Modafinil: The Rise of Smart Drugs

The core of biohacking is finding tricks and tools that cause a big impact with very little effort. Call it enlightened laziness or the relentless pursuit for personal perfection, if there is any difference between them. It’s time to write about Modafinil, the performance-enhancing smart drug that belongs in your bag of biohacker tricks, at least some of the time. This post shares the experience of several people who use it, including first-time users and an interview with a biomedical engineer who, like me, is a long-time Modafinil user. Read to the end for warnings.

What is modafinil?

Modafinil is a smart drug, also known as a nootropic. It enhances your cognitive function in a variety of ways (more on that in a second) & you can buy modafinil online too. There are plenty of smart drugs, but modafinil stands in a class of its own for a few reasons:

• It’s not a stimulant. Modafinil acts sort of like a stimulant, but it’s actually a eugeroic – a wakefulness-promoting agent. It doesn’t make you speedy or jittery like most classical stimulants do. Modafinil also doesn’t have a crash or withdrawal, the way many smart drugs do.
• It’s not addictive.In fact, modafinil can help people kick addictions.
• It has few to no side effects. Modafinil is very safe. I’ve hacked my brain with neurofeedback so much that I don’t see much of a benefit from modafinil now, but I took it every day for 10 years and saw no problems of any kind with it during that time.
• It works. Really well. Have you ever seen the movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper? It’s based on modafinil. This stuff gives you superhuman mental processing, with few to no downsides.

How modafinil enhances your brain and mood

Unlike some smart drugs, there’s a good deal of evidence to back up the effects of Modafinil.

• It has been shown to increase your resistance to fatigue and improve your mood.
• In healthy adults, modafinil improves “fatigue levels, motivation, reaction time and vigilance.”
• A study published by the University of Cambridge found Modafinil to be effective at reducing “impulse response”, i.e., bad decisions.
• Modafinil even improves brain function in sleep deprived doctors.
• There is some evidence that people who buy Modafinil only helps people with lower IQ, but after years of experimenting (and upgrading my IQ), it doesn’t feel that way.

How to dose modafinil

For most healthy people, 30-50 mg of modafinil will be plenty. It lasts 6-8 hours; take it in the morning, with or without food. I should say that modafinil is a prescription drug; you can talk to your doctor about it. There are places you can get it online; I don’t want to link to them because of legal issues…but you may be able to find a source. Biohack responsibly, of course.