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Comment by brotchie | Hacker News Reader

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 had an amazing sleep: felt completely wide awake and alert.

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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 total. Don’t lecture me, I know.

Anyway, it took 2 days in bed for me to recover after. Brutal.

Towards the end of that time period, my brain stopped processing information in the 30 degrees at the edge of my peripheral vision on either side. We were at a restaurant celebrating being done and the waiter kept teleporting into view at around 60 degrees off my center line. Very startling. Done with it now since I don’t have anything nearly that stressful in my life, but back then, it was a godsend.

Modafinil has a 15 hour half life so my main complaint was my sleep schedule was about 26-28 hours so I was constantly shifting. Adrafinil is only the active isomer in modafinil so it’s more potent. I didn’t like it as much. Even at a half tab it still kept me up longer than modafinil. Also modafinil makes your pee smell when it’s metabolized whereas adrafinil not nearly as much.

Am I the only one thinking there is something seriously wrong with an education system if students have to resort to drugs that keep them awake for a week to succeed in it?

I mean I'm not exactly anti-medication but... wow.

It’s worth it, no faster way to get into lifelong debt!

"Have to", maybe not. Will perform better if they do, probably. Will be outcompeted by others if they don't, many of whom only did better because they used drugs, yes.

It took me half a lifetime to really come to grips with it, but fact is, winners absolutely do use drugs. William S. Sessions' anti-drug arcade game ads lied to me.

I hate that I feel so congruent with this comment.

Maybe school shouldn't be a competition with winners and losers.

That is impossible because there is limited supply of the things you want to achieve with your education, e.g. a tenure track position, and the demand is always higher than the supply.

Shhh don't tell them, let them stay unambitious. It makes it easier for the rest of us.

This is true only if your range of available strategies is constrained to a closed competitive subsystem. The actual range of available strategies is unbounded, given unlimited rationality.

School is just a part of life, and life has limited resources. There will always be winners and losers. At least, until (and if) we reach a point where the total sum of resources exceeds the total demand for them.

Is the score what makes a student a winner, though? That is what parents have to learn to curb.

The score is supposed to be representative of your knowledge in a subject. And the entire point of going to school is to become more knowledgeable in a subject so you can apply it somewhere in your life.

If the score was not an indicator, then it serves no purpose.

Unfortunately, academic scores in most of the world stopped representing knowledge and started representing rote memorization long ago. They are a very, very poor indication of knowledge.

Well, if success in life is measured by getting the highest score, then we are really doomed.

Maybe most schools but I went to the top school (most years) so it was. …and I had imposter syndrome, so I did everything I could to keep pace.

Capitalist life is a competition with winners and losers. The losers are basically debt-slaves, and the winners are modern royalty.

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 beneficial outcomes of a cooperative superstrategy of which they are a part.

Not all life is competition. Ecosystems in general are a complex web of cooperation. One could say that all life is cooperation with equal merit.

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.

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.

Capitalism has nothing to do with it. Schooling in China is and was even more competitive, making competition in American schools look like child's play. This was the case even before China opened up and introduced market reforms in the 90s.

Be careful with this line of thinking. It can lead you to justify some extremely unhealthy habits. You'll justify it by saying it's fine, you're getting things done. But the cost will always be there, either physical or mental.

Agreed and note that 3 of 4 paragraphs in ei8htyfi5e's post were describing the costs:

> Anyway, it took 2 days in bed for me to recover after. Brutal.

> my brain stopped processing information in the 30 degrees at the edge of my peripheral vision on either side.

> makes your pee smell

On the other hand, the cost of not using those things can be not getting a good job, or not being able to do your job, which has costs too. A small difference in work done can be the difference between keeping a job and getting fired.

Don't worry, I'm still taking it pretty easy. I'm just not surprised when I see someone who's very successful and seems far more alert and energetic than I could possibly be without some serious uppers—mystery solved, they're very probably on some serious uppers.

My favorite thing is more often than not, the faces of anti-drug campaigns tend to be celebrities/athletes who were caught in a drug scandal, and do this campaigning to improve their public image.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a prominent example.

Cramming is less "required" then "an alternative way to get a good grade than working all semester long."

I had multiple classes in university where the professor didn't finish their syllabus for the term and so the TAs crammed the last few weeks worth of class into a study session.

I definitely remember approximately weekly having to stay up all night to finish my regular assignments assigned the same day and due the next

It wasn’t a paper test and cramming. I had to create a product from scratch. I could have made a simpler product but I’m type a and challenged myself. 3D modeling, waiting for a 3D printer to complete, designing and manufacturing creating circuit boards, programming them, setting up a server, modifying the printed case by hand to insert glass, iterating when tolerances aren’t right. …it was a lot of work.

But now I get to make cool shit for a living.

