At one point there was a significant amount of discussion regarding Modafinil—this seems to have died down in the past year or so. I’m curious whether any significant updating has occurred since then (based either on research or experiences.)
(This is a repost from last week’s open thread due to many upvotes and few replies. However, see here for Gwern’s response.)
I meant to post something about my experience with armodafinil about a year ago, but I never got around to it. My overall experience was strongly negative. Looks like I did write a long post in a text file a day or so after taking armodafinil, so here’s what I had to say back then:
Some background:
I’m a white male in my mid-20s. I have excessive daytime sleepiness, and I believe this is because I’m a long sleeper who has difficulty getting an adequate duration of sleep. There are several long sleepers in my family. My mother and I tend to not like how stimulants make us feel, e.g., pseudoephedrine makes us fairly nervous, though it will help our nasal congestion from allergies and help wake us up. I was interested in trying modafinil because I hear it has proportionally less of the negative effects compared against its wake-promoting effects.
My neurologist gave me a few samples of armodafinil, which is basically a variant of modafinil. I was busy in the month after I met my neurologist last and didn’t think about taking it at all, but come mid-February I remembered to try it.
Saturday, Feb. 15, 2014:
I woke up at 8:30 am, as I usually did, and started eating a chocolate chip muffin for breakfast. During the breakfast I took 4000 IU of vitamin D and 150 mg of armodafinil. I took these at 8:37 am.
I started organizing files on my computer. I still felt fairly tired, and considered going back to sleep, but I did not because I try to keep a very regular sleep schedule. I will take naps in the afternoon (before 8 pm, or so, to avoid delaying my bedtime) if necessary, but I try to wait until then. Until around 10:30 am, I thought armodafinil was doing absolutely nothing. I know armodafinil takes some time to kick in, but I didn’t expect that long. Maybe I’m one of the people for which modafinil doesn’t work?
At around 11 am I realized that I felt weird. It was obvious that the armodafinil had kicked in fierce at that point. I checked my heart rate: 75 bpm, which is higher than normal, though not as high as other stimulants take me. I wouldn’t quite describe how I felt as more awake, though I don’t think I could involuntarily fall asleep now. It felt as if I could fall asleep if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to. I felt a bit more nervous, perhaps, but that might just be the placebo effect. It certainly was not as strong as what 60 mg of pseudoephedrine does to me. I got a phone call from my apartment manager saying that they’ll be showing my apartment today, so I (slowly) started sweeping and vacuuming to make my apartment a bit more presentable. I was pacing around like crazy while doing this.
At about 11:30 am I took a shower. I started realizing that I have no impulse control. Instead of washing myself, I’d start, get distracted by some thought, think about that for a while, realize I’m in the shower, forget where I was in my shower routine, etc. I started thinking that armodafinil might have given me ADHD, which is odd given that I’ve read it might be useful for the treatment of ADHD.
After the shower I consulted the note packet that came with the armodafinil. Given what these notes said, I think I was experiencing a side effect. The notes said to discontinue use of armodafinil if you experience these symptoms. “Okay, can do.” is what I thought.
I went to the LessWrong meetup and told Vaniver that I think armodafinil is not doing nice things for me. Another LWer suggested that perhaps these effects go away with repeated use; I said that I didn’t know, but I don’t intend to find out. During the entire meetup I had a lot of difficulty sitting still. I got up a few times to get water, or a napkin, or a bag of chips, but I don’t think I actually wanted any of those things; I guess I just didn’t want to stay still.
The early afternoon is the hardest time for me to stay awake, and this meetup spanned that time entirely. I yawned a few times during the meetup, but I didn’t become so drowsy that I had to take a nap, as I often do. I take this as evidence that armodafinil helps my EDS, though it’s not that strong because I never really felt “awake” during this entire process. I felt really weird in a way that I can’t quite describe.
After the meetup (about 4 pm), I rode my bike to the downtown library to return a book. Purely subjectively, I’d say armodafinil increased my endurance. I’m in reasonable shape now, but I felt that I could maintain 20+ mph easier today than a few days ago. Objectively, though, it doesn’t seem that my average speed increased much if at all; it was about 13 mph on Saturday and 12 to 13 on most days.
