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How to diminish modafinil's half-life?

C

coriolis

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Aug 21, 2007
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I am not sure if I am posting in the correct section but it seems to me that in the other sections only rather stupid questions and comments repetetively emerge, so please excuse me if I am posting in a wrong place.

I consider modafinil to be the best help to work and study that I know of. The only problem is its long half-life. If I take, e.g., 600 mg of modafinil in the morning I am able to highly effectively work or study the whole day but in the evening I am unable to fall asleep without an aid of a hypnotic agent and the night sleep is impaired. My question: Is there any possibility of how to get rid of the modafinil in the evening when I want to go to sleep, how to get quickly the modafinil out of the body so that I could have normal sleep? Or is there any alternative chemical similar to modafinil but with a half-life, say, six hours. Thank you for your answers.
 
Ritalin is very short acting for me, but it leaves a lot of people in a bad mood when it wears off. It just leaves me sleepy when it wears off, but I keep the dose pretty regular (and low). 40 mg. to 50 mg. per day, skipping 1 or 2 days per week usually.

My current doctor has scripted it since 2000 for me and I have escalated the dose from 20 mg. day to about 40 mg. a day. (I am taking this for concentration and to counteract drowsiness from opiate pain meds).

ps - it can be like having a bag of potatoe chips open when hungry -- you got to stop the urge to keep eating the ritalin. Everyone I know says its a shitty drug, does not get them high, but if its around, they eat like candy (and complain how bad it is).

Good luck!
Willie
 
Do you mean something like drinking the juice from citrons? Unfortunately Ritalin causes a very unpleasant come-down in me. I don't understand why they are developing Nuvigil that should have even longer half-life than modafinil.
 
without..

structurally modifying the drug, the only thing that i can think of is take the modfinil tablets (they are big white footballs if I remember, at 300mg /tab) as early in the morning as possible and chew them up well and wash them down with something to get any bad taste out of your mouth. THe effects should come on swiftly, peak higher and earlier, and come down faster. It might be a good idea to start with only chewing a half a tab first and take the other amounts whole at the same time. You don't want to get too powerful a buzz going all at once.
 
I find modafinil to be effective as a cognitive enhancer at the dose of about 1 gram. Sometimes I take 2 grams or more. Modafinil would be an ideal cognitive enhancer if it weren't for its too long half-life. Scientists should focus on diminishing its half-life not increasing it, it's rather stupid.
 
Jesus christ guys, I take 200 in the morning when I need it and that's more or less good enough for the whole day.
 
That really is too much. You are venturing into uncharted and possibly dangerous territory at those doses-- although there has never been a fatality from "modafinil" overdose, 1g/day cannot be good for one. I'd go with a 400-500 mg max morning dose. As for the half-life, what can I say? I've never had it actually interfere with sleep or even significantly tweak me out.
 
it means that adding a chlorine molecule to modafinil will increase the effect in question, while adding a methyl group (-CH3) will reduce it. Not knowing what effect you mean, I can't say any more, but I'd presume they mean chlorination/methylation somewhere on one of the phenyl groups.
 
coriolis said:
I find modafinil to be effective as a cognitive enhancer at the dose of about 1 gram. Sometimes I take 2 grams or more. Modafinil would be an ideal cognitive enhancer if it weren't for its too long half-life. Scientists should focus on diminishing its half-life not increasing it, it's rather stupid.
Click to expand...

Well theres your problem!! 8o

That dose will be seriously counter productive. (As demonstrated by the fact loss of sleep is happening!). It will also likely make you so focused you will loose sight of the bigger picture (as demonstrated by thinking changing modafinil's half-life will solve the problem!) It is also a dose far higher than recommended so don't expect it to be free of serious acute or long term side effects.

There will be a critical or optimal point for any improvement in intellect for ANY nootropic drug. There will be a peak (at a given dosage) and any higher dose thereafter will be detrimental. [Think of a car engine you can't keep pumping Nitrous oxide/Nitromethane in and not expect it to go bang - it needs fine tuning for performance]

Recommended dose:
100 - 200mg daily

Maximum recommended dose: (doesn't necessarily translate as optimal!)
600mg daily
 
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Agreed that 600mg seems way too much.

