Modafinil is one of a number of performance-enhancing smart drugs that can be found online. It gives a sensation of natural wakefulness for hours at a time, without the jittery buzz and disrupted sleep associated with caffeine. It also sharpens the mind, boosts memory and aids problem-solving: the Ministry of Defence shipped thousands of pills to tired soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. They certainly work. While I was dozing off, bored senseless by revision, my mates were more focused than a Buddhist monk mid-meditaton.
But Modafinil does more than just keep you awake. I asked a friend who tried it out to describe his experience.
"It messes with your mental reward system," he said. "It makes you desperate to do what you know you actually need to do. You just don't want to do anything else. I wanted to revise all the time, non-stop."
Professor Barbara Sahakian, a leading neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, explained it to me in scientific terms: "Our recent study published in Neuropharmacology suggests that healthy people use smart drugs, like Modafinil, to get down to and complete tasks that they have been putting off, because these tasks seem more enjoyable when taking these drugs."
