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An Experience with Modafinil

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Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#221

Post by samatman »

pennaMan wrote: post #84
inter_netuser wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>80% of people couldn't distinguish I.V. cocaine from I.V. caffeine in some study I am unable to locate at the moment That is complete bullshit.

It doesn't have to be.

If we imagine a study where the users have never had either I.V. caffeine nor cocaine, well, how are you supposed to reliably distinguish between two stimulants hitting your heart and brain directly, without passing through any sort of blood brain barrier, when having that experience for the first time?

Now, it would be a useless study for us. But not useless for the chucklehead who padded his or her CV with it.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#222

Post by samatman »

dpark wrote: post #110
inter_netuser wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You remember the topic and the name of the PI but still can’t find this study? I am relatively certain that’s because it does not exist. The idea that caffeine is comparable to cocaine is pretty nuts. People murder to get cocaine. When’s the last time anyone murdered for Starbucks? I can totally believe that if you give someone who’s never done drugs a high dose of caffeine and tell them it’s cocaine, they might beli…

> When’s the last time anyone murdered for Starbucks?

Allow me to introduce you to a bit of unpleasantness called the Opium Wars.

Which could also be called the "Give us the Tea, or Else" wars.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#223

Post by Mezzie »

Ffonts21 wrote: post #219

Modafinil is great while you use it for some specific situations, but it’s a bad idea to take one everyday. From my experience, doing even half dosage everyday made my body feel sick, my muscles were tense all day and overly exhausted. There are other drugs that are way better than modafinil.

I think it's because of the long half-life: it's about 15 hours.

I have over half a bottle from when I was prescribed it (for MS fatigue) and I can definitely still feel in my system after a day. And yeah, if I take it more than, say, 2 days in a row, I start having a bad time.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#224

Post by throwawayke »

ei8htyfi5e wrote: post #25
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…

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…

I take 200mg every morning. I can still have a midday nap.

I'm not narcoleptic but somehow it just doesn't work that well for me.

Dexamphetamine worked but ooh boy the side effects like munting.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#225

Post by davidwritesbugs »

Ffonts21 wrote: post #219

Modafinil is great while you use it for some specific situations, but it’s a bad idea to take one everyday. From my experience, doing even half dosage everyday made my body feel sick, my muscles were tense all day and overly exhausted. There are other drugs that are way better than modafinil.

like ...?

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#226

Post by actually_a_dog »

ghshephard wrote: post #105
pennaMan wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>80% of people couldn't distinguish I.V. cocaine from I.V. caffeine in some study I am unable to locate at the moment That is complete bullshit.

Curious - do you have something to back that up? Caffeine is pretty toxic ( I think the LD50 is something like 200 mg/KG of body weight. 20 grams would kill most people) and I don't find it surprising that an IV mix would have pretty serious effects.

While it’s true that if the LD50 is 200mg/kg, you’d expect roughly 50% of humans weighing about 100kg to die from it, I kind of suspect it doesn’t quite work that way. Dose/response relationships are frequently logarithmic, which means that after a certain point, you have to increase the dose by a lot to get just a little more effect.

Also, LD50 values are always extrapolated from single dose tests on lab animals, typically rats or mice. Not only is that not how a human would end up ingesting 10+ grams of caffeine, the LD50 varies considerably from one animal to the next.

For instance:

> [S]ome LD50s for dichlorvos, an insecticide commonly used in household pesticide strips, are listed below:[0]

> Oral LD50 (rat): 56 mg/kg

> Oral LD50 (rabbit) 10 mg/kg

> Oral LD50 (pigeon:): 23.7 mg/kg

> Oral LD50 (rat): 56 mg/kg

> Oral (mouse): 61 mg/kg

> Oral (dog): 100 mg/kg

> Oral (pig): 157 mg/kg

As you can see, these numbers don’t seem to scale up in any intuitive way when you start crossing animal species.

