![]() ![]() ![]() Users on message boards talk about how modafinil doesn’t so much speed them up as clear their minds. For this reason, scientists originally believed it to be non-habit-forming, though some are beginning to doubt this claim. Unlike Ritalin or Adderall, modafinil isn’t an amphetamine and doesn’t flood the body with dopamine in the same way. “Whereas with guys on Wall Street, it’s more testosterone-fueled it’s more just power through it.” In a conversation on WallStreet titled “Viagra for the Brain,” one commenter gushed, “This is not like caffeine or 5 Hour Energy. “There’s something, I think, about guys who write code for a living that makes them very interested in hacking things-finding shortcuts, stuff like that,” he says. In New York, Borden is hearing more chatter about it among traders and hedge-funders, though they don’t tend to boast about it in the same way as the tech guys. Far and away, most of those were for off-label use. prescriptions increased almost tenfold over the past decade. Last month, modafinil’s penetration into the culture was confirmed by the American Medical Association’s journal Internal Medicine, which published a University of California, San Francisco, study reporting that U.S. Last summer, ABC News did a segment on Asprey in which he compared taking it to the scene in The Wizard of Oz where everything blossoms from black-and-white to color. Probably its biggest booster is Dave Asprey, founder of the Bulletproof Executive web forum, where he blogged about the drug’s powers (headline: “ Why You Are Suffering From a Modafinil Deficiency”). Timothy Ferriss, author of the best-selling The 4-Hour Work Week, recently dished about its effects with modafinil fan Joe Rogan, the former host of Fear Factor, on Rogan’s popular podcast. It is rumored to be the model for the fictional pills in the movie Limitless that allowed Bradley Cooper’s character to use 100 percent of his brain. More recently, it has attracted traders like Borden who don’t just need a pick-me-up to get through a deadline they need to be on, without a break, for months, even years at a time.Īnd that’s modafinil’s reputation. Modafinil, which is marketed as Provigil in the United States, was first approved by the FDA in 1998 for the treatment of narcolepsy, but since then it’s become better known as a nootropic, a “smart drug,” especially among entrepreneurs. I didn’t think I was an anxious person, but I guess I was.” “There were some very potent anti-anxiety effects. “Time took on an entirely different sort of quality.” He was even happier. I polished things.” As long as he kept taking the pill, his focus never wavered. “I never felt, Oh, let’s just get it done. “I didn’t take as many breaks I didn’t get as frustrated the stuff came out with fewer errors,” he says. He spent hours fine-tuning ad campaigns for his new business, and his output wasn’t just faster and longer-it was better. Tasks that were usually soul-crushing now had his undivided attention. I would describe it as being very much like Adderall, but without the speediness.” Your eyes start to feel very sort of engorged, and your awareness comes to the front of your face, which is kind of a freaky sensation. “I sensed it was blood actually moving to the optic nerve. It was very easy to stay visually focused.” It was like walking around on a winter day when it just snowed. “My senses sort of shifted to the visual, and my auditory sense went down. A crisp softness to it.” Soon he was experiencing a level of concentration he’d never imagined. (“It was a piece of cake,” he says.) He popped his first pill-“the maximum suggested dose”-as soon as the package arrived, and within a few hours he started feeling a pleasant fuzziness. So a few months ago, Borden ordered a three-week supply by mail. But he was working two jobs-by day, he does quantitative analysis and project management for a venture-capital-backed B2B start-up by night, he’s developing a proprietary high-frequency trading system for a Wall Street start-up of his own-and what he needed was more time to work. He’s into acupuncture and alternative medicine. It took Peter Borden a while to come around to modafinil. ![]()
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