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Provigil Extends Your Day?
John Mearns writes "It looks like before long all caffeine junkies will be able to ditch the bottle of Mountain Dew or cup of coffee in favor of pill. Its not a true stimulant so you don't get the "caffeine crash," just countless hours of alert attentiveness. " It's also
still in testing so it'll probably make you grow horns or something, and is
supposed to only be used for people who are sleepy during the day, but it raises
several interesting ethical questions.
There's something incredibly cozy about having a cup of hot coffee or tea to sip on throughout the day, a sort of tangibility that you won't get from popping a pill. It's kind of like the difference between muzak(tm) and Pink Floyd...sure, both are music, but only one is music.
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I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Provigil was developed in France in the 1970s. Although no one is sure how it works, animal studies show that the medication--unlike other drugs that induce wakefulness--doesn't seem to dramatically increase levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with arousal and alertness.
If you want to take a drug that no one knows how it works, go for it. However, I will not be taking a drug that scientists are clueless about.
The best treatment for sleepiness is SLEEPING!!! If you are engaging in an activity that is depriving you of sleep, STOP!!! There is a reason you get sleepy. Your body and mind needs to rest and recharge and sleepiness is the signal to do so. Medical test after medical test has shown that people that deprive themselves of sleep go insane and lose their ability to perform even the easiest of tasks. That is why sleep deprivation is used so often as a torture device to break down subjects, so they will spill the proverbial beans.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Where does society get off saying what people can and can't do with their own bodies, given that they are aware of the risks (or at least aware that the risks are not known). These are not questions for the government or society to ask. These are questions for individuals to ask. "Is this a good choice for me and my body?"
Many people I tell this to think it would be a good idea to take them during finals.
I never grokked why this stay-up-for-hours mentality became such a powerful meme with college students. I *always* did better by getting a reasonable amount of sleep than by staying up to cram. Give yourself a few extra days lead time for in-depth studying. Get proper sleep sleep for the period just before and during exams. Watch your performance soar.
I would advise against using this if you want your memory to function. It's still probably just a theory, but I still remember hearing the most probable explanation for the brain's need to sleep that I've ever heard. Basically, the theory goes that when you enter deep sleep (i.e. non-REM sleep) your brain is literally wiring new connections: shifting memories to long term storage, connections are reinforced with more connections, etc. Your brain then goes in to REM sleep to test those connections, which is why REM sleep seems pretty random, but is often related to what's going on in your life.
Some evidence for this: there is a specific type of autism (I can't remember the name) that baffled researchers until they started monitoring the EEG's at night. The researchers found out that the people with this type of autism were literally going in to seizures at night, at least they were experiencing the "electrical storm" in their brains that characterize a seizure. The researchers put the patients on anti-epilepsy medication, and it cleared up the symptoms right away. As the theory goes, the brain was using all of it's connections every night, preventing unused/unneeded connections from atrophying. So the patient was literally unable to forget anything, but also didn't have any more room for more connections.
The moral of the story (considering that only a fool wouldn't realize that these pills won't be more abused than Viagra)? Don't use/abuse these pills if you want to be able to remember/learn anything long-term.
BlackGriffen
I've had a problem with getting sleep during the day for years. It has nothing to with how interested in my projects I am or how much sleep I get: I would always get sleepy right at 10 am and about 2pm. Lately I've taken to walking to work each morning (about five miles) and it's made a huge difference. It took me a week to realize that most of my sleepiness problems had disappeared. Now, a month later, there's no mistaking the difference: if I walk to work I feel alert. If I don't, I get sleepy. I usually hate exercise but I enjoy the walk.
Miko O'Sullivan