How long does Modafinil work?

[shadowknight]

First of all, let me give you all a brief overview of the condition I have. I have never been formally diagnosed for any sleep related disorders with the use of advanced tests (like those conducted in sleep clinics). I and most doctors felt I had insomnia but at the back of my head, I always knew it wasn't insomnia because what I have is quite different. I am going to keep this very short. I believe I either have non-24-hour sleep-wake syndrome (more likely) or delayed sleep phase syndrome (less likely). The problem is that, I can never maintain a proper routine/cycle. I haven't been able to since the age of 15 and I am going to turn 26 now. My body clock seems to be on a constant move. For example if on a given day I slept at around 7 in the morning, the next day I sleep a bit latter. But I eventually fall asleep. Now when these minutes keep adding, they start becoming hours and within a few weeks, from 7 AM my time changes to 10 AM. And it doesn't stop. Unlike insomnia, when my "body's time to sleep" comes, I don't really experience any difficultly falling asleep. Alright, that should be enough. On to the important thing.

So you can imagine how difficult my life must be specially considering the fact that I am married and I have a child. I am grateful I work as a freelancer and that I don't have a regular job or else I don't know what kind of a hole I'd have been. Anyways, I can live with anything before 7 AM but anything after that starts becoming difficult. Eventually when I start sleeping at 12 noon, I just give up and I perform a type of chronotherapy. Basically, what I do is, for example. Day before yesterday I woke up at 8 PM. I was supposed to sleep at around 10 AM but instead, I didn't. I was going to stay away for 24 hours and instead sleep at around 10 PM. Most of the time this works and for a few good weeks, I can maintain a significantly better schedule. It does take a few weeks before my clock moves from 10 PM to 7 AM. Anyways, the sad thing is that, chronotherapy can be very very painful. Sleep deprivation in the morning hours is nasty!

Here is my main query. To deal with the deprivation and not to feel sleepy I took 200 mb of Modafinil yesterday. According to wikipedia, it works for around 12 hours. I took it at 11 AM and I was hoping I could sleep by 11 PM. Well, it's 5 AM and apparently, I am still wide awake! I need to assess if whether it's just my chronotherapy that has failed or if whether it's possible for modafinil to cause wakefulness for more than 12 hours? It's almost like 18 hours now and I am thinking I am right now experiencing classical insomnia.

Anyone here who has experience using Modafinil to stay awake? Please, I'd really appreciate your input! I feel like crap.

 

[hobhead]

mountains out of molehills - get up at in the early AM day after day and your carcass will quickly adjust if you have any health at all . the alarm clock is your friend !
you stand the perfect chance of fucking your mind up and diving into severe depression if you fuck about with strong medicine and sleep cycle .
alarm clock and the least bit of self control = sleep like before you began to stay in bed until the afternoon.

you wake up at 3 AM - stay up and carcass soon will adjust ! seen it with slacker neighbor guy who had 3 x kids and welfare . in the fart sack until the afternoon and knocking his mate up yearly .

 

[hobhead]

Wtf.

 

[TheAzo]

I think you aimed a bit too far north with the dose; the stuff does last a while, and while many people can sleep not-that-long after taking it, some people can't.

Good luck.

 

[shadowknight]

I think you aimed a bit too far north with the dose; the stuff does last a while, and while many people can sleep not-that-long after taking it, some people can't.

Good luck.

You are right. Considering the fact that I was taking it for the first time, I should have gone with a lower dose like 100 mg. It's been 31 hours since I took it. I am feeling very sleepy right now but I won't go to bed because it's just 5 PM right now. I plan to go to bed at around 11 PM. I am basically giving chronotherapy another shot so I am feeling anxious and I am afraid this anxiety might cause problems so I plan on taking a low dose of alprazolam 30 mins before I lie down. Do you think it would be safe? I mean it's been more than 30 hours since I took modafinil so I am hoping it won't cause an interaction? I usually take .25 mg of alprazolam to deal with anxiety related insomnia. I have been taking it as needed from the past 3 years.

 

[blah]

Get off the benzo/(s), alprazolam(which may be hard for some days or weeks), eat good food, go to bed at the same time every nite, wake up at the same time every morning, get plenty of exercise, and the carcass:D will indeed adjust. You'll be much better all round and probably feel better than you ever have.

If you suffer from anxiety, alprazolam may lower that and help with the onset of sleep in the short term, but mid to long term this drug will exacerbate anxiety, and/or depression. Not only that, it will interfere with decent sleep, making the carcass restless even if you think you slept like a fossil.