Honestly believe if you give me enough time and money I can make anything. Worth it.

> Honestly believe if you give me enough time and money I can make anything. Worth it.

Same, but it didn't take a week on modafinil to finish a crazy project for me, I just always just liked making cool shit ever since I was a kid. Currently more on the software/kernel side, but I've done my share of hardware projects.

For me, after bouncing around a few universities, I realized how much of a broken joke the system was and resolved to go the easiest route to get the piece of paper (an on-line university), which I'm glad I did because the one time in my life I needed it it was important... but uni never taught me anything I couldn't have learned more efficiently on my own.

I distinctly remember that time in a microcontrollers class where the book was wrong and teaching the exact opposite of the solution to the problem it was trying to teach, and I'd known about that one for like 7 years at that point, and when I offered to the teacher to write a little article about it so we could all learn about it, he said yes and never even read it...

Or that time where as a sophomore I was helping a team of seniors working on a project to build a CubeSat, and I designed the PCBs and all the firmware and we won the competition to get funding and actually launch... and the uni's response was to kick us out of the lab we were in because "we were using too much space" (about 1m of desk space there). That CubeSat never launched.

Also, there was one part of that board designed by a professor instead of me. It was the only part that didn't work. And I thought it was dodgy at the time, and with my current experience I can confidently say that design was utterly insane and broken and he had no idea what he was doing.

Meanwhile in Calc II they wanted me to memorize three dozen identities because... why? I liked math until I got to that class, because even though it wasn't exactly being taught in an engaging way, I could work out the underlying concepts and understand and appreciate it, and work from first principles. Then it got complicated enough that doing that at the exam was no longer viable and I was just expected to become a computer and memorize all the damn formulas (and it wasn't just a few), understanding be damned. I cheated my way through that exam ("yes professor, I promise this TI-84 emulator on my Zaurus PDA is exactly like the real thing and I don't have a little formula database app in another window"). I damn well know what integration is and how it fundamentally works and how to apply it, but storing rote trivially looked up information is what we have paper and computers for. I don't go around memorizing programming APIs, I look up what I need and whatever I use often enough comes naturally.

Chemistry was more fun. We were allowed one index card, handwritten, both sides for the exam. I developed an electrical arc sharpening mechanism for mechanical pencil lead, so I could handwrite it all in 4pt size or so. Give me limitations and I will make the best use of them :)

Yeah, the system is broken.

Some students have ADHD or simply learn in a way that does not track with how school and university are taught. The rewards and incentives are typically orthogonal to what a person diagnosed with ADHD wants, and often times extreme measures must be taken to adapt to the rigid expectations.

That is a failure of the system to adapt to the needs of students. I have adult-diagnosed ADHD and school sucked for me too... and I'm on medication now, which makes me function normally, not stay up for a week.

Definitely don’t have to. It’s an anecdote from a single person, it’s not normal behavior.

Don’t read too much into individual HN comments, especially those describing outlier behavior.

How about kids don't procrastinate and play videogames?

I’ll never forget that I was sitting outside the hallway before my SATs, and some random girl I just met offered me Adderall - I had 3 thoughts:

1) I’m not taking random pills from a stranger, let alone before the SATs

2) If it is adderall, I have no idea what it would do to me

3) If I need adderall to do well on the SATs that would get me into a better college, I’m going to need it through college

Seeing this story makes me think that, yeah, some people probably do make it through hard programs with medication…

> I stayed up for finals for a week straight with maybe 2 hours of sleep total

I’m confused when I read anecdotes like this. Are you staying you literally slept for 2 hours over the course of 7 days, averaging 17 minutes of sleep per night for a week? I think that’s very unlikely!

probably a slight exaggeration

It's possible but unlikely. You physically cannot sleep on these drugs without something like clonazepam. So I have no doubt a series of bad decisions could lead to someone being up that long.

However,

psychosis usually sets in around ~96 hours of sleep deprivation. It is however possible that this individual is unique or resistant, or maybe just his youth helped him. When I was 16 and MTV still played music-- I could survive on 2hrs sleep a day for weeks.

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.

You know not of what you speak.

~15 years of taking Adrafinil and then Modifinil on prescription and "recreationally" says otherwise. The actual effect of a drug and then the psychosomatic effect of those who expect it to have a certain effect are two very different things.

Also, not everyone is the same neurologically. People seem to write off this difference as moot. It's not

You may have developed a tolerance.

It is categorically impossible (for me) to sleep on Modafinil, or it is at least significantly harder than on amphetamines (which I'll grant you can sleep on... Sometimes).

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.

I've once given it to a friend without telling him what it was exactly and he sure did sleep through it, he said he didn't feel anything at all and he was up from the night before (was in vacation). Asked him how he felt afterward and he reported no issues sleeping a couple of hours after taking it.