When I got back to my apartment, I felt a little better. Still fidgety and easily distracted, but slightly better. Perhaps the exercise helps, or the armodafinil was wearing off? I go running around now usually anyway, so I hoped this would help more. I went on a run, but it didn’t have quite the effect the bike ride did. I then started making dinner, but I was continually distracted by my computer through that.
I noticed that my tinnitus was much worse today. Not sure if this was due to the armodafinil, but it sounded at least 10 dB louder than usual. Ambient noises could not mask it.
Around 10 pm, I started feeling more tired, so I figured the armodafinil must be wearing off. I still felt odd and easily distracted, though. I read on my couch for a while until I felt as if I could fall asleep quickly, and I slept briefly on my couch. I woke up and moved to my bed, where it took me a while to fall asleep again, but I did. I woke up several times during the night and felt I had to try quite a few positions before I found something comfortable. This wasn’t particularly restful. Otherwise, I don’t think armodafinil did much to my nighttime sleep. I think if it hadn’t caused some manic symptoms, I probably wouldn’t have had any issues sleeping.
Sunday, Feb. 16, 2014:
I still felt a little odd when I woke up, but it was very obvious now that these effects were wearing off. I had read that armodafinil has a half-life of about 12 to 15 hours, so using a simple exponential decay with a conservative half-life, I saw that I still had the equivalent of about 45 mg of armodafinil in my system. Tomorrow morning that decrease to about 15 mg; after the third day it’s down to 5 mg. I can’t wait for this to be out of my system.
Overall, I’d say taking armodafinil was worthwhile as I learned something about myself, which is that I probably should avoid stimulants as much as possible.
(Not from my original intended post: I want to note that I’m doing much better now, after getting more sleep. No stimulants necessary. I haven’t seen a neurologist since I wrote the post above and probably won’t again.)
Your main complaints about your drug experience seem to be (a) feeling unusual, (b) having some difficulty managing your attention, (c) feeling excessively fidgety, (d) louder tinnitus, and (e) sleep difficulty. As someone who has experimented with psychoactive drugs a fair amount, including modafinil, my impression is that (a) and (b) are pretty common with psychoactive drugs and are almost always transient and harmless (unless you’re driving a car, biking, operating heavy machinery, etc.). ((c) is less common but definitely present with some, e.g. coffee. (d) and (e) are probably good reasons to stop using a particular drug.) In fact, I’ve gotten to the point where I consider feeling unusual and having my attention work differently to be fun, interesting experiences to observe and learn from.
So my thought is that before trying modafinil, maybe people should experiment with small doses of strongly psychoactive drugs that don’t have a 12-hour half life, perhaps in a safe & supervised environment, to learn that altered mental states aren’t scary and can be pretty useful for certain tasks—they’re like distinct mental gears you can enter using cheap, reliable external aids.
(For example, drink half a cup of coffee, then a full cup of coffee, then two cups of coffee on separate days to know what it’s like to be highly stimulated, and a cup of beer, two cups of beer, and four cups of beer on separate days to know what it’s like to be highly disinhibited. Kratom is another highly useful but little known legal psychoactive; for example, this successful blogger primarily credits kratom with his success at building his online empire, and I’m not surprised at all given my kratom experiences… any resistance I have to doing tasks seems to just melt away on kratom.)
(Disclaimer: I’m a foolish young person and maybe you should ignore everything I’m saying. Also if you really did experience stimulant induced mania you should probably follow the instructions on the label.)
I think smaller doses are prudent for people experimenting with these things. If I were to try armodafinil again, I would have cut the pill in half or even quarters. (I had no real choice in the pill dosage, as I only received a sample.) Though, in retrospect I think avoiding (ar)modafinil all together would be smart because the half-life is way too long.
I’m basically straight-edge, though I’m open minded and willing to try some drugs if I think they might have a positive effect on me. I’ve only tried nootropics, and so far I have not been impressed. Either they do nothing or make me feel really strange. Others’ experiences may vary. There doesn’t seem to be anything here for me. At this point I have no intention of ever trying a drug for non-medical reasons.
