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Driven and Focused
Modafinil
by jmck
Citation:   jmck. "Driven and Focused: An Experience with Modafinil (exp87894)". Erowid.org. Jan 1, 2016. erowid.org/exp/87894

 
DOSE:
300 mg oral Modafinil (daily)
BODY WEIGHT: 300 lb
300I am a computer engineer, and I lost my job for falling asleep on the job too often. People often talked that I was a party animal and was probably up drinking or doing drugs all night, when in reality I didn't drink on week days and rarely did drugs of any sort. The sleepiness was not that of being normally tired ... it's hard to explain, but it's an absolutely unresistable urge to sleep/close my eyes. I'd fall asleep for 2 - 5 minutes, then wake up. Some times it would recur, sometimes it wouldn't.

I tried a lot of different things to try and get this sorted out. I went to my doctor, and she sent me to a sleep clinic so have testing done to see if perhaps it was sleep apnea or something along those lines as I reported being tired chronically when waking up. It turns out I did have at least a minor case of sleep apnea, and was given a CPAP machine and sent home. I continued to have problems. It seemed to be times of lowered activity, like driving or sitting in a chair at home, in a movie theatre, wherever, but nobody could figure out a cause.

<3 years pass>

I got diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis after having a clinically diagnosed episode where I went blind in one eye due to optic neuritis. This turned out to be my second incident, due so some scarring they found in my other eye from a similar incident of much less severity. About 2 years after being diagnosed, I decided to bring up the problem of my sleepiness. We talked about the symptoms and onset conditions for a little bit, and she said it sounds like narcolepsy. She said that just the sleepiness wouldn't be indicative of narcolepsy by itself, there'd be other signs as well. Said one that was related to waking up and being paralyzed (mentally, of course) and I told her that wasn't me. Then she went on to mention that some people have issues with suddenly falling down ... the pure inability to keep control of their muscles. She said that this could happen many ways, one example was at the climax of emotion (ie.. sex, telling a good joke, etc). I stopped her right there! I confirmed with her that this was my story ... but it was weird enough to never really bring up with anyone previously. What happens to me when I tell a really good joke is I kind of lose the ability to breath for a split second, and my knees give out.

So, having both MS and potentially narcolepsy as well, she wrote me a prescription for Modafinil. The initial prescription was for 200mg per day, 100mg at 07:00 and one at 12:00. Over time I adjusted this for myself ... I found that the 100mg in the morning wasn't enough, and the 100mg at lunch was too late and I'd have issues getting to sleep. I've changed my dosage to 300mg when I wake up, at 07:00. This is the perfect amount for me ... lasts all day and I can still sleep at night with no issues.

I find that the effects in the morning are very lightly cocaine-like. I feel the same sort of buzz initially, my mouth gets moving, and I'm genuinely interested in ... well, uninteresting shit for lack of a better word. I'm focused, driven, and not tired at all. This is generally gone within the first 2 hours. Half-life is about 12 hours, so by 7pm I'm coming down off it and by 11pm there's no problems sleeping.

One warning, however, do not drink excessive amounts of caffeine on this stuff. I would normally consume 5-15 shots of espresso per day. Doing that while on a 300mg dose of Modafinil is suicide ... my heart races, I get a headache and I go speed demon out of control. It feels a lot like a reallllly long night on cocaine (like an 8-ball to my lonesome). This made me feel really bad, and I had to beg a friend for a couple ambiens when it happened.

Finding the right dosage was paramount to this drug's ability to function correctly. This drug has changed my life, I am now the person I always knew I should be if I wasn't so damned tired all the time and falling asleep randomly.

The price is a little much, running me just over $70 for 60x100mg generic which lasts me about 20 days. With a little work trying to find the right hoops to jump through, I found that if my doctor prescribed it specifically for the label use (narcolepsy) and with some supporting documentation (MSLT tests) they would eventually cover it.

Exp Year: 2010ExpID: 87894
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 27
Published: Jan 1, 2016Views: 4,505
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Modafinil (217) : Performance Enhancement (50), Medical Use (47), Not Applicable (38)

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