This seems to be a ... trusting and open-minded action on the part of your friend, might be one way to put it

We were young and yes, he did trust I wouldn't give him poison. I certainly didn't have a reputation of using illegal drugs, he knew I dabbled with supplements like Piracetam / Ashwagandha etc.

> You physically cannot sleep on these drugs without something like clonazepam.

Please tell my brain this. Around 50% of the time my ADHD meds (Adderall) make me sleepy because, for once, my brain is calm and focused and it's a very relaxing experience as opposed to my typical state.

That just means you have real ADHD. Stimulants can have the opposite effect on people with ADHD.

We're in agreement there. Your original statement did not have this caveat.

Yes. I slept for 2 hours on Wednesday under my desk on a camping pad. You don’t have to believe me. If anybody on HN ever outs me, there were a lot of people who can corroborate this.

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, particularly the implications of the last paragraph.

If you're on a Dark Fields kick, Ted Chiang's 1991 short story Understand is worthwhile. Geekier and not as philosophically weighty, but way more fun.

> 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

Different effects on different people I guess. Whoever is reading parent, don't expect this to be true for you. It certainly wasn't for me.. if I didn't get proper sleep and then took modafinil I would get super anxious, fidgeting and just plain feeling bad. Certainly couldn't work on it.

Does skipping sleep during finals affect your ability to recall the material long term?

I had to make something. It wasn’t a cramming session. If it was a mental task, I would have taken a different approach. But I needed more hours and I got them.

I take 200mg every morning. I can still have a midday nap.

I'm not narcoleptic but somehow it just doesn't work that well for me.

Dexamphetamine worked but ooh boy the side effects like munting.

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.

This is 100% correct. I’ve never taken adrafinil, late night typi.

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 not exist to me. Like, I don’t remember it apart from the abstract knowledge that it happened. I learned C# and .net in the first 48 hours, having never used either before (we were a PHP shop - but some combination of naivety and hubris had us take the project on) - and a few weeks later when making some tweaks, I may as well have been looking at someone else’s code in a language I’d never worked with before.

Two, the comedown wasn’t awful, but I did sleep for about 36 hours straight, and woke up hungry enough to eat a bear.

Haven’t used it since - haven’t needed to - but I do keep a blister pack handy in case I ever find myself needing to function without cessation for a week again.

>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.

Nope, completely gone. I may as well have started from scratch the next time I looked at it.

It was my business. I was the idiot that signed us up for it - it was kinda out of necessity, as it was for the New York marathon, and their developers had evaporated on them two weeks before a critical deliverable - and we charged blood money for it.

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.

By comedown you mean sleep debt or have you been using it like caffeine, got your required 8 hours but when you didn't use it one day you felt lethargic?

Not GP, but for me it really seemed to affect my sleep quality in addition to keeping me up later. I started by taking 100mg at 8AM and another 100mg at 12PM. Any later and I'd still be awake at 2AM.

The lethargy and brain fog went away if I dosed again, but that only compounds the problems.

I still dose when I need a guaranteed day of focus, but I really try not to use it on consecutive days.

YMMV

Sleep debt. It's very much burning the candle at both ends. It can also be pretty terrible for your sleep patterns even for a few days after.

As another commenter mentioned, used judiciously, it's amazing.

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.

Funny. The couple of times I took Modafinil, it might as well have been placebo. Absolutely no effect. I gave the pills away.

I have ADD, and am prescribed 60mg Adderall XR/day. OTOH, I have slept on 30mg Adderall XR a couple of times, so maybe I'm just "built differently" w.r.t. The Stimmies.

There’s a genetic component - don’t remember which gene, but only some are subject to its effects.

This is a interesting one. I once heard a psychiatrist ask someone during an evaluation: have you ever borrowed Ritalin from your friends? Follow up question: did it work?

I guess this is a really nice hack he had: Has used Ritalin illegally? Increased probability of ADHD. Does it work? Even more increased probability and he know knows the person tolerates it.

This fascinates me. Some people seriously take stimulants at night to fall asleep, others in the morning to wake up..!

Recently I heard the story about how stimulants came to be used to treat ADHD and one thing that stood out except that this was an extremely suprising effect was the very simplified explanation that stimulants seems to stimulate the inhibitory parts of the brain most which seems to account for the increased self control.

As someone who has just gone through the ADHD diagnostic process in the UK - previously abusing stimulants is a risk factor they have to consider before prescribing you anything.

I have previously used Modafinil fairly extensively and considered purchasing Ritalin or Adderall on the dark web, but was very worried about telling the doctor in case it would cause me issues getting treatment.

Brand can affect this according to anecdotes on /r/modafinil/

I've never felt a comedown from it. I take it 6 days a week.

I wonder if some of that 'comedown' is just lack of sleep.

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