I was prescribed some Diazepam for anxiety, when required. Ocassionally I would use it to help get to sleep. For over two years I would sometimes take a small to moderate dose before bed. Initially this was fine. But slowly, but surely, I began to notice a very subtle thing happen which was quite unexpected. I started to have nitemares which I'd never had prior to any meaningful degree; and these would sometimes leaving me feeling very fucked indeed upon waking oweing to the content of these aweful dreams.

For a while I thought it was just how I was feeling, what I was going through. But eventually I discovered that without any question what so ever, it was the Diazepam which was causeing the nitemares. I ceased useing the Diazepam and the nitemares went away just like that. I would imagine that many 'Benzos' could alter brain chemistry in the same way.

 

[shadowknight]

Hey guys. I had a wonderful day today! I went to bed last night at 11.30 PM. I had taken .25 mg of Alprazolam yet I was feeling very anxious that I might not succeed in sleeping in the night. And at first it did effect me because I woke up feeling fresh at 12.30 AM. I can't tell you how depressing that felt. But I didn't want to give up. So I spent some time reading and at around 2.30 took another .25 of Alp and with a huge feeling of sadness, I tried sleeping again at 3 AM. Woke up 30 mins later again but luckily, I fell asleep in less than a minute and finally woke up at 12 noon It didn't go as well as I was hoping for because my plan was to wake up at 8 sharp. It seems my wife tried to wake me up and she said I did get up and said I was too sleepy and went back to sleep again. I don't remember that though.

So you guys are saying, if I force myself to wake up early I can keep my body in synch? I know I can't force myself to sleep but waking up at an exact time everyday is something that IS in my control. I am thinking I'll take .25 mg of Alp. today again because I don't want to take any chances. I am thinking I'll use it for two days more so that I can be sure my body has gotten used to the new time.

 

[TheAzo]

So you guys are saying, if I force myself to wake up early I can keep my body in synch? I know I can't force myself to sleep but waking up at an exact time everyday is something that IS in my control. .

They're claiming that. Try it, and if it works, that would be great. All I can say is that that didn't work at all for me.

Calling the body a carcass and acting like if you just wake up at the right time everything will follow... it pissed me off. So easy for someone blessed with a 24-hour body clock to say. It doesn't work for everyone. I've gotten up at the same time every day for months at a time, and been miserable and groggy the whole time, not feeling awake or alive until 2 hours before i was supposed to sleep.

Those people who say "just get up at the same time every day" have no idea what it's like, to have a sleep cycle that just won't conform to the 24 hour cycle that society runs on. I only feel awake when it's close to time to go to bed, and forcing myself to go to bed earlier doesn't work, as i just lie awake, and if i don't get enough sleep, i feel miserable the next day, but become more awake in the evening, until i feel great right before i need to go to bed.

I wrote a really really nasty response to the first poster originally, but thought better of posting it, because i figured he was just posting while intoxicated, and/or flat-out trolling. I don't know what to say now that the only other person posting in the thread has given the same bullshit advise with the same offensive terminology. Is this some cult or something?



I will mention a few bits of drug-related advice - if you smoke weed, you'll either benefit greatly from smoking before bed, or smoking before bed will keep you up. I'm the latter, and i now avoid smoking for a few hours before bed. I found that GABAergics (benzos, soma, etc) can go both way - if i go to sleep early on them, or it's a longer acting one, it helps me sleep and it's fine, but if i try to sleep when they're starting to wear off, they can make it harder to sleep (xanax in particular, thanks to it's short halflife. Plus, in any case, you can't use benzos or other GABAergics daily long term _anyway_, so this avenue only really offers temporary relief.

Stimulants can help with feeling more awake in the daytime (if that's part of your problem), but their benefits for fixing sleep cycle are much more questionable.

It's helped me to some degree to try to optimize the environment i sleep in (all the power lights in my room have duct-tape over them, because i'm light sensitive, and i've got blackout curtains up so i don't get woken by the sun at the crack of dawn), and what I do before bed.

 

[Lolie]

Sounds like a circadian rhythm sleep disorder. Your circadian rhythm is set by external cues and when those are removed most people's natural rhythm is a bit over 24 hours. It sounds like your body doesn't naturally adjust according to time cues. Light is one of the most important environmental cues which regulates your body's sleep cycles and artificially controlling your exposure to light is one of the common treatments for circadian rhythm disorders. It sounds counter-intuitive but light therapy uses increased exposure to light to reset your body clock to a 24 hour cycle.