——-

[0]: https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/chemicals/ld50.html

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#227

Post by samatman »

bloqs wrote: post #142
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…

Be extremely careful with it. A friend of mine developed some horrifying skin issues after relatively light use.

This is a real and very rare thing.

It isn't an "extremely careful" type of situation. It's a "take 50mg first and be aware that skin outbreaks can be caused by modafinil" type of situation.

This isn't well understood because there are so few cases, but it's believed to be effectively an allergic/histamine response, and I've never heard of a case of it developing after regular use (sensitization), only initial exposure.

In terms of how often modafinil causes Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (or whatever actually happens here) it seems to be about like aspirin and Reyes syndrome, but without susceptibility being limited to the very young.

A pill is 200mg and that's a lot of molecule (I find it a high dose as well, ymmv). Everyone has to find their own risk threshold, but "take a quarter pill at first just in case you're the 1/100,000 who gets a rash" is my safe bet for risk mitigation.

For context, my first -afinil was adrafinil, which I imported from France around 2000 on the strength of some blog about how it was a preferred treatment for ADD (the H wasn't a thing yet) there. Adrafinil metabolizes to modafinil, and France is a pretty big place with a unified modern healthcare system, if this adverse effect were more than very uncommon I figure it would have shown up strongly enough to have prevented that in the first place.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#228

Post by realce »

bserge wrote: post #190
throwawayHN378 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've had cocaine a few times now and while everyone is saying it's euphoric, I keep saying it's the most normal I've ever felt. Not "euphoric", I've done other stuff that felt suuuuper good (in an actual euphoria sense) so I believe can compare. But normal . The cloud of thoughts gone, I am able to make myself do anything with one thought, I have energy, the aches are gone, the tinnitus is gone, I don't second guess,…

Coke and Amph making you feel "normal" means you 100% have ADD.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#229

Post by samatman »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #140
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…

Coffee is not just caffeine. How are people so ignorant about that?

It's pretty easy to not know that coffee has monoamine oxidase inhibitors in it.

Most people can't answer the question "Is caffeine a xanthine or a phenethylamine" any better than chance. Good luck explaining there's a second drug that doesn't really get you high, but mildly inhibits the metabolism of a whole bunch of native 'drugs' in your brain as well as the caffeine.

No I mean that, good luck, it's fun to get as far as you can with that stuff. Just wanted to answer your second question.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#230

Post by tonyarkles »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #210
bserge wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had cocaine a few times now and while everyone is saying it's euphoric, I keep saying it's the most normal I've ever felt. Not "euphoric", I've done other stuff that felt suuuuper good (in an actual euphoria sense) so I believe can compare. But normal . The cloud of thoughts gone, I am able to make myself do anything with one thought, I have energy, the aches are gone, the tinnitus is gone, I don't second guess,…

I know this is kind of an obvious follow up to your comment, but, have you been tested for ADHD? You described exactly how my brain reacts to mixed amphetamine salts (AKA Adderall). Caffeine doesn’t really do much for me, either, incidentally.

I was diagnosed last year and the psychiatrist I was seeing worked at a clinic that primarily sees inner city patients with much different health profiles than a mild mannered engineer. This is one of my favourite exchanges from the intake meeting:

“So, the first time you tried cocaine, were you surprised that you didn’t react the way everyone else did? Did it calm you down instead of getting you keyed up?”

“I’ve never done cocaine”

“Look, yes, some doctors might disqualify you for stimulant prescriptions for admitting to past substance abuse, but it doesn’t bother me at all. I actually do some research at $local_university specifically looking at how properly managed ADHD dramatically reduces the chance of substance abuse.”

“Serious, I’ve smoked pot, I’ve done mushrooms, but I’ve never tried coke. Had lots of opportunities if I wanted to, but it didn’t appeal to me”

“Huh! With lots of the patients that come through here, they see me for the first time after casually mentioning to a GP that they’re worried they’re weird when coke doesn’t work right for them!”

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