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.
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.