I Pit Provigil Preposterousness

The BBQ Pit
1

I pit the credulous yahoos who produced and bought into this crap (reposted from Slate): My Experiment with Smart Drugs

Now I remember why I stopped reading blogs…

This is one of the least credible things I’ve ever read by people I’d hoped would know better. We get what we expect from sources such as Pajamas Media and Fox News, but I’d have hoped Slate would have been at least a bit more skeptical. Unfortunately, David Plotz, a Slate editor, is also another Provigil booster, which prompts me to wonder how many shares he and Hari have invested in Cephalon, the drug’s maker.

Let me see if I have this right: This Hari guy claims he took a single 200mg dose of Magipill, er, eh, Provigil — no dosage acclimation period, no days or weeks to run-up to full potency – and in one hour – one hour! – claims to have become suddenly so focused and brilliant that in five short hours he reads an entire book on quantum physics and super-string theory that had previously daunted him, and apparently people living in the world of fact and reality actually buy into this silliness?

Of miraculously attaining this new-found mental ability and deep scientific cognizance, he writes: “I hadn’t noticed anything, except the words I was reading, and they came in cool, clear passages; I didn’t stop or stumble once.” And yet no one chokes on this hallucinogenic fairy-cake?

The rest of his yarn is more implausible still. “And so it continues like this,” he writes, “for five days: I inhale books and exhale articles effortlessly.” He reports there is no down-side and no side-effects. He even claims weight-loss properties! (I seem to recall an aphorism that warns of claims that sound too good to be true, but perhaps that only applies to people deprived of the bewitching power of Provigil.)

Then he bravely stops taking his miracle pills, and, lo, the magic stops cold and he’s back to being a mere human again, albeit one who could continue – utterly without side-effects – to be a dazzling genius and intellectual superstar, but deliberately chooses not to be!

I’d like to try the drug that the people who believe this nonsense must be taking! I don’t know who to pity more. This Johann Hari guy’s either another James Frey or he’s punked them all big time. What a bunch of credulous yahoos!

And no one laughs? No one notices the emperor is sitting there starkers?

Now, I understand that others swear by the drug, too, but besides the fact that plenty of people swear by homeopathic “medicine”, Holy magic underwear, and the cancer-curing effects of Old Milwaukee, this Johann Hari’s claims in particular are just too preposterous to let stand unchallenged.

(p.s.: I was prescribed Provigil legitimately for hypersomnia/EDS (gotta have an acronym, you know) a few years ago. Might as well have been Mentos for all they did. The reports of its almost-supernatural powers are, shall we say, greatly exaggerated.)

2

He’s on speeeed!

Seriously, stimulants can seem magical for a while when you’re ramping up to the A God Am I phase. There’s something magical about everything becoming wonderful and fascinating and shiny and all of a sudden you are a comedic wizard and a demigod and a universal genius.

Then you get a bit too much and you’re a single exposed nerve thrumming to its own frequency. All of your filters are gone and everything is too loud and too bright and too goddamned present. Does Provigil not do that to you? If it doesn’t, it is a miracle drug.

In any event, remember that Freud developed psychoanalysis when he wouldn’t shut up while he was on cocaine. He thought coke was an absolute miracle drug and wouldn’t shut up about it until one of his friends died. I hope Provigil doesn’t cause a repeat of that.

3

Occasionally, due to flare ups of UC, I take prednisone. Not a ton of it, mind you, but about 15mg per day to get things under control. Let me tell you, I could easily imagine myself writing about how godlike my powers have become. I become hyper-focused. I only need about 5 hours of sleep per night. Instead of plopping down in front of the TV, I do a bunch of productive shit.

I read and understand more, I get a ton more done at work and have better ideas.

I’m also really insufferable because I can’t shut up, but you wouldn’t see me writing much about that…

So I can totally beleive this guy’s claims that he felt genius-like on Provigil, and experienced no bad side effects. At least in the short term. I know Prednisone has plenty of bad long-term side effects, which is why I happily taper back down when the doc tells me to. I do miss the genius, hyper-energetic phase, though. It makes me feel like I imagine all those overachieving CEOs and stuff do.

4

I’ve also had Provigil legitimately prescribed to me. During the period I needed it the most, it did pretty much nothing. I took a pill later when I was doing a 48-hour exam, and it definitely lessened my need for sleep but trust me, if I had become magically smarter, I would have known. I’d have appreciated it greatly, too.

5

You can have my Provigil when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. No more having to pull over on the way home from work to sleep because I can’t keep my eyes open. No more passing out as soon as I sat down in the afternoon. No more propping my eyelids up with one hand so I can get my clinical note done. Love, love, love the stuff.

Unfortunately it doesn’t make me super-smart. Well, I suppose it did up my IQ a little, but that probably had more to do with the fact that I could string more than three words together at a time. It also doesn’t make me high, or feel godlike, or need any less sleep. Maybe I need to up my dose to get those effects?

