Modafinil is designed for narcoleptics, people who are theoretically getting too much sleep. It is not actually intended for people to use to stay up beyond the recommended range. If you stay up for multiple days you are increasing the build up of these plaques, because the brain is not able to clear them out while you are awake.

"Is designed for" implies a lot more than what it means here. If I remember correctly, the mechanism behind Modafinil is unclear. The usage is approved for narcoleptics, but also for people who want to shift their circadian rhythm (because it [allegedly] doesn't carry the sleep debt that other stimulants do).

Is there any information (affirmative or negative) about Modafinil's effects on this plaque? Considering how recent this whole discovery seems to be, I doubt there's much conclusive info on this specific interaction.

Yeah, the "doesn't carry the sleep debt" bit is dubious at best. Maybe not at much. But it doesn't fit my experience at all. Anecdotes not being data, and all that, but for me at least I still wear down over time with a couple of uses of modafinil a week unless I actually make sure to catch up on sleep, to the point where I am careful to limit how often I use it, even though it is far easier to avoid totally crashing with than caffeine and generally feels less stressful on the body (whether that feeling reflects reality, I don't know).

Well I think you're talking about something different. From what I've heard (and in my experience), I can skip a full night of sleep with Modafinil and then fall back into my normal sleep schedule the day after.

You'll probably fall asleep earlier in the day, but you'll only sleep for 8 hours. This is why it's useful for offsetting your rhythm.

Ritalin/Adderall is very different. If you use it to stay up for 8 hours, you'll sleep for 16 hours the next time you pass out.

Again, though, the data is ambiguous AFAIK.

>Ritalin/Adderall is very different. If you use it to stay up for 8 hours, you'll sleep for 16 hours the next time you pass out.

From my subjective experience, this isn't necessarily true. All-nighters with modafinil vs. all-nighters with adderall require the same amount of catch-up sleep for me. Modafinil just gives me a less jittery wakefulness.

If you fall asleep earlier in the day, you're paying offf your sleep "debt" right away. When I use it I go to bed at roughly normal bedtime the following night. At that point 8h sleep is certainly not enough. Though I'll usually not "catch up" more than 1-2 hours extra that night. If I want to I can push through and continue as normal, and even do multiple more cycles, but over time I do end up tired enough that I need to catch up with more sleep.

I tend to prefer to use it to offset sleep for relatively short periods - e.g. get an extra night of work, and then sleep a bit longer for the next couple of nights - as I feel it's more productive to get a longer block of time where I'm fully alert, and give up late evenings when I'd feel tired anyway to recover.

Modafinil also, in my experience, does not make you likely to sleep less over time. What it does let you, similar to caffeine - but totally different feeling - let you portion out your sleep differently. Whether I delay sleeping with caffeine or modafinil, I end up wearing down until I catch up.

In my opinion, efficiently using our current methods for deferring sleep boils down to understanding that you're merely deferring it, and using it to "schedule" your most awake/concentrated periods when you need it most, rather than try to force yourself to work well all the time.

Maybe one day we have something that can let us cut sleep entirely, but we're still far away from that.

EDIT: As I've clarified in another comment below, my sleep amounts without anything are already fairly low, and that may certainly affect my ability to push it further down with modafinil over the long term.

I take armodafinil for a chronic fatigue condition that has been ruled out as any of the diagnosable sleep disorders. It absolutely causes me to sleep less, but that probably has to do with it making me want to go to sleep just a little bit later and not having room to add more sleep in the morning.

It also builds tolerance in a kind of annoying way; it prevents me from napping or sleeping even when it no longer makes me not tired.

> It also builds tolerance in a kind of annoying way; it prevents me from napping or sleeping even when it no longer makes me not tired.

Interesting. I can sleep just fine on modafinil, but I still have greatly increased focus if I just choose to stay awake. Also, I've never noticed any increase in tolerance (which I get very quickly with caffeine and alcohol), even taking it every day for two weeks, although maybe that's not very long.

I've been taking it for about two years, often skipping it on days I don't have to work, and it's definitely not as effective. Once, though, I did lose about three weeks' worth when it got accidentally tossed during a move. Insurance doesn't tend to cover that sort of thing, and the stuff is $500+/month, so I just struggled without. When I refilled it and started taking it again, I was bouncing off the walls a little bit.

Have you tried generic modafinil from India?

Aside from the above hiccup, I come out ahead on cost if I go through my insurance rather than try to buy from India. There would also likely be some lag time involved that wouldn't have helped in that instance.

How do you safely source something like that?

You read reviews of suppliers. Lots of reviews. And you look up images of the genuine packaging from reputable manufacturers like Sun Pharma, and compare.

are you going to let that keep you up at night???

You might very well be in a different situation to me if your fatigue previously made you sleep more than you necessarily need. For my part I sleep less than average already without taking anything at all, so I might very well be pushing the lower end of the viable long term sleep amounts.

+1. For some normal* people, taking modafinil increases the risk of major depression as well.

* not diagnosed with narcolepsy or depression already

Original source: asked doctor for modafinil to enable working harder for more hours. Doctor said, No, you might think it's a good idea now, but if you're back here a couple months later with depression, you'll realize it's not worth the risk.

Looking up some primary source just now: http://www.oncologypractice.com/fileadmin/content_pdf/cpn/ar...

(for some reason the UI doesn't let me reply to the reply, so here goes)

Now that I'm looking around at papers, it seems like there is evidence that it helps patients who are already depressed get some energy back.

Is this anecdotal or do you have a link to some research?

Or coffee.

Caffeine directly effects the adenosine receptors [1] which are what regulates sleep and wakefulness [2].

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20164566

[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301008204...