Narcolepsy medication modafinil is world's first safe 'smart drug'

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

Narcolepsy medication modafinil is world's first safe 'smart drug'

Modafinil is the world’s first safe “smart drug”, researchers at Harvard and Oxford universities have said, after performing a comprehensive review of the drug. They concluded that the drug, which is prescribed for narcolepsy but is increasingly taken without prescription by healthy people, can improve decision- making, problem-solving and possibly even make people think more creatively.

While acknowledging that there was limited information available on the effects of long-term use, the reviewers said that the drug appeared safe to take in the short term, with few side effects and no addictive qualities.

Modafinil has become increasingly common in universities across Britain and the US. Prescribed in the UK as Provigil, it was licensed in 2002 for use as a treatment for narcolepsy - a brain disorder that can cause a person to suddenly fall asleep at inappropriate times or to experience chronic pervasive sleepiness and fatigue.

Used without prescription, and bought through easy-to-find websites, modafinil is what is known as a smart drug - used primarily by people wanting to improve their focus before an exam. A poll of Nature journal readers suggested that one in five have used drugs to improve focus, with 44% stating modafinil as their drug of choice. But despite its increasing popularity, there has been little consensus on the extent of modafinil’s effects in healthy, non-sleep-disordered humans.

A new review of 24 of the most recent modafinil studies suggests that the drug has many positive effects in healthy people, including enhancing attention, improving learning and memory and increasing something called “fluid intelligence” - essentially our capacity to solve problems and think creatively. One study also showed that modafinil made tasks seem more pleasurable. The longer and more complex the task tested, the more consistently modafinil conferred cognitive benefits, the authors of the review said.

The review points out that negative effects - including one study that showed that people already classed as creative saw a small drop in creativity - were reported in a small number of tasks, but never consistently. It added that the drug exerts minimal effects on mood, and only causes minor side effects such as nausea, headaches and anxiety, although these were also reported by people who took a placebo drug.

Other proposed smart drugs, such as Ritalin, prescribed for ADHD, have many negative side effects, said Anna-Katharine Brem, co-author of the review, published today in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology. “Modafinil seems to be the first ‘smart drug’ that is reasonably safe for healthy people.”

She emphasised that although the drug is not thought to be addictive, its long-term effects have not been studied. “It would be difficult to get ethical approval to test the effects of taking this drug in the long term,” she said.

Peter Morgan, at Yale School of Medicine, says there is substantial evidence that other cognitive enhancers, such as caffeine or nicotine, have benefits from short-term use, but that those benefits are erased by long-term use, and are rather replaced by deficiencies in cognitive performance. “There is no evidence that modafinil would be any different in this regard,” he said.

The effects of modafinil on the brain are complex and not well understood. One promising theory is that the drug increases blood flow to brain areas serving attention and learning. It might also enhance brain activity in areas thought to act as “conductors”, which manage skills like memory, reasoning and problem-solving.

“Modafinil is the first real example of a smart drug which can genuinely help, for example, with exam preparation,” said Guy Goodwin, president of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. “Previous ethical discussion of such agents has tended to assume extravagant effects before it was clear that there were any. If correct, the present update means the ethical debate is real: how should we classify, condone or condemn a drug that improves human performance in the absence of pre-existing cognitive impairment?”

Goodwin points out that drugs are approved to treat illnesses if they are effective and safe. The manufacturers of modafinil will not attempt to extend the licence to exam doping and there would be no precedent for handling such an application if they did, he said.

“That leaves us in uncharted territory. If there is a demand for modafinil, and people are prepared to pay for it then an illegal market will be created. Whether it becomes a target for political action must depend on how and whether public debate evolves to demand such action.”

Brem and her co-author Ruairidh Battleday think that time for debate has come. “For the first time, we have an agent without serious side effects showing benefits which we haven’t had before.”

“We’re not saying ‘go out and take this drug and your life will be better’,” said Brem. “It is still unlicensed for healthy people - but it is time for a wider debate on how to integrate cognitive enhancement into our lives. We need to explore the ethics, and scientist, politicians and the public need to be involved.”

