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An Experience with Modafinil

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Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#91

Post by xboxnolifes »

marcan_42 wrote: post #75
brimble wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

School is just a part of life, and life has limited resources. There will always be winners and losers. At least, until (and if) we reach a point where the total sum of resources exceeds the total demand for them.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#92

Post by jack_pp »

oceanghost wrote: post #85
nojs wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I stayed up for finals for a week straight with maybe 2 hours of sleep total I’m confused when I read anecdotes like this. Are you staying you literally slept for 2 hours over the course of 7 days, averaging 17 minutes of sleep per night for a week? I think that’s very unlikely!

It's possible but unlikely. You physically cannot sleep on these drugs without something like clonazepam. So I have no doubt a series of bad decisions could lead to someone being up that long. However, psychosis usually sets in around ~96 hours of sleep deprivation. It is however possible that this individual is unique or resistant, or maybe just his youth helped him. When I was 16 and MTV still played music-- I coul…

I've once given it to a friend without telling him what it was exactly and he sure did sleep through it, he said he didn't feel anything at all and he was up from the night before (was in vacation). Asked him how he felt afterward and he reported no issues sleeping a couple of hours after taking it.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#93

Post by oceanghost »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #89
oceanghost wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible but unlikely. You physically cannot sleep on these drugs without something like clonazepam. So I have no doubt a series of bad decisions could lead to someone being up that long. However, psychosis usually sets in around ~96 hours of sleep deprivation. It is however possible that this individual is unique or resistant, or maybe just his youth helped him. When I was 16 and MTV still played music-- I coul…

I'm sorry, this is rubbish. One of the reasons Modafinil is useful is that it will help you stay awake and alert for long periods AND when you want to sleep you still can do. It isn't like speed.

You know not of what you speak.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#94

Post by octoberfranklin »

thePostFuturist wrote: post #69
ei8htyfi5e wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took it heavily in grad school. Prescribed off label for adhd. You can be in any state of exhaustion, take a modafinil, and an hour later feel like you just woke up on a Sunday morning after sleeping in. It’s nuts. The military uses it for fighter pilots. You can take it for days and only lose minimal amounts of reaction timing. At my peak, I stayed up for finals for a week straight with maybe 2 hours of sleep tota…

The rumour is Limitless (the movie with Bradley Cooper in the early '10s) was modeled on Modafinil, the side effects being "inspired by" as well. I didn't have the peripheral vision failures to register, but the death like fatigue is real.

Limitless is the film version of Alan Glynn's book The Dark Fields. It was published in 2001, so it would've been written before or at most a year or two after modafinil got FDA approval, and long before modafinil was popularized by Wired, etc in the mid-2000s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Fields

The book is really, really good. Much darker than the film, however. The ending is completely different, particularly the implications of the last paragraph.

If you're on a Dark Fields kick, Ted Chiang's 1991 short story Understand is worthwhile. Geekier and not as philosophically weighty, but way more fun.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#95

Post by [deleted] »

marcan_42 wrote: post #75
brimble wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

[deleted]

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#96

Post by mise_en_place »

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.

Be careful with this line of thinking. It can lead you to justify some extremely unhealthy habits. You'll justify it by saying it's fine, you're getting things done. But the cost will always be there, either physical or mental.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#97

Post by cjohnson318 »

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.

Shooting in the dark here, but I imagine dose size is an important variable in a study like this. At 500mg, I'm pretty sure a member of the LDS* could tell the difference between coffee and cocaine.

[*] I'm only calling out the LDS community here because they don't consume coffee, or cocaine, generally speaking.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#98

Post by marpstar »

jack_pp wrote: post #87
brotchie wrote: post #12

Modafinil is a pretty amazing drug. The come down after one use isn’t too bad. But if you’ve been using it daily for a week, the comedown is BRUTAL: pretty much feel like you have zero energy and feel like laying prone for 8 hours. Once did 48 straight awake on it and felt wide awake 36 hours in… Distinctly remember the 1st time I took it. Was perhaps 8pm at night and I swore it was 8am in the morning and I’d just ha…

By comedown you mean sleep debt or have you been using it like caffeine, got your required 8 hours but when you didn't use it one day you felt lethargic?

Not GP, but for me it really seemed to affect my sleep quality in addition to keeping me up later. I started by taking 100mg at 8AM and another 100mg at 12PM. Any later and I'd still be awake at 2AM.

The lethargy and brain fog went away if I dosed again, but that only compounds the problems.

I still dose when I need a guaranteed day of focus, but I really try not to use it on consecutive days.

YMMV

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#99

Post by jimbob45 »

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.

If you have that study on hand, please please post it. It’s worth its own discussion if that’s real.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#100

Post by aunty_helen »

jack_pp wrote: post #87
brotchie wrote: post #12

Modafinil is a pretty amazing drug. The come down after one use isn’t too bad. But if you’ve been using it daily for a week, the comedown is BRUTAL: pretty much feel like you have zero energy and feel like laying prone for 8 hours. Once did 48 straight awake on it and felt wide awake 36 hours in… Distinctly remember the 1st time I took it. Was perhaps 8pm at night and I swore it was 8am in the morning and I’d just ha…

By comedown you mean sleep debt or have you been using it like caffeine, got your required 8 hours but when you didn't use it one day you felt lethargic?

Sleep debt. It's very much burning the candle at both ends. It can also be pretty terrible for your sleep patterns even for a few days after.

As another commenter mentioned, used judiciously, it's amazing.

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