An Experience with Modafinil • Hacker News Board

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#231

Post by Mezzie » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

snek_case wrote: post #72

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 pr…

Yup. I have a prescription for modafinil, but I only use it when desperate times call for desperate measures. (Like having to lead a session but I'm having a terrible pain day).

I know whenever I use it I'm going to pay for it later.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#232

Post by Enginerrrd » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #220

pengaru wrote: post #82

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, which I think involved Nora Volkow from NIH, either as PI or collaborator. All this tells me is that I'm clearly consuming caffeine incorrectly in the form of coffee and/or tea.

Or, and hear me out, people outside of cocaine's traditional region are using it wrong. The past being a different country, I was fortunate in the early Noughts to be able to purchase Bolivian coca tea bags from an early online drug dealer called Amazon dot com. They were a fantastic addition to the tea shelf. I would favor a cup of the coca tea when energy was low going into an evening with social plans. Even, brigh…

Bingo.

Coca tea is awesome.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#233

Post by samatman » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

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…

Big ol' ymmv on this one.

I've run years on end on a 50/5 stack, 50mg 15 minutes after waking, 5 days a week.

Energy levels on the weekend could be low but hard to separate that from working hard all week. It was sustainable.

Now if you get a real streak going, the two days after discontinuing you'll feel like an idiot. Hyperbolic tapering is a reliable solution to this: go 200/100/50/0 instead of 200/0, give your brain a fighting chance.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#234

Post by dotancohen » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

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,…

  > This is what people like Bezos and Musk must be like

And now you too know the powdery white secret to success.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#235

Post by samatman » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

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…

Small correction: adrafinil is a prodrug to modafinil and is less potent, it turns into modafinil after liver action. It also makes your pee smell more, if anything.

I expect you're thinking of armodafinil, the isolated r-isomer. I've taken it a few times, it's more potent by weight than modafinil but I'm unconvinced the chiral group is anywhere near so decisive as it is with amphetamine, where the laevo-rotary molecule is useless unless you have a head cold.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#236

Post by CoastalCoder » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #212

tactile-setter wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caffeine and modafinil shouldn’t be compared, as they have vastly different activity, history of use, and understanding of effects. This is merely an anecdote, but I was prescribed modafinil for narcoleptic symptoms. Compared to traditional psychostimulants, I found it to be ineffective with a more severe side effect profile. Of course, YMMV.

As another 2 data points: My brother has narcolepsy, and finds modafinil much better than amphetamines. He says he has zero side effects with modafinil, and it makes him much less jittery than amphetamines. I have CFS, and sometimes need a stimulant if I must stay awake. I've tried amphetamines, but they make me really jittery and a bit anxious and snappy - I feel "tweaked", and it's not pleasant. By contrast, modafi…

Asking as a layman: What's the current understanding as to why modafinil and stimulants affect different people so differently?

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#237

Post by tbs_ » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #201

inter_netuser wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dosing usually would be dialed-in to provide roughly identical autonomic effects (at least) and then graded increased doses. otherwise it would be a pointless study. here is a very old one, but oral not i.v.: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4900434/ 5mg/10mg amphetamine sulphate vs 300mg and 600mg of caffeine (all oral). The study scales ended up being skewed because one subject had paradoxical response and felt rela…

>The study scales ended up being skewed because one subject had paradoxical response and felt relaxed instead on amphetamines, lol. That happens to me and I want to research what it means but your link doesnt seem to work

It means you could have ADD/ADHD.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#238

Post by sprizzla » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

tactile-setter wrote: post #197

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 and modafinil shouldn’t be compared, as they have vastly different activity, history of use, and understanding of effects. This is merely an anecdote, but I was prescribed modafinil for narcoleptic symptoms. Compared to traditional psychostimulants, I found it to be ineffective with a more severe side effect profile. Of course, YMMV.

what side effects did you experience? (if you don't mind me asking)

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#239

Post by jquery » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

inter_netuser wrote: post #118

cjohnson318 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ever heard of the mormon tea? They just drink ephedrine instead of caffeine.

Mormon tea is merely the folk name of a plant, it doesn’t mean they all drink tea made from it.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#240

Post by gadders » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

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've taken it twice. Once for an overnight implementation, and once as a pre-workout for a strongman competition.

There used to be a vitamin for sale in the UK called Berocca that had the slogan "You but on a good day." Modafinil for me felt like me on a really, really good day.