Article at link: http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/med...il-is-worlds-first-safe-smart-drug/ar-BBlTnpO

 

[Screaming_Skull]

Cool. Did anyone see the epidode of Law and order SVU where the girl at a school for basically genius kids went crazy from too much Provigial(lol) and pushed her roomate off a boat then had a break down while talking to the cops and did the best job of acting like someone who is psycotic on amps who was laughing that she pushed her roomate at the school in the river and was smiling and laughing about cuz she was #1 now,lol. It was a really good acting job honestly.

 

[missing_one]

Please do not read this article and believe modafinil is some kind of safe and wonderful drug with no side effects.

Modafinil certainly does have side effects. I have only taken it on rare occasions, perhaps no more than 5-10 in total, over a few-year period. Over this period I have tried varying doses from half tablet to single tablet doses, with no difference.

Originally, I was gifted the stuff by a friend who decided it didn't agree with him. It sounded as if he had been using it too much.

Curious, I initially tried it with caution and experienced some positive effects including concentration and energy without methamphetamine-style downsides (that 'wired' feeling, relatively sudden comedowns, etc.). Unfortunately, both myself and others thereafter reported feeling disoriented, anxious, ill, and generally uncomfortable as a result of taking it.

Quite separately on another continent, with a totally different line of supply, another friend of mine became addicted to it, taking it 5-7 days per week for a prolonged period.

Thus, in my sample size of four people I have personally known (original owner of stash, self, other person who tried, plus someone else with a completely separate supply) a total of zero overall-positive relationships formed with this drug.

I recommend avoiding the stuff unless you really, really need a quick fix for concentration and can't hack sleeping or coffee: overall I'd prefer natural stimulants like betel-nut. To me, this drug is kind of shit, the type of brain-number big pharmaceutical companies are happy to pump out for worker drones who can't embrace and enjoy the natural rhythms of their bodies and illogically seek some type of temporary, superhuman alertness at the almost definite (despite some short-term, small-sample research) cost to their long term health.

Key phrase: "The effects of modafinil on the brain are complex and not well understood".

 

[Crankinit]

Please do not read this article and believe modafinil is some kind of safe and wonderful drug with no side effects.

Modafinil certainly does have side effects. I have only taken it on rare occasions, perhaps no more than 5-10 in total, over a few-year period. Over this period I have tried varying doses from half tablet to single tablet doses, with no difference.

Originally, I was gifted the stuff by a friend who decided it didn't agree with him. It sounded as if he had been using it too much.

Curious, I initially tried it with caution and experienced some positive effects including concentration and energy without methamphetamine-style downsides (that 'wired' feeling, relatively sudden comedowns, etc.). Unfortunately, both myself and others thereafter reported feeling disoriented, anxious, ill, and generally uncomfortable as a result of taking it.

Quite separately on another continent, with a totally different line of supply, another friend of mine became addicted to it, taking it 5-7 days per week for a prolonged period.

Thus, in my sample size of four people I have personally known (original owner of stash, self, other person who tried, plus someone else with a completely separate supply) a total of zero overall-positive relationships formed with this drug.

I recommend avoiding the stuff unless you really, really need a quick fix for concentration and can't hack sleeping or coffee: overall I'd prefer natural stimulants like betel-nut. To me, this drug is kind of shit, the type of brain-number big pharmaceutical companies are happy to pump out for worker drones who can't embrace and enjoy the natural rhythms of their bodies and illogically seek some type of temporary, superhuman alertness at the almost definite (despite some short-term, small-sample research) cost to their long term health.

Key phrase: "The effects of modafinil on the brain are complex and not well understood".

What kind of doses were you guys taking?

I took it for 3 months to counteract fatigue from an illness and it worked perfectly, the worst side effect I'd get was a bit of a headache when it kicked in some days, a slight tweaky feeling if I took more than 400mg or so in a day (not even as bad as excess caffeine - probably most comparable to smoking too many cigarettes in a row), and a bit of light anxiety if I kept that dosing up for more than 3 or 4 days in a row.

