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An Experience with Modafinil

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Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#291

Post by akimball »

Mezzie wrote: post #231
snek_case wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The "knowing" may possibly be creating the result you observe.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#292

Post by ghufran_syed »

nfw2 wrote: post #269

Modafinil had only major flaw in my experience, but it was significant enough for me to stop taking it; it made it very difficult to stick to a 24-hour circadian rhythm. To illustrate, if I got a full night sleep, then took modafinil, I would be up for easily 18 hours without feeling any urge to sleep...which seems great until it's 5am, and you need to be at work again in 4 hours. The apparent solution to the problem…

Some people try taking a smaller dose to shorten the duration of action

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#293

Post by iammjm »

saganus wrote: post #273
iammjm wrote: post #256

I've been using Modafinil daily for about 2,5 years and I am currently under its effect. I buy it online and pay with Bitcoins. I use armodafinil if I want more focus, and I use modafinil if I am tired. I don't take the full dose, which is 150mg (armodafinil) /200mg (modafinil)- I break the tablets into 4 and pop them if I feel like I am unfocused or tired. In the course of the day, I rarely take more than 1 full dos…

I had a friend that liked the effects of Modafinil, but would complain of bad headaches every time they took some. Even less than 1 quarter of tablet would be enough to produce the bad effects. Is that something that happens just to some people or is there a way to avoid the headaches? I'm curious about trying, but since I used to suffer migraines (not anymore fortunately) I am worried that I will have headaches or t…

I suspect that his headaches might have been due to dehydration - Modafinil does indeed make me pee a little bit more/more often, but since I am drinking water constantly I don't consider this a negative side effect and I also don't suffer consequences such as headaches. But I am fortunately healthy, fit and relatively young (30) and only very rarely suffer headaches. Before I decided to use Modafinil I did research its side effects as well as potential risks and every couple of months I check the newest studies to see if new data came up - TLDR: some people indeed experience some headaches and/or nausea and in very, very rare cases some people experience pretty bad allergic skin reactions. But then again some people die of peanut allergy so... Modafinil has been there since the 70s, there are even some studies about its long-term use (10+ years) and its side effects and it looks pretty chill. I think the English Wiki Page for Modafinil is pretty well researched and a good place to start if you want to read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#294

Post by jasonladuke0311 »

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,…

Gonna pile on with everyone else and suggest you get tested for ADHD. This is a pretty classic symptom from what I understand. This is basically how I feel with Adderall. I had no idea how "normal" things could feel.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#295

Post by openknot »

madaxe_again wrote: post #204
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 used it once, for a week-long slog on an impossibly short timescale project - it just made sleep an absolute irrelevance, and I was able to just sit and code from Sunday to the following Tuesday. The delivery was on time, the client congratulated “the team” (lol), and our business gained a reputation as being able to pull off the impossible. I felt fine for the duration. Two things, though. One, that week does n…

>I may as well have been looking at someone else’s code in a language I’d never worked with before.

Was there any memory or retention of C# and .net at all (e.g. if you tried to learn it later, was it easier to pick up, or was the memory completely gone)?

I'm curious about what happened after, too. Were you rewarded with a raise/promotion, or was there no reward so you moved companies? Faced with an impossible deadline, I've read it's better to just let the deadline slip because it's not worth the burnout or cost to mental health (because few deadlines are truly life-or-death), so I'm wondering whether pushing through was worth it in your case.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#296

Post by CountDrewku »

krageon wrote: post #290
CountDrewku wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ALL LIFE is competition regardless of whether it's capitalistic or not. People need it or they're miserable. Competition is not a bad thing.

Maybe all of your life is competition, but mine certainly is not. It's an unhealthy attitude to have in your private life as far as I'm concerned.

I did not say all my life is competition, it was a generalization that life cannot exist without competition. Reading comprehension bud.

It's a natural attitude that's innate to human survival. You need competition or you will be a miserable mentally unhealthy person. You're in denial if you don't realize this truth.

This ridiculous socialist utopia where everyone is at peace doing finger painting all day doesn't exist. It's a good way for your society to collapse though. Competition is not some artificial outcome produced by capitalist economic systems.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#297

Post by beaconstudios »

replwoacause wrote: post #251

So weird... I just had a dream about Modafinil last night for no apparent reason and then I wake up to see this post on HN. What an odd coincidence. I haven't thought about Modafinil in years but back when 'Limitless' came out and I was in my mid-twenties I experimented with it very briefly, along with a host of other "nootropics", but the risk of Stevens-Johnson syndrome put me off of it pretty quickly. It still sho…

from what I've read, SJS is actually triggered by a number of different pharmaceuticals including paracetamol - it's more of a person-caused condition than a medicine-caused condition, if you get what I mean.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#298

Post by CountDrewku »

akimball wrote: post #285
CountDrewku wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ALL LIFE is competition regardless of whether it's capitalistic or not. People need it or they're miserable. Competition is not a bad thing.

Competition is a bad thing when it squeezes out cooperative strategies with superior outcomes. This can be expected to be more frequent in a society perfuse with pro-competitive and anti-cooperative incentives. Competition is conceptually aligned with defection strategies. The fitness landscape generally has fragile optima at cooperative strategies. That said, competitive substrategies may contribute to the beneficia…

Yes, it's a sliding scale like everything.

The idea that competition should not exist and is some outcome of "evil" capitalism is absolute ridiculousness. I was responding directly to that asinine comment.

Life without competition doesn't exist, nor should it.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#299

Post by px43 »

Apfel wrote: post #215
r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I'm afraid you're definitely wrong on this. I've used Modafinil extensively at several different doses. Even at a quarter pill (50mg) you will struggle to feel even remotely tired if you take it after 9am (assuming you go to bed at a normal-ish time).

You should probably be saying "I" instead of "you". Anecdotally, I've never had trouble going to sleep even a couple hours after having modafinil. If anything, it's a more peaceful transition to sleep too. Modafinil makes me feel relaxed and refreshed. Like going to bed after taking a shower, or being in a hot tub or something.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#300

Post by jasonladuke0311 »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #94
thePostFuturist wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, part…

> Ted Chiang's 1991 short story Understand is worthwhile.

Great story, as are most of his. It reminded me of the Dark Forest Theory [0] from the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy [1].

[0] https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/the-dark-forest-theo... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past

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