What I experienced isn’t exactly clear, but, I didn’t like what I experienced. In fact, it took several weeks for me to fully recover from taking armodafinil. After a few weeks or so I felt mostly normal, and a bit later the tinnitus finally died down. The latter isn’t that unusual for my tinnitus, actually. After exposure to a loud noise I might have louder tinnitus for several weeks. (Not that mine ever is quiet. It doesn’t bother me, but I imagine normal for me would drive most people nuts. It never goes away and probably will only ever get worse, and I accept that.)
Understood. I don’t doubt your self-assessments, just wanted to provide a contrasting perspective. For tinnitus, you might want to try googling “tinnitus replacement therapy” or experimenting with ear/jaw/neck massage; both of these seem to have been helpful for me.
I’ve looked into tinnitus retraining therapy (I think this is what you meant) but decided I’m not bothered enough by my tinnitus to go that route. I’ll keep it in mind if this changes. I have not heard about massage helping tinnitus. I’ll have to give that a shot as I’m sure it would be enjoyable even without tinnitus relief.
Otherwise, I’ve found noise machines to be helpful. Sometimes I also listen to a brown noise mp3 when working and I don’t want to listen to music. I find that this totally masks my tinnitus, masks most ambient noises, and is rather pleasant (it sounds like a waterfall). (I want to note that my brother finds artificial noise to be worse than tinnitus, so your mileage may vary.)
If you use Linux and have the right software installed you can run the following commands to generate a brown noise mp3:
The core idea behind tinnitus retraining therapy is to listen to noise that doesn’t totally mask the tinnitus but is more salient than it. The principle being that it helps you think of your tinnitus as background noise. Seems to work for me.
A month or two ago I started taking Modafinil occasionally; I’ve probably taken it fewer than a dozen times overall.
I think I’d expected it to give a kind of Ritalin-like focus and concentrate, but that isn’t really how it affected me. I’d describe the effects less in terms of “focus” and more in terms of a variable I term “wherewithal”. I’ve recently started using this term in my internal monologue to describe my levels of “ability to undertake tasks”. E.g., “I’m hungry, but I definitely don’t have the wherewithal to cook anything complicated tonight; better just get a pizza.” Or, on waking up: “Hey, my wherewithal levels are unusually high today. Better not fritter that away.” (Semantically, it’s a bit like the SJ-originating concept of “spoons” but without that term’s baggage.) It’s this quantity which I think Modafinil targets, for me: it’s a sort of “wherewithal boost”. I don’t know how well this accords with other people’s experience. I do think I’ve heard some people describe it as a focus/concentration booster. (Perhaps I should try another nootropic to get that effect, or perhaps my brain is just beyond help on that front.)
I did, however, start to feel it suppressed my appetite to unhealthily, even dangerously, low levels. (After taking it for two days in a row, I felt dizzy after coming down a flight of stairs.) I realize that it’s possible to compensate for this by making oneself eat when one doesn’t feel hungry, but somehow this doesn’t seem that pleasant. For this reason, I’ve been taking it less recently.
I’d be curious to know whether others experience the appetite suppression to the same extent; it’s not something that I hear people talk about very much. Perhaps others are just better at dealing with it than I am or don’t care.
It’s also hard to say how much of its positive effects were placebo, given that I took it on days when I’d already determined I wanted to “get a lot of shit done”.
Mixed feelings. If you need wakefullness it’s available on tap, but with a side of anxiety and trouble going to sleep later if your dosage is not perfectly calibrated.
I took modafinil twice. I’d been having problems staying awake during the day—it’s hard for me to sleep before 2am—and those completely disappeared. I had more energy then than I’ve had in a while. No negatives. The only reason I haven’t gotten more is that I don’t have a mailing address.
(Disclaimer: I drink a lot of coffee and tea, use a lot of snus, and drink like a relevant ethnic stereotype on weekends.)
At one point there was a significant amount of discussion regarding Modafinil—this seems to have died down in the past year or so. I’m curious whether any significant updating has occurred since then (based either on research or experiences.)