In the end I gradually reduced my dosage as my supply ran low, then I ran out and realized I had recovered my energy levels and was fine without it, and I've never touched it since (and at the time I was pretty into smoking meth when I went out on the weekend, so if it had had some kind of recreational value I would have been all over that). There wasn't even any kind of crash when I stopped taking it, I barely noticed (by that point I'd cut down to 50mg a day or so).

I don't see how someone could even become "addicted" to it in the general sense of the word, there's no high, no physical dependence and no tolerance - at worst I could see some kind of lifestyle based dependence, where a person who pushes themselves too far and doesn't sleep well relies on the pills to function over a long period of time, wears their body down from sleep deprivation, then keeps taking the pills the counteract the mounting fatigue instead of stopping to catch up on sleep. But that's not a direct function of modafinil, that's just shitty time management enabled by it.

I agree that it's not an awesome thing to take on a daily basis longterm, simply because if you need a stimulant on a daily basis longterm then you should be managing your lifestyle better instead of depriving your body of it's natural sleep requirement, but people are always going to want to take drugs to help them focus and function, and imo modafinil is a far better option for that than most traditional stimulants (amphetamines, cocaine, etc).

of course 20 years from now we could find out it causes brain cancer, so who the fuck knows

Another interesting article on the subject:

http://www.popsci.com.au/science/me...r-narcolepsy-can-boost-brain-function-,408225

A Drug Meant For Narcolepsy Can Boost Brain Function
Alexandra Ossola
at 16:40 PM Aug 21 2015
0 Comments
A Drug Meant For Narcolepsy Can Boost Brain Function
Brain boost!
The Javorac via Flickr, CC by 2.0
Medicine //

In 1998, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug modafinil as a treatment for narcolepsy, a condition in which the brain has trouble regulating its sleep-wake cycle that results in sudden “sleep attacks” where a person falls asleep at unwanted or inappropriate times. In the years since, modafinil has become popular for another, off-label use: to boost a person's cognitive abilities—an effect that hadn't been thoroughly studied by scientists. Now a team of researchers has reviewed the literature to find that modafinil does, in fact, increase a number of important activities in the brain, according to a study published yesterday in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology. This finding, however, doesn't ensure that your doctor will prescribe it to you to help you cram for an exam.

Scientists still aren't sure exactly how modafinil works, though past studies have found that the drug increases the levels of the neurotransmitters, histamine and orexin, both of which regulate sleep and wake cycles. It also elevates levels of serotonin (which affects mood) and glutamate (which helps to excite brain cells).

These chemical changes make modafinil effective at treating narcolepsy, but it also has some unintended effects on other brain functions. It makes the patient more attentive, a better learner, and more adept at “higher level” tasks that involve executive function and require inputs from several simpler brain functions, according to a press release. This is similar to how some ADHD medications, like Adderall, work, though they increase the activity of other neurotransmitters, norepinephrine and dopamine.

The researchers reviewed 24 studies about modafinil's effects on cognition that were published between 1990 and 2014 and found that modafinil did, indeed, provide a boost in tasks that require, “planning and decision making, flexibility, learning and memory, and creativity,” the press release states. It didn't have a significant effect on working memory (how the brain temporarily stores information). Plus, the drug had very few serious side effects, making it a strong candidate to be a bona fide “smart pill.”

The researchers were quick to point out that these findings don't mean that modafinil is now approved as a cognitive enhancement—that decision is up to government regulatory bodies like the FDA. But their conclusions may encourage modafinil's manufacturer to apply for the drug to be prescribed for this use. They also note that any cognitive enhancement comes with “ethical considerations” that would be important to explore in future studies.

 

[SixBuckets]

Interesting!

I take it for fibromyalgia related fatigue. I haven't noticed any boosts to creativity or focus, although it does make me functional (and therefore more creative and focussed than I am when I'm completely impaired by fatigue). The only side effect I've noticed is that when I take it for three or four days in a row, my first 'off day' is pretty much me sleeping until four in the afternoon.