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An Experience with Modafinil

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Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#321

Post by an9n »

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.

It does seem to be a thing with Modafinil - I got a rash on my forehead after trying it. You definitely have to be careful with it, productivity gains are insane, but it's a double edged sword and will easily knock your normal sleeping patterns.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#322

Post by bitcurious »

Just to have a diverging pov, I tried prescribed off-label modafinil for ADHD, because I was concerned about potential dependency on Adderall. It wasn’t nearly as effective as adderall, and it gave me a general sense of unease, like something about me was slightly off but not in a way I could pin down. Very uncomfortable. Ended up throwing away most of the bottle.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#323

Post by actually_a_dog »

kortex wrote: post #258
actually_a_dog wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all seriousness, taking it sublingually might actually be extremely effective. Sublingual delivery tends to be more effective with lipophillic substances than hydrophilic substances. Caffeine is a bit weird in that it is hydrophilic, but, it is sufficiently lipophyllic to cross cell membranes and penetrate the blood/brain barrier, which is what makes me suspect it would work out well.

Sublingual caffeine is definitely a thing. There is caffeinated gum you can get on Amazon. You can feel it kick in almost immediately.

Huh. Technically, that would probably be considered buccal (via the cheek) delivery, but, close enough, right? I had no idea caffeinated gum kicked in significantly faster than pills or drinks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buccal_administration

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#324

Post by bryanrasmussen »

dpark wrote: post #309
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I heard it from him, although I haven't tried anything personally, in Denmark there are some restrictions about importing liquid caffeine, he hates to drink coffee and also soft drinks, but getting caffeine from bubble gum does not provide the same level of caffeine and the water with caffeine drinks you import do not have as high a level of caffeine as soft drinks for some reason so he had to import his own and m…

Ah, I misread. I thought you said import from Denmark. Can you not buy caffeine pills in Denmark? A quick search gives conflicting info. I don’t know what I would even do with liquid caffeine. But again, I don’t want caffeine badly enough to be looking for alternative ways to get it.

well this is second hand from him, so that also makes it about 12 years old, but I figured it seemed like the kind of thing they would keep if not get stricter about.

The problem of course is that they want to make sure you don't take too much caffeine and have a problem, so they want to limit the strength of what you can get and my understanding from him was the strength was limited so that it was hard to get anything into you with the strength of a cup of espresso, as ridiculous as that sounds but nanny-statism is a thing.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#325

Post by dpark »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #136
dpark wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If caffeine was both illegal and as in demand as cocaine vs supply then people would indeed kill for it.

Your hypothetical situation defines caffeine as being illegal and as in demand as cocaine. So basically you said if caffeine were exactly like cocaine then it would be exactly like cocaine. This is technically true but also vacuous.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#326

Post by tvanantwerp »

I experimented with modafinil for a week once. Early on, it seemed great—I was productive and had a good mood. By the end of the week, I really didn't feel any different from baseline, and it was exacerbating my bad habit of clenching my jaw during focused work, leading to soreness in my face by the end of the day. I did not perceive the benefits to be enough to continue.

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#328

Post by SubiculumCode »

samatman wrote: post #229
eurasiantiger wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

what are the consequences of that inhibition??

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#329

Post by 0des »

inter_netuser wrote: post #319
0des wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ritalin does damage to DNA, if that counts for anything.

To DNA? as in cancers? Pls send some studies, very interesting.

Sure. The early history of ritalin was the first sign to me that pharmatech industry owns their regulators. Check out the follow up research on 8-hydroxyguanine glycosylase as an indicator of oxidative DNA damage in response to the 2005 nih publications asserting no increased biomarkers, its somewhat surprising on both sides for Ritalin and the popular amphetamine alternative as well.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00702-010-0408-5

Re: An Experience with Modafinil

#330

Post by fragmede »

inter_netuser wrote: post #316
CoastalCoder wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If anyone tells you they understand the brain - they are lying. The only certainty we know is it’s located in your head and weighs a few pounds. That’s pretty much it. The absolute best neuroscience program at the absolute best university would essentially read from an outdated curriculum (which means it’s from the last semester, in neuroscience that’s ancient history), supplemented with current studies, and you will…

That's only half true.

It's true that we don't know everything there is to know the brain, and critically we have zero idea where consciousness actually comes from; where 'you' exist within your brain.

But we do know a whole hell of a lot of details. A bunch of the different chemicals inside of the brain, how they influence behavior and mood. We know a whole bunch about different receptors and have drugs to modify their behavior. We're now able to use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to stimulate nerve cells in the brain and are able to use that to help people suffering from depression, OCD, and to help mathematical cognition [1].

Our knowledge is hampered by the difficulty of research in this area. The cost of imaging techniques - specifically SPECT scans which use 5-7 Tesla machines which use liquid helium which is super difficult to work with. This means there's not really a way to test exactly which medication will help a given individual other than to give it to them, but don't mistake that for a total lack of knowledge about how things work. We do actually know the method of action on how those drugs work, which ones are agonists and which ones are antagonist and which don't mix.

Better real-world treatment options would be really awesome! It sucks that we can't do any better. Cheap and better imaging options would really change the status quo and allow better real-world treatment for mental illness. But what we do know takes years, if not decades for a person to learn, so even though things are still changing in the field, even though we can't answer some fundamental questions about consciousness, we understand a whole hell of a lot more than "it's located in your head and weighs a few pounds".

[1] https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019...

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