For my body, the half-life of modafinil is around twelve hours. I usually take 200mgs during the day if I use it, once when I wake up (around 7am) and another before midday, sometimes even earlier if I can. I've found taking the second 100mg after midday/lunch makes it very hard to sleep (usually around 11pm/midnight).

Thought I haven't experimented, I've not found anything that helps to dampen it's effects.
 
Hello johanneschimpo,

thank you for your kind answer. Forgive my ignorance please again: is it possible to somehow induce these two chemical reactions, i.e., chlorination and methylation in the human organism once modafinil was swallowed and thereby to regulate the potency of modafinil?

I start to feel the cognitive-enhancing effects of modafinil at the dose of approximately 1 gram, but I admit that such a rather high dose is perhaps necessary since I suffer from a brain disease with more than 80% of brain volume affected by a diffusion pathology and also I am taking 7 different neuropharmaceuticals so there could be various interractions and the understanding of their mechanism remains inchoate.

Forgive me now, please, a little digression. On many boards the theme of modafinil or Ritalin causing, promoting or facilitating stuttering often emerges. Some people often infer that these chemicals impair the thinking process. But the truth is that that people suffering from balbuties have completely normal cognition and thinking processes.
 
the chlorination and methylation alluded to above remarks on potency as related to synthetic derivatives of which the body will not create in vivo

yohimbine may cause a potentiation, but for most is usually a nasty agent with negative side effects -- though if you wish to warrant some experimentation in the potential for allowing you to use a more moderate dose of MOD and thus have less potential of insomnolescense certainly it could be done judiciously

otherwise you may want to look for another agent to fill the role you desire from MOD as it appears to not have optimal characterictics for your needs
 
Looking closely at the structure of...

MOD, you , first of all to all of us wouldn't at first glance be a stimulant at all. If you stuck in front of me on a pharmacology exam paper, i wouldn't know how to categorize it. But anyway, it's interesting that the phenyl groups are both unsubstituted, leaving them open to metabolism, and the di-benzylic position with the alpha sulfonyl would appear to be quite activated towards metabolism, as would the carbon atom (methylene) between the sulfonyl group and the primary amide. I would expect that MOD is already set up to have a short half-life, unless the metabolites are the root of it's long half-life.
 
Actually, the metabolites of modafinil (mainly the carboxylic acid) are completely inactive. The long half-life has a lot to due with its lipophilic nature. Modafinil is absolutely insoluble in water. As for the chlorination thing: that is not a reaction that happens in the human body. That article is talking about a different chemical: 4,4'-dichloro-modafinil, which is a little stronger than the parent. Most diphenyl or diphenylmethoxy type DAT inhibitors are more potent with small halogens at the para position on the rings.

The dose used in ADHD trials for modafinil was around 400-500 mg qAM, so I would use that as a guideline. Simply put, 1g is way too much--modafinil is one of those compounds that has a ceiling dose & going above that offers no additional benefit.
 
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Thank you all for your helpful comments and suggestions. Modafinil helps me compensate the cognitive deficit I suffer from and also I am almost sure it slowly improves my condition, i.e., cures my illness. And you are right that I should draw the line at, say, 400mg. Once I did a rather irrational thing, I simply naively thought that if I would take a large enough dose of modafinil, it will cure me, so I took 3 grams of it. I had a rapid heart-beat as if hart-attact was imminent. The first night I didn't sleep, then I felt asleep with the help of Seroquel and the much more potent sedative levomepromazine. However, after 4 days, when I had in my body only approx. 10mg of modafinil left, I suddenly started to loose sight, my brain felt like insufficiently supplied with blood, heart-beat dangerously accelerated, I was red in the face, I thought I had an epiletptic seizure or apoplexy, I had to lie down and wait. It disappeared after 10 minutes but then it struck again. So despite modafinil is generaly relatively safe it can be dangrous in large amounts too.

And here is again a small humbled question for a chemist: in what edible liquid is modafinil solvable? Pehaps in glycerol? I have some modafinil powder, but it is formed by rather larger crystals and I have a hunch that such large crystals would not sufficiently absorb in the body.
 
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