
Modafinil Is Wall Street’s New Drug of Choice - whalesalad
http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/modafinil-2013-4/
======
thomasbk
Gwern has an amazing writeup of Modafinil, including his own (DIY "double"
blind-trial) experience, effects, etc:

<http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil>

Highly recommended for anyone even slightly interested in the workings of
Modafinil. His own experiences are described in the most detail on this page:

<http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#modafinil>

~~~
jcomis
There goes my night. That site is like a black hole.

~~~
codemac
It's not just a black hole, it's a well researched and _cited_ black hole.

Gwern seems to be an awesomely motivated person. It really inspired me to take
what I consider to be "interests" more fully.

~~~
mh-
I do wonder what the source of his seemingly-abundant motivation could be.

------
pg
"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.

~~~
hristov
Yes, those couple of hours right after it snows can be quite beautiful in a
big city. If you want to cure yourself of your nostalgia you can just imagine
the couple of hours after that. When the snow starts melting and everything
turns into grey/black mush. I guess this is what it must feel like to stop
taking Modafinil.

------
DigitalSea
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 make it harder for legitimate suffers of
narcolepsy (and other cases treated by Modafinil) to get access to the pills.

~~~
RobertHoudin
"a pill that can have some serious side-effects"

Such as?

~~~
DigitalSea
This link seems to detail all of the possible side-effects:
[http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a602016.htm...](http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a602016.html#side-
effects) — I think many would agree some of the side-effects which include;
difficulty breathing or swallowing, swelling of the face, throat, tongue,
lips, eyes, hands, feet, ankles, or lower legs, anxiety, depression are
definitely serious. And I would also argue that even though some of the other
side-effects like skin peeling, rashes and whatnot aren't as serious, they're
still pretty bad side-effects.

It's rare that most drugs these days don't have a potential side-effect or
two, but if you don't need to take these pills I think there's no point in
potentially risking some serious health issues like depression as a result of
taking something you don't need.

~~~
argonaut
Those seem like fairly cookie-cutter side effects for quite a large class of
pharmaceuticals.

------
woah
I use modafinil regularly. I have (had?) some variant of ADD, and while it
does not trouble me as much as it did when I was younger, it can still be
frustrating, mostly if I am trying to focus on work I don't particularly
enjoy.

I use it between a few times a week and a few times a month (my desire to take
it at all fluctuates quite a bit). I'll take 10-25mg in the morning and get on
with my day. I generally don't really notice it, but looking back in the
evening, realize I was a bit more productive.

For me, it's less euphoric than coffee. I'll feel happy and energized after a
cup of coffee, but after taking modafinil, just a bit more alert.

What it does seem to do is raise overall energy levels during the day, and
increases short term memory (useful for programming).

I think many news stories about it, like this one, blow it vastly out of
proportion. Cumulatively, it could make the difference that pushes your work
to the next level, but sleep and exercise are a way bigger factor. Still, I am
very happy to have it.

For those worried about giving money to big pharma, buy it online from one of
the many sites that import from India.

~~~
jimrandomh
Sanity check fail: 10mg is an implausibly small dose, so small you'd have to
grind the pills and measure tiny quantities of powder. Are you sure you're not
thinking of a different drug, or off an order of magnitude?

~~~
woah
It comes in 100mg pills, and I take between 1/4 and 1/6 of one. Higher doses
don't seem to have much more of the beneficial effects on concentration and
memory, just make me more jittery.

------
hristov
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 fall apart. You start spraining random muscles (even
ones you did not know you had), you gain weight very quickly, etc. This is
just not worth it. Just do us all a favor and get some sleep.

~~~
argonaut
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.

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

------
mathattack
I am very interested of opinions on these boards for it. My intuition is there
is no free lunch - if this were the optimal brain wiring, we'd be there
already. Is it the inevitable crash or sleep deprivation? I haven't done any
hard research on the topic, so I am interested in first hand observations. We
are the target audience of the article, even if the link title doesn't suggest
it.

~~~
aaron695
Well the no free lunch theory is I think wrong, we are vastly better off with
modern medicines. We are already getting free lunches of longer and heather
lives.

My experience, obviously not scientific, with modafinil is mild mania,
grumpiness/quick to anger (What I think is the tiredness coming through),
increase concentration and attentiveness to a task. My intelligence goes down.
Mixed with alcohol it can cause blackouts (It has a long half life so this can
be a day or so later). Hard to sleep on. Euphoric enough to take
recreationally.

Listening to other people they have different effects.

For me I'm not sure it's a effective drug. Because it's said long term you can
build up tolerance I've always only done it one pill per week for small
projects, so maybe doing it on a regular schedule it might stop some of the
above negatives.

