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Comment by jaggederest | Hacker News Reader

Light therapy. Or, you know, modafinil works too. The answer isn't always 'man up', neither is it 'I am a victim'. Just treat it and move on with your life. You're not a hero for getting to work on time, but neither are you a villain for being late.

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The world is a big place and everyone has their own circumstance. But I think the point of the Great Big Get-Off-My-Lawn Rant (which I loved) was more that for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of circumstances getting up in the morning doesn't rise to the level of a severe personal handicap.

I mean, I hate mornings as much as the next person, and have slept through a decent number of events. Yet still, when I had kids and had to get up for a crying baby or to change a diaper, I Just Did It, and didn't feel the need to blog about whether I should feel "guilty" about it.

I mean, really: don't we have more important things to argue about? Isn't there a new Javascript rendering abstraction layer or something?

Well, in my opinion, it's pretty crippling in 'polite society' not to be a morning person.

I've lost jobs over it, relationships, all sorts of fairly major personal issues.

My point is that there are solutions that enable people to fix this problem, if they are so inclined. This sort of excoriating article disregards the real pain people experience, and the other sort of article disregards the real issues that 'just never do anything in the morning and don't try to adapt' causes.

Rather than starting with modafinil, melatonin should probably be the first step. It might help, and people do not report tolerance after prolonged use the way they do for modafinil.

Melatonin is fine if it works for you, and you find the right schedule to take it on, and you don't get terrible nightmares from it. Somehow I usually meet 2 of those criteria at a time.

> and you don't get terrible nightmares from it

Whoa, melatonin makes you dream? Sounds interesting. I can count on one hand the number of dreams I'm aware of having over the past 10 years.

No, not dream. Wake up dripping sweat and fearing the things under the bed. No bueno.

Modafinil is not a long-term solution as regular use causes tolerance.

As someone who has used it for this exact purpose, it's enough to use it occasionally to enable you to keep your sleep schedule in check. If I don't manage my sleep schedule well, I end up waking up later and later, and having to loop over. Modafinil perhaps once a month allowed me to reset without having to burn a couple days being useless.

Ah, this is clever. I'm glad it works for you.

Sounds like the OP could use some regular modafinil.

Funny you mention that, but there is evidence that giving racists beta blockers reduces their racism:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/242769.php

I often wonder if similar treatment could improve empathy across the board.

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