Any such thing as wake up pills?

Factual Questions
1

I, like the next man i’m sure, find waking up in the mornings a deeply unpleasant experience, especially if I’ve had less than 6 hours sleep.

So I wondered, is there an opposite to sleeping pills? Perhaps you could have wake up pills that would wake you after a certain amount of time, leaving you feeling completely awake and happy to get up.

I envisage perhaps a tablet with a thick outer coat that will dissolve in your stomach, and the centre would be something like caffeine or another stimulant, so that when the outer coating breaks down (after around 6 hours), the body would begin digesting the centre, consequently waking you more ‘naturally’.

I’d be willing to pay good money for something like this!

2

The only things I know of are caffeine pills, like No-Doz. But you have to be awake to take them. Go figure.

3

I’ve read that there are experimental remote-controlled pills that can deliver medication to a specific point in the intestine. A timer-activated capsule would be even easier to build. The empty capsule would come out the other end intact, but if it’s small enough I wouldn’t mind.

4

Well military pilots use Go-pills and No-go pills.

No go’s (Ambien) have to do with the sleep cycle. IT basically puts you into REM sleep much faster than you normally would be there. So basically you get better sleep in a hoster peior of time.

Go pills will get you going but again, you have to be awake.

Maybe you could get a research grant…

5

I like my tea or coffee in the morning… I think there’s some stress-reducing value to getting your caffeine in a yummy hot drink. At least, I can envision myself getting blue if I just popped a pill for breakfast every morning instead of getting some aesthetic pleasure from my caffeine source.

6

You could try drinking several large glasses of water at bedtime.

You may find that you’re, shall we say, eager, if not exactly happy, to get out of bed before your alarm goes off. :smiley:

7

Buffered amphetamines?

8

…well, yes, but if you consider what go-pills do to, say, Canadian bystanders, I´m not sure we want syntax (or anybody else, for that matter) popping them, even if it´s only a car in the rush-hour traffic they´re driving and not an F-16 fighter jet…
</sarcasm>

I quite like the time-controlled pills idea, you could make a helluva money, I´m sure.

I don´t know much about sleep cycles, but I suppose if you could get the alarm clock to ring at the right point, you´d wake up smoothly. I understand from some phases of the sleep cycle you wake up more relaxed than from others, but you´d need to be wired to the alarm clock or something for it to see when you really go to sleep and ring after the appropriate time…

nah, better just stick to coffee.

9

I guess people are just lazy and sleep slowly when they could sleep fast and have their sleep time be more productive.

10

There is actually a brand of caffeine pills called, wait for it, Wake Ups. No time release, though. Just enough caffeine to send high school students everywhere into high strung hissy fits a la that Degrassi High scene in the library where the girl starts throwing books at her boyfriend yelling “No YOU calm down! YOU!”

11

Amphetamines were the first thing I thought of when I read syntax’s question.

Perhaps if one went to sleep with an IV in one’s arm, then had a physician drip in the amphetamines when one wanted to wake up?

12

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by universe.zip *
**…well, yes, but if you consider what go-pills do to, say, Canadian bystanders, I´m not sure we want syntax (or anybody else, for that matter) popping them, even if it´s only a car in the rush-hour traffic they´re driving and not an F-16 fighter jet…
</sarcasm>

OUCH! Sorry, I forgot those were a sensitive issue. My apologies…:smack:

13

hmmm…there’s got to be something legal?

14

Why, yes, actually there is! There´s these daylight lamps or whatever they´re called, that gradually get lighter for 20 or 30 minutes, simulating dawn, so your body gets the feeling it´s morning and time to get up.
The problem is they probably only work in winter or if you have to get up real early, because if the sun´s rising outside anyway (and you don´t have your shades down), you should get this effect anyway. But that´s the one technology I´m really interested in.

The real problem with amphetamines isn´t that they´re illegal or a sensitive issue just now because of that incident, it´s that they do make you awake, but not in a relaxed sort of way. Side effects include edginess, agressiveness, increased blood pressure and heart rate etc, prolonged use can lead to paranoia, etc… you also tend to feel talkative and superior to others - all in all, a bunch of effects that some may find desirable in recreational use but which aren´t exactly compatible with regular office work (or whatever - operating heavy machinery would be even worse). Plus, people would probably notice…

So for a quick wake-up without too many side effects, I still recommend coffee or tea, but if you ever try out those daylight lamps, please tell me how they work!