~~~
balloot
You're missing his point, which is a reasonable one. If the human body truly
functioned better with modafinil, then evolution would have given us humans
that naturally produced modafinil. That isn't the case, so the assumption is
there is some downside to the drug, and one that actually outweighs the
positives. However, the article makes modafinil seems like an obviously
positive thing and that taking the pill fixes some bug in natural human
behavior.

~~~
wpietri
A few issues with that approach:

Given that our brains have been under heavy evolution, there's no particular
reason to think we're at a local optimum.

The environment we've evolved for is not the one we are currently in. What was
adaptive 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 years ago may not be what we need today.

Your definition of "optimum" and your genes' may differ wildly. For example
your genes build disposable bodies for the same reason humans build disposable
cars: there's no sense in working ever harder to keep the old model going when
making a new one is easier.

On the other hand, I've got a similar sentiment from a different perspective:
it is surprisingly easy to to FUBAR an evolved system. We're still trying to
figure out what effects electric light has on humans. [1] Anybody who thinks
they've figured out all the subtle effects of a drug like this is fooling
themselves.

[1] e.g.: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19401186>

------
sdoowpilihp
As I read this, I can't help but be reminded of the old adage, "There ain't no
such thing as a free lunch".

~~~
tapp
Slightly OT:

I am surprised to hear this sentiment on HN as often as I do. It seems to
imply a somewhat Luddite-like fear of technological advancement, versus the
generally positive interest I would expect from hackers. Am I off base?

I'm not talking about modafinil specifically (no opinion there) but more
generally.

~~~
duaneb
I think it's more about caution when dealing with your body than actually
believing some law about having a bad side.

------
lake99
> “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 effects on
each person, but I have never felt any of that stuff.

I experimented with 100mg tablets of Modafinil for a few years because I can't
concentrate. It did nothing for my concentration, nothing I could discern, at
any rate. Modafinil did help to get rid of my sleepiness: if the
task/meetings/lectures dragged a bit, I'd actually nod off. Modafinil fixed
that.

Write-ups such as this one on nymag make Modafinil sound like something to
trip on. Very misleading.

> At the very least, doctors have warned that modafinil can bring about sleep
> deprivation

I call BS.

~~~
argonaut
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.

~~~
lake99
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.

~~~
argonaut
200mg. Again, there was a study that showed that people with a certain
genotype did not feel the effects of modafinil, so that might apply to you.

------
rayiner
The "meritocracy" article on the front page is relevant in context of this
one.

------
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.

------
bquarant
Congratulations HN for upvoting Big Pharma propaganda nonsense.

~~~
Afforess
As opposed to vitriolic opinions?

------
phil
_Skip a dose, and there would be hell to pay. “I really would feel it. It was
sort of like being thrust into dirty, messy reality, as opposed to a clean,
neatly organized place. It was like crashing, and I actually found what would
happen is the anxiety that got dialed down on the way in, when you were coming
off it, all of a sudden you went through the reverse. So I got incredibly
anxious. Eventually that concerned me.”_

Wow, this sounds amazing! Sign me up!

~~~
lake99
Don't worry. To me, it sounds like the author was tripping on his own silly
mind.

------
runarb
_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...

~~~
boon
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.

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the_cat_kittles
For me, it was a pretty euphoric high and short term memory boost the first
time. With repeated use, the effects diminished alot. I am much more
effective/productive/clever/creative without it, though the drug makes it feel
like im better at all those thing. (I was prescribed it long ago)

~~~
MacsHeadroom
That is very odd. I have never heard of somebody having euphoria from
Modafinil in any of the medical literature or on any of the nootropic/drug
forums.

<http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil> list off 10 different citations for the line
"But what does medicine say? It seems to report no euphoria, tolerance, or
withdrawal/dependency."

------
od2m
This is nonsense.