(This is a repost from last week’s open thread due to many upvotes and few replies. However, see here for Gwern’s response.)
I meant to post something about my experience with armodafinil about a year ago, but I never got around to it. My overall experience was strongly negative. Looks like I did write a long post in a text file a day or so after taking armodafinil, so here’s what I had to say back then:
Some background:
I’m a white male in my mid-20s. I have excessive daytime sleepiness, and I believe this is because I’m a long sleeper who has difficulty getting an adequate duration of sleep. There are several long sleepers in my family. My mother and I tend to not like how stimulants make us feel, e.g., pseudoephedrine makes us fairly nervous, though it will help our nasal congestion from allergies and help wake us up. I was interested in trying modafinil because I hear it has proportionally less of the negative effects compared against its wake-promoting effects.
My neurologist gave me a few samples of armodafinil, which is basically a variant of modafinil. I was busy in the month after I met my neurologist last and didn’t think about taking it at all, but come mid-February I remembered to try it.
Saturday, Feb. 15, 2014:
I woke up at 8:30 am, as I usually did, and started eating a chocolate chip muffin for breakfast. During the breakfast I took 4000 IU of vitamin D and 150 mg of armodafinil. I took these at 8:37 am.
I started organizing files on my computer. I still felt fairly tired, and considered going back to sleep, but I did not because I try to keep a very regular sleep schedule. I will take naps in the afternoon (before 8 pm, or so, to avoid delaying my bedtime) if necessary, but I try to wait until then. Until around 10:30 am, I thought armodafinil was doing absolutely nothing. I know armodafinil takes some time to kick in, but I didn’t expect that long. Maybe I’m one of the people for which modafinil doesn’t work?
At around 11 am I realized that I felt weird. It was obvious that the armodafinil had kicked in fierce at that point. I checked my heart rate: 75 bpm, which is higher than normal, though not as high as other stimulants take me. I wouldn’t quite describe how I felt as more awake, though I don’t think I could involuntarily fall asleep now. It felt as if I could fall asleep if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to. I felt a bit more nervous, perhaps, but that might just be the placebo effect. It certainly was not as strong as what 60 mg of pseudoephedrine does to me. I got a phone call from my apartment manager saying that they’ll be showing my apartment today, so I (slowly) started sweeping and vacuuming to make my apartment a bit more presentable. I was pacing around like crazy while doing this.
At about 11:30 am I took a shower. I started realizing that I have no impulse control. Instead of washing myself, I’d start, get distracted by some thought, think about that for a while, realize I’m in the shower, forget where I was in my shower routine, etc. I started thinking that armodafinil might have given me ADHD, which is odd given that I’ve read it might be useful for the treatment of ADHD.
After the shower I consulted the note packet that came with the armodafinil. Given what these notes said, I think I was experiencing a side effect. The notes said to discontinue use of armodafinil if you experience these symptoms. “Okay, can do.” is what I thought.
I went to the LessWrong meetup and told Vaniver that I think armodafinil is not doing nice things for me. Another LWer suggested that perhaps these effects go away with repeated use; I said that I didn’t know, but I don’t intend to find out. During the entire meetup I had a lot of difficulty sitting still. I got up a few times to get water, or a napkin, or a bag of chips, but I don’t think I actually wanted any of those things; I guess I just didn’t want to stay still.
The early afternoon is the hardest time for me to stay awake, and this meetup spanned that time entirely. I yawned a few times during the meetup, but I didn’t become so drowsy that I had to take a nap, as I often do. I take this as evidence that armodafinil helps my EDS, though it’s not that strong because I never really felt “awake” during this entire process. I felt really weird in a way that I can’t quite describe.
After the meetup (about 4 pm), I rode my bike to the downtown library to return a book. Purely subjectively, I’d say armodafinil increased my endurance. I’m in reasonable shape now, but I felt that I could maintain 20+ mph easier today than a few days ago. Objectively, though, it doesn’t seem that my average speed increased much if at all; it was about 13 mph on Saturday and 12 to 13 on most days.
