Real Tech News - Independent Tech » Modafinil - the Scary Time-Shifting Drug
via Digg.
I am going to make a guess that this drug will soon be the new darling of the black market.
I cannot even imagine the ramifications of this drug's release for all-night cramming sessions. If kids aren't all tweaked after studying all night, having worse retention than the kids that actually read the book, how are students that don't use drugs going to compete?
I can't wait for this to hit the mainstream legal prescription drug-taking population to hear the horror stories of lives destroyed and families ruined. Or perhaps to lives regained after being able to use their newly-found wee hours.
I doubt that the come-down is as rosy as the article suggests. Messing with your body's circadian rhythm has potentially debilitating side-effects. This would more than likely shift your time so that, without the drug, the person would be unable to regain their sleep schedule.
Being the skeptic that I am, I checked-out Google News to find stories on this drug and its authenticity. This Gizmag article is much better than the previously linked article; it has information about military trials and such. An abstract from the British Journal of Psychiatry also sounds fascinating (but I am not going to hunt it down--it is sad to not have access to articles online).
Categories: drugs, sleep, fda, timeshift
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I once read the report of a Russian (or german, I honestly can not remember which) research scientist who trained himself onto a 48/12 cycle of wake sleep and reported no side effects once he was accustomed to it.
Of course, crazy scientists being... crazy scientists that might not mean a damn thing.
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