's important to remember the hidden underlying problem won't go away just because the visible coping mechanism does. A severely depressed person using modafinil as a crutch has to treat the depression first and foremost.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#72

Post by snek_case »

ianbutler wrote: post #67

A friend of mine has used this before and they did alternating low ~30mg doses that same someone had previously used a similar dose Adderall in highschool and early college and preferred the feeling of Modafinil. They told me they had read multiple studies before hand as well as personal accounts (such as from the venerable https://www.gwern.net/ ). That person told me that the feeling was less intense but enough to…

If you do want to use stimulants to boost productivity, it probably has to be a somewhat rare thing. I've had a handful of positive experiences with modafinil when I wasn't taking it regularly. There was this one time, I had a lot of work I needed to do but I kept procrastinating on it. I cleared up my schedule for an entire day and took modafinil in the morning. I started working and just did not stop. I was more productive than ever, all the way until 10PM. At some point during the day my mom called me and I picked up the phone. I had a normal conversation with her that laster multiple minutes, while putting together a graph for a presentation I was working on, and I felt like I was doing both things at once without any loss in efficiency. Normally, I could never have a phone conversation while also focusing on a work task, I felt superhuman in that one moment.

BUT... I later got a prescription for modafinil, which I took daily for 3 months. My experience was that you build a tolerance, just as you do with caffeine or with any other stimulant. Initially, I would take it in the morning and feel very focused for most of the day. Eventually, the stimulation would only last until noon or so, at which point I would crash and get extremely irritable. I remember the guy I shared an office with telling me to "just chill" because I kept getting frustrated at a programming issue and cursing. I was getting super pissed off at really minor things. On top of that, there were also side-effects. It made my acne quite a bit worse and my hair much more oily. This is also typical of stimulants in my experience.

I reached a point where there was zero benefit to taking modafinil anymore. It just made me have annoying mood swings, so I discontinued it, and went back to coffee, which I gradually reduced to just one coffee a day, and I felt a lot better. I haven't used modafinil in years and I don't really care to push my body like that anymore.

My general advice for people who want to try this is that there is unfortunately no free lunch with stimulants. You can use them every once in a while to get an extra boost in focus and energy, but you usually end up more tired later, like you have to pay back a debt to your system. Even just taking a stimulant for one day will lead to a little bit of tolerance buildup. You'll probably feel slightly more tired and unmotivated a day or two or three later.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#73

Post by vorpalhex »

staticassertion wrote: post #64
nostromo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've purchased prescription drugs from Indian pharmacies online and they take a while to arrive, but they do make it through customs and arrive and they are legit. The funny thing is, I mostly do it because I don't want to go to the doctor every six months to say "mother may I" for a very mild and safe statin. My insurance would pay for everything, but it's such a pain to do.

> and they are legit. How do you know? Do they have a lab certification/ is there a regulating body?

Obviously importing regulated drugs may come with their own legal quandries. However, if you were to do such a thing, you would find information on what the pills and packaging should be, their ph, their coating and their weight.

Then when you receive you order, you'd sacrifice a pill to carefully weigh it, check the coating matches, packaging and so on. If you ordered a whole bunch, you would check batch numbers and sample each batch for testing.

Obviously this isn't foolproof, but if someone is going to sell a counterfeit they aren't going to practically spend a lot of time in making it a perfect one.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#74

Post by marcan_42 »

echelon wrote: post #50
marcan_42 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one thinking there is something seriously wrong with an education system if students have to resort to drugs that keep them awake for a week to succeed in it? I mean I'm not exactly anti-medication but... wow.

Some students have ADHD or simply learn in a way that does not track with how school and university are taught. The rewards and incentives are typically orthogonal to what a person diagnosed with ADHD wants, and often times extreme measures must be taken to adapt to the rigid expectations.

That is a failure of the system to adapt to the needs of students. I have adult-diagnosed ADHD and school sucked for me too... and I'm on medication now, which makes me function normally, not stay up for a week.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#75

Post by marcan_42 »

brimble wrote: post #36
marcan_42 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one thinking there is something seriously wrong with an education system if students have to resort to drugs that keep them awake for a week to succeed in it? I mean I'm not exactly anti-medication but... wow.

"Have to", maybe not. Will perform better if they do, probably. Will be outcompeted by others if they don't, many of whom only did better because they used drugs, yes. It took me half a lifetime to really come to grips with it, but fact is, winners absolutely do use drugs. William S. Sessions' anti-drug arcade game ads lied to me.

Maybe school shouldn't be a competition with winners and losers.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#76

Post by travisjungroth »

asdff wrote: post #53
travisjungroth wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caffeine seems to stack with every stimulant. In my experience, in a way that isn’t really nice.

It makes a great stack with a sativa however. The hippy speedball.

That would be an absolute nightmare for me. I can’t stand cannabis and I doubt an elevated heart rate would make the experience any better.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#77

Post by zapdrive »

I experimented with Modafinil back in 2013 when I was working on a startup like project, where I had a lot to do in different areas (hardware, software, backend, frontend etc etc).

Modafinil really helped me concentrate. But sometimes it was also a "miss". That is, I would focus on something totally unrelated to my project. For instance, one day I spent 6 hours comparing Vegas hotel room prices over different days of a month.

The side effects were annoying, to say the least. Itchy ears and eyes, dry mouth, occasional anxiety, talkativeness etc.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#78

Post by bbreier »

majormajor wrote: post #38
marcan_42 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one thinking there is something seriously wrong with an education system if students have to resort to drugs that keep them awake for a week to succeed in it? I mean I'm not exactly anti-medication but... wow.

Cramming is less "required" then "an alternative way to get a good grade than working all semester long."

I definitely remember approximately weekly having to stay up all night to finish my regular assignments assigned the same day and due the next

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#80

Post by throwawayHN378 »

inter_netuser wrote: post #59
ipnon wrote: post #49

What's remarkable to me is that modafinil is less toxic than caffeine[0], and possibly even less addictive[1], but we all know which is illegal for recreational use and which is coffee. Regulations are sticky. The FDA follows the precautionary principle. Political game theory incentivizes restricting what the electorate can do rather than giving them more freedoms, and being blamed for whatever harm may fall upon the…

Caffeine would be illegal to possess, if it were invented yesterday. 80% of people couldn't distinguish I.V. cocaine from I.V. caffeine in some study I am unable to locate at the moment, which I think involved Nora Volkow from NIH, either as PI or collaborator.

As someone who has done a lot of IV cocaine and coffee I find this hard to believe. IV cocaine is one of the most euphoric highs in the world
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