Modafinil
I just read an article in the Washington Post about a new drug called Modafinil. This pill allows the user to stay awake and alert for 40 hours at a time.
Its neurological focus is precise, unlike stimulants such as caffeine and amphetamine. It targets regions of the brain believed to regulate wakefulness, avoiding the jittery and addictive side effects of other drugs. One “can’t get high on modafinil. There’s no euphoria to it. When they first take it, a lot of test subjects figure they must have gotten the placebo. When this stuff takes over, it takes over. Gently, not violently. No apparent loss of acuity. But you have definitely kicked into a gear you didn’t know you had.” And it does not hinder your ability to sleep if you desire.
University of Pennsylvania sleep researcher David Dinges, among others, questions the long-term safety of this drug, and wonders if the drug will at all affect the phenomonon of long-term fatigue accumulation. But he is looking forward. “The more far-out question is: What if we eventually had something that was absolutely safe that could substitute for sleep?” he wonders. “Is that the direction we want to go? Many would say yes. I don’t know what the implications are for our species. Probably not bad. … Should humans try to live without sleep? I don’t know. We’re already trying to do that.”
The author wrote the article in 30+ straight hours after having taken Modafinil. Near the end he notes that he is tired but not sleepy. “Interesting to imagine a future in which those are two distinctly separate things,” he notes.
I am terrifically excited about a drug such as this. I have a medical condition that causes sleepiness. I take a prescription drug for it that also causes sleepiness, and I have to time consumption of the drug carefully. I, like many people, never feel that I have enough time in the day to pursue all my interests. And as a believer in mortality, I do not want to look back at a life in which I spent a third of the time unconscious. The ability to sleep only every other night, or less, is fantastic.
I am scared of a fen-phen style story unwinding. If the drug decreases lifespans significantly the good effect is nullified. But if safe, consider the ability to sleep for recreation, but never to be chained to a pillow. How exciting.
Sleep research is, in general, exciting. It is a mystery to me. We live in a world with electric lighting, plenty of food, medicines; if our daily unconsciousness was evolutionarily advantageous simply for resource management, then the physiological necessity is obsolete. I wonder if something is going on other than forcing a physical recuperation process. But what?
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