When I got back to my apartment, I felt a little better. Still fidgety and easily distracted, but slightly better. Perhaps the exercise helps, or the armodafinil was wearing off? I go running around now usually anyway, so I hoped this would help more. I went on a run, but it didn’t have quite the effect the bike ride did. I then started making dinner, but I was continually distracted by my computer through that.
I noticed that my tinnitus was much worse today. Not sure if this was due to the armodafinil, but it sounded at least 10 dB louder than usual. Ambient noises could not mask it.
Around 10 pm, I started feeling more tired, so I figured the armodafinil must be wearing off. I still felt odd and easily distracted, though. I read on my couch for a while until I felt as if I could fall asleep quickly, and I slept briefly on my couch. I woke up and moved to my bed, where it took me a while to fall asleep again, but I did. I woke up several times during the night and felt I had to try quite a few positions before I found something comfortable. This wasn’t particularly restful. Otherwise, I don’t think armodafinil did much to my nighttime sleep. I think if it hadn’t caused some manic symptoms, I probably wouldn’t have had any issues sleeping.
Sunday, Feb. 16, 2014:
I still felt a little odd when I woke up, but it was very obvious now that these effects were wearing off. I had read that armodafinil has a half-life of about 12 to 15 hours, so using a simple exponential decay with a conservative half-life, I saw that I still had the equivalent of about 45 mg of armodafinil in my system. Tomorrow morning that decrease to about 15 mg; after the third day it’s down to 5 mg. I can’t wait for this to be out of my system.
Overall, I’d say taking armodafinil was worthwhile as I learned something about myself, which is that I probably should avoid stimulants as much as possible.
(Not from my original intended post: I want to note that I’m doing much better now, after getting more sleep. No stimulants necessary. I haven’t seen a neurologist since I wrote the post above and probably won’t again.)
Your main complaints about your drug experience seem to be (a) feeling unusual, (b) having some difficulty managing your attention, (c) feeling excessively fidgety, (d) louder tinnitus, and (e) sleep difficulty. As someone who has experimented with psychoactive drugs a fair amount, including modafinil, my impression is that (a) and (b) are pretty common with psychoactive drugs and are almost always transient and harmless (unless you’re driving a car, biking, operating heavy machinery, etc.). ((c) is less common but definitely present with some, e.g. coffee. (d) and (e) are probably good reasons to stop using a particular drug.) In fact, I’ve gotten to the point where I consider feeling unusual and having my attention work differently to be fun, interesting experiences to observe and learn from.
So my thought is that before trying modafinil, maybe people should experiment with small doses of strongly psychoactive drugs that don’t have a 12-hour half life, perhaps in a safe & supervised environment, to learn that altered mental states aren’t scary and can be pretty useful for certain tasks—they’re like distinct mental gears you can enter using cheap, reliable external aids.
(For example, drink half a cup of coffee, then a full cup of coffee, then two cups of coffee on separate days to know what it’s like to be highly stimulated, and a cup of beer, two cups of beer, and four cups of beer on separate days to know what it’s like to be highly disinhibited. Kratom is another highly useful but little known legal psychoactive; for example, this successful blogger primarily credits kratom with his success at building his online empire, and I’m not surprised at all given my kratom experiences… any resistance I have to doing tasks seems to just melt away on kratom.)
(Disclaimer: I’m a foolish young person and maybe you should ignore everything I’m saying. Also if you really did experience stimulant induced mania you should probably follow the instructions on the label.)
Appreciate your response and perspective, hg00.
I think smaller doses are prudent for people experimenting with these things. If I were to try armodafinil again, I would have cut the pill in half or even quarters. (I had no real choice in the pill dosage, as I only received a sample.) Though, in retrospect I think avoiding (ar)modafinil all together would be smart because the half-life is way too long.
I’m basically straight-edge, though I’m open minded and willing to try some drugs if I think they might have a positive effect on me. I’ve only tried nootropics, and so far I have not been impressed. Either they do nothing or make me feel really strange. Others’ experiences may vary. There doesn’t seem to be anything here for me. At this point I have no intention of ever trying a drug for non-medical reasons.