6

I don’t know about the claims these guys are making, but the times I’ve taken provigil, I would definitely describe the effects as miraculous. It really is unlike any stimulant I’ve ever taken. The extreme focus was the main effect I remember. Maybe it effects people differently.

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I can’t comment on his reading of a quantum physics book (maybe there were pictures!), but in regards to stopping, he did say that he was stopping because it seemed too miraculous and he didn’t want to screw up his brain from any as-of-yet-unknown potential side effects.

Nobody said those who self-medicate know what they’re doing.

8

What’s all this about Slate? The OP’s article would appear to be on The Huffington Post, and while the author apparently writes for Slate as well, I can find no indication that this article was ever run there. Indeed, from the author’s website, it would appear to have originally run in the Evening Standard (June 5, 2008).

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So I take it that you guys all missed Law & Order: SVU last night? A Provigil-addled teenager at a froofy residential school for geniuses goes bonkers and kills her room mate. Jury lets her off easy.

I personally don’t like the stuff much. Just gets me kinda wired and tense. I’ll stick with piracetam.

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Submitted for your viewing and reading pleasure.

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The health issues I have are legion. I have previously enjoyed almost impeccable health, but now at 42, I feel as if the warranty on my body has worn out and everything is breaking down at once. I go to the doctor often to have my blood tested due to a possible reaction to prescriptions. At my request, my doctor changes meds in a hit-or-miss effort to find something that works based upon side effects. I swear, if a drug has a side effect, I’ll feel it. One side effect from one drug caused a trip to the ER. Not a fun few days.

I also have poor sleep habits. I am a night owl. I have sleep apnea and don’t use a CPAP machine. Waking up in the morning is tough. I honestly need about 10 hours of sleep a night. Two of my current meds carry the “will cause drowsiness” label.

My typical workday is hell. Everything is done on the fly, at the last minute, and usually just under the wire. But if there is nothing to do, I will do nothing. (Yes, I’m a lazy bastard.) I usually get drowsy around 10 AM. And by drowsy, I mean that I am going down. Fast. I usually have to close my eyes for a few minutes. Sometimes I have flat out fallen alseep on my desk. I used to think it was that I take all my meds first thing in the morning after I arrive to work. They make me sleepy.

The same thing happens after lunch. Around 2 or 3, I get another crash. I always thought it was the post-lunch nap attack (aka PLNA, if we need acronyms). I absolutely cannot function for about 20-30 minutes. I once thought these were a function of the diabetes, but the few times I have tested when sleepy like this readings were average (normal for me is 150-200). This is not the reason. Still a Scooby-Doo mystery.

I am always trying to tweak my health care, but this time I made a mistake and changed two factors on the same day, so I can’t be sure as to which one is going to work better. As of last night, I have started taking my meds after work. Yesterday I took all of them and took a 20 min nap around 8:30 PM. More like was conked out.

Only got about 4 hours of sleep last night. Today I took my first Provigil (obtained legally as a sample pack from the doc) about 30 minutes before I got to work. I don’t remember where I heard about it first (somewhere on the internet, and made a note to myself to ask the doc about it) but at the time I thought it would help with daytime sleepiness.

Today I was on fire. Well, sort of. Today was a slow day. (Funny aside - today my boss told me I should save ice cream bars for ‘slow days’ - we usually get ice cream bars for meetings with my boss’ boss, because he likes them. We usually have leftovers which I pass around to everybody else. Even caught my boss surfing the net with YouTube funnies from his wife.) I didn’t get sleepy, I was able to catch up on a lot of stuff still leftover from the Xmas break (although not all of it), and even managed to open a few more doors on current problems I’ve been asked to solve.

However, I didn’t feel like I was in God mode. I wasn’t bullet proof. I wasn’t Man Of The Year. I didn’t contemplate quantum physics. (Well, maybe I did - found an interesting article in today’s New Scientist online mag about our existence is a mere hologram and understood it…But I digress) It is almost 11 PM and I’m still not tired (even after several tasty adult beverages - did I mention there’s a game on?).

My first impression: This is a great drug. As long as I can fall asleep tonight (after the game, of course). I don’t feel speedy or coked up (I know what that feels like, but that’s why I don’t do those anymore). Although several times today I was more aware of my heartbeat fluttering a bit, but I call that one without taking the BP meds for almost a whole day.

Tomorrow I’m not going to take it. Just to see what happens. Upthread there was a good comment about drug buildup in the body effect. Maybe today was just a good day for me. (trying to be objective) And then there’s maybe the issue of drug longevity to consider.

Although, I would like to find out more about what these brain damaging side effects are. I checked it out on my prescription website, but the side effects listed weren’t anything that threatening.

…Or did I just miss it?

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I had it prescribed to me when I had chronic fatigue syndrome. It worked as it’s supposed to, in that I wasn’t at all tempted to nap, but didn’t give me more energy or make me more focused. The higher dosage (I don’t remember the dosage level anymore) made me nauseous, but that was it.