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Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice

nymag.com

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Re: Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice

#61

Post by argonaut »

lake99 wrote: post #50

> “Not fuzzy-headed,” he says, “but crisp. A crisp softness to it.” Soon he was experiencing a level of concentration he’d never imagined. “My senses sort of shifted to the visual, and my auditory sense went down. Sounds didn’t even register. It was like walking around on a winter day when it just snowed. It was very easy to stay visually focused.” Placebo effect? I understand that drugs have slightly different effec…

I completely disagree.

1. The effect is extremely noticeable, as noticeable as a headache is (whatever the opposite of a headache would be).

2. I did read a study which found evidence that a particular genotype affects whether someone finds modafinil effective. I happen to have that genotype correlated with modafinil effectiveness.

Re: Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice

#62

Post by lake99 »

argonaut wrote: post #61
lake99 wrote: post #50

> “Not fuzzy-headed,” he says, “but crisp. A crisp softness to it.” Soon he was experiencing a level of concentration he’d never imagined. “My senses sort of shifted to the visual, and my auditory sense went down. Sounds didn’t even register. It was like walking around on a winter day when it just snowed. It was very easy to stay visually focused.” Placebo effect? I understand that drugs have slightly different effec…

I completely disagree. 1. The effect is extremely noticeable, as noticeable as a headache is (whatever the opposite of a headache would be). 2. I did read a study which found evidence that a particular genotype affects whether someone finds modafinil effective. I happen to have that genotype correlated with modafinil effectiveness.

What dosage have you tried? I have always been very careful to not abuse it. So, I'd take just 100mg as soon as I woke up. Perhaps upping my dosage will bring out those effects.

Re: Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice

#63

Post by boon »

runarb wrote: post #39

So a few months ago, Borden ordered a three-week supply by mail. (“It was a piece of cake,” he says.) Can one really just order prescription medicine through the mail or internet like that? I thought most of thus online pharmacy was just a scam. I guess there would be no way of telling if the pills one got was the real deal or some fake ones containing possibly poisonous ingredients...

If you were going to run a site that made money from selling "illegal" drugs to people over the internet, would you want to poison your customers? Aside from losing money in the long term, you're going to draw quite the ire when it's discovered you supplied the lethal dose.

This is the largest fallacy in the "we must regulate" side of drugs.

Re: Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice

#64

Post by bluetooth »

Afforess wrote: post #28
bluetooth wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, you end up paying for the tolerance that builds up extremely quickly when you take Modafinil multiple times.

It's interesting that tolerance is always mentioned when modafinil is brought up, because no research studies have found any evidence of the reported tolerance, and users of said drug have no incentive to hurt the modafinils image. I wonder if repeated use simply makes the user feel that the changes are normal, when in effect, they are in a high functioning state.

I was speaking anecdotally, both from my experiences and the many experiences I've read about online. Modafinil is a great replacement for sleep once in a while, but repeated usage ends up making it useless. It's not that you don't notice the effects, more like you notice the lack of them. Still tired, unable to focus, etc.

Re: Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice

#65

Post by tomsthumb »

RobertHoudin wrote: post #53
DigitalSea wrote: post #30

Well if this isn't a somewhat glowing endorsement of a pill that is being abused, I don't know what is. As someone who is close friends with someone suffering from narcolepsy who actually needs this pill to function normally, I find it worrying people are abusing a pill that can have some serious side-effects. Good job publicly endorsing a pharmaceutical drug NY Mag. I have a feeling as word spreads, the abuse will m…

"a pill that can have some serious side-effects" Such as?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21567182

Re: Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice

#66

Post by tptacek »

pg wrote: post #36

"It was like walking around on a winter day when it just snowed." Reading that made me want to move back to the East Coast. Not take Modafinil, which is probably a good sign.

The lack of distinctive seasons was far and away the #1 reason I got out of California. Maybe you're not wrong about wanting to move back. :)

Re: Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice

#67

Post by malandrew »

malandrew wrote: post #49
DigitalSea wrote: post #30

Well if this isn't a somewhat glowing endorsement of a pill that is being abused, I don't know what is. As someone who is close friends with someone suffering from narcolepsy who actually needs this pill to function normally, I find it worrying people are abusing a pill that can have some serious side-effects. Good job publicly endorsing a pharmaceutical drug NY Mag. I have a feeling as word spreads, the abuse will m…

Diagnosed narcoleptic here with an MSLT score of about ~2min. I've been taking Modafinil @ 200-400mg/day off and on since 2003, with probably a total of 4 years of usage in that time span, together with Xyrem for about a year in 2004 and punctuated by ritalin for a year or so around 2008-09. I personally only take it when I have to and try to avoid taking it on days on which I think I can manage without it. Yes, it c…

Another correction: While it's obvious what I meant, I wanted to write that the prescription drugs are 100-200x more expensive, not the other way around.

Re: Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice

#68

Post by malandrew »

argonaut wrote: post #59
malandrew wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diagnosed narcoleptic here with an MSLT score of about ~2min. I've been taking Modafinil @ 200-400mg/day off and on since 2003, with probably a total of 4 years of usage in that time span, together with Xyrem for about a year in 2004 and punctuated by ritalin for a year or so around 2008-09. I personally only take it when I have to and try to avoid taking it on days on which I think I can manage without it. Yes, it c…

Correction: its half-life is actually something around 12 hours.

Thanks. I had a sneaking suspicion that I was underestimating the half-life.

Re: Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice

#69

Post by malandrew »

argonaut wrote: post #58
hristov wrote: post #47

I don't know why people would experiment with pills like that. I used to pull all nighters when I worked for a big law firm. Sometimes I would pull worse -- I would spend forty hours in a row in the office. I did not take any pills. Let me tell you its no fun. Even if this pill solves the depression and inevitable mental issues, I doubt it helps the rest of your body handle the lack of sleep. Your body just tends to…

1. Modafinil also suppresses appetite. 2. It's easy to argue against the extremes. But nothing about using modafinil precludes sleeping 8 hours a day. The effects usually last anywhere between 12 to 16 hours. So, for example, you can take it with breakfast and go to bed normally in the evening.

It's appetite suppressing properties are one of the first things to wear off with long term use.

Re: Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice

#70

Post by ScottWhigham »

I file this under, "Something I'd love to try/experiment with for myself, but I can't because, if I convince a doctor to prescribe it to me, I'll be forever labeled as 'someone who needs to pay higher insurance premiums because he has sleep issues'." Oh well. I don't feel comfortable buying unregulated medicines from outside of the US/Canada and I don't want to pay higher insurance premiums (already at $15,000/yr for a family of four w/ no medical issues). I don't need the insurance companies to have yet another reason to charge me more.
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