What I experienced isn’t exactly clear, but, I didn’t like what I experienced. In fact, it took several weeks for me to fully recover from taking armodafinil. After a few weeks or so I felt mostly normal, and a bit later the tinnitus finally died down. The latter isn’t that unusual for my tinnitus, actually. After exposure to a loud noise I might have louder tinnitus for several weeks. (Not that mine ever is quiet. It doesn’t bother me, but I imagine normal for me would drive most people nuts. It never goes away and probably will only ever get worse, and I accept that.)
Understood. I don’t doubt your self-assessments, just wanted to provide a contrasting perspective. For tinnitus, you might want to try googling “tinnitus replacement therapy” or experimenting with ear/jaw/neck massage; both of these seem to have been helpful for me.
I’ve looked into tinnitus retraining therapy (I think this is what you meant) but decided I’m not bothered enough by my tinnitus to go that route. I’ll keep it in mind if this changes. I have not heard about massage helping tinnitus. I’ll have to give that a shot as I’m sure it would be enjoyable even without tinnitus relief.
Otherwise, I’ve found noise machines to be helpful. Sometimes I also listen to a brown noise mp3 when working and I don’t want to listen to music. I find that this totally masks my tinnitus, masks most ambient noises, and is rather pleasant (it sounds like a waterfall). (I want to note that my brother finds artificial noise to be worse than tinnitus, so your mileage may vary.)
If you use Linux and have the right software installed you can run the following commands to generate a brown noise mp3:
The core idea behind tinnitus retraining therapy is to listen to noise that doesn’t totally mask the tinnitus but is more salient than it. The principle being that it helps you think of your tinnitus as background noise. Seems to work for me.
A month or two ago I started taking Modafinil occasionally; I’ve probably taken it fewer than a dozen times overall.
I think I’d expected it to give a kind of Ritalin-like focus and concentrate, but that isn’t really how it affected me. I’d describe the effects less in terms of “focus” and more in terms of a variable I term “wherewithal”. I’ve recently started using this term in my internal monologue to describe my levels of “ability to undertake tasks”. E.g., “I’m hungry, but I definitely don’t have the wherewithal to cook anything complicated tonight; better just get a pizza.” Or, on waking up: “Hey, my wherewithal levels are unusually high today. Better not fritter that away.” (Semantically, it’s a bit like the SJ-originating concept of “spoons” but without that term’s baggage.) It’s this quantity which I think Modafinil targets, for me: it’s a sort of “wherewithal boost”. I don’t know how well this accords with other people’s experience. I do think I’ve heard some people describe it as a focus/concentration booster. (Perhaps I should try another nootropic to get that effect, or perhaps my brain is just beyond help on that front.)
I did, however, start to feel it suppressed my appetite to unhealthily, even dangerously, low levels. (After taking it for two days in a row, I felt dizzy after coming down a flight of stairs.) I realize that it’s possible to compensate for this by making oneself eat when one doesn’t feel hungry, but somehow this doesn’t seem that pleasant. For this reason, I’ve been taking it less recently.
I’d be curious to know whether others experience the appetite suppression to the same extent; it’s not something that I hear people talk about very much. Perhaps others are just better at dealing with it than I am or don’t care.
It’s also hard to say how much of its positive effects were placebo, given that I took it on days when I’d already determined I wanted to “get a lot of shit done”.
I might still try armodafinil at some point.
Huh, along with the low side effects, sounds like a candidate for a weight loss drug.
Yes, perhaps for some, but I’m already closer to underweight than I am to overweight, so for me that’s a big con.
I wonder if activation energy is a good way of describing difficulties with getting started.
Discussion of different kinds of werewithal
Yep, the model in that post is quite close to the one I’m trying to describe.
Mixed feelings. If you need wakefullness it’s available on tap, but with a side of anxiety and trouble going to sleep later if your dosage is not perfectly calibrated.
I took modafinil twice. I’d been having problems staying awake during the day—it’s hard for me to sleep before 2am—and those completely disappeared. I had more energy then than I’ve had in a while. No negatives. The only reason I haven’t gotten more is that I don’t have a mailing address.
(Disclaimer: I drink a lot of coffee and tea, use a lot of snus, and drink like a relevant ethnic stereotype on weekends.)