I’ve always wondered whether or not modafinil (provigil) or other drugs are effective for long-term avoidance of sleep without major side effects. Does anyone on LessWrong have experience with modafinil that they would be willing to talk about? (PM if you would prefer not to discuss publicly).
I enjoy the feeling of sleep because my primitive mammal brain needs it, but on an intellectual level I hate every hour that I give over to sleep. It feels too much like death because of its unavoidable encroachment. All too often I’m not ready to surrender the hours to sleep that could be spent learning, or reading, or anything else that I want to do instead. I also hate the tiredness that I’m punished with when I try to steal a few hours from the night. The tiredness persists for most of the day and prevents me from doing any serious work if bad enough (coffee can bring me out this, but it wears off and is not a good long term ‘solution’ to sleep).
Anyway, to be more on-topic, I would not be surprised (but disappointed) if sleep were far more necessary and needed than a quick first-pass would show. Its omnipresence throughout the animal kingdom (a form of sleep can be observed in a freakin’ nematode#Sleep_in_invertebrates)) as well as the fact that we don’t observe any full exceptions to the requirement of sleep suggests that it is not trivial for life as we currently know it to evolve away from needing it.
I’ve always wondered whether or not modafinil (provigil) or other drugs are effective for long-term avoidance of sleep without major side effects. Does anyone on LessWrong have experience with modafinil that they would be willing to talk about? (PM if you would prefer not to discuss publicly).
I enjoy the feeling of sleep because my primitive mammal brain needs it, but on an intellectual level I hate every hour that I give over to sleep. It feels too much like death because of its unavoidable encroachment. All too often I’m not ready to surrender the hours to sleep that could be spent learning, or reading, or anything else that I want to do instead. I also hate the tiredness that I’m punished with when I try to steal a few hours from the night. The tiredness persists for most of the day and prevents me from doing any serious work if bad enough (coffee can bring me out this, but it wears off and is not a good long term ‘solution’ to sleep).
Anyway, to be more on-topic, I would not be surprised (but disappointed) if sleep were far more necessary and needed than a quick first-pass would show. Its omnipresence throughout the animal kingdom (a form of sleep can be observed in a freakin’ nematode#Sleep_in_invertebrates)) as well as the fact that we don’t observe any full exceptions to the requirement of sleep suggests that it is not trivial for life as we currently know it to evolve away from needing it.
Gwern is a lesswrong contributor who has recorded his experiences with modafinil, it might be what you’re looking for.