Astral Codex Ten

modafinil

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modafinil

Article

modafinil is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 28, 2021 and November 16, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “I also asked about how people experience modafinil tolerance”; “MAOIs and modafinil”; “There are similar considerations for modafinil”. It most often appears alongside modafinil, Nootropics Depot, 2020 SSC nootropics survey.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: April 28, 2021
  • Last seen: November 16, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Nootropics Survey 2020 Results
April 28, 2021 · Original source
But I and many other people have had good results with Zembrin, a concentrated extract of kanna advertised for low mood and anxiety. So I asked respondents to specify whether their kanna was Zembrin or something else. Of 37 kanna users, 20 used Zembrin and 17 used something else. The subgroup who used Zembrin reported a mean effectiveness of 6.88, which beats out modafinil to make it highest on the list. After ad hoc Bayesian adjustment, it was 6.72, second only to modafinil as the second most effective nootropic on the list. This really excites me - I've felt like Zembrin was special for a while, and this is the only case of a newer nootropic on the survey beating the mainstays. And it's a really unexpected victory. The top eight substances in the list are all either stimulants, addictive, illegal in the US, or all three. Zembrin is none of those, and it beats them all.
I'm not sure. SSRIs are very effective for a lot of people. But Zembrin outperformed modafinil and phenibut on the survey. I have never heard even the most extreme fan of SSRIs (possibly me, honestly) claim people like them more than modafinil or phenibut. So this is either a bias (people think it's cool to be taking a new experimental plant, but don't like taking prescription medications with a bad reputation), or else Zembrin is either not an SSRI, or not just an SSRI. Of note, there are ways to prepare kanna (the plant Zembrin comes from) that make it kind of a recreational drug of abuse, though not a very addictive one. This suggests it has something more than just SSRI activity.
Sublingual Modafinil Is Not Very Interesting
The Psychopharmacology Of The FTX Crash
November 16, 2022 · Original source
Here the detectives on r/NootropicsDepot recognized it as their company’s old brand of adrafinil7. Adrafinil is a prodrug of modafinil, an unusual stimulant-like drug. That is, your body metabolizes adrafinil and turns it into modafinil after you take it.
Inline links: r/NootropicsDepot, 7
So was SBF effectively on modafinil? Seems likely - many traders are. I won’t lie - modafinil is a good stimulant, during medical residency some doctors (including me) would use it to stay alert through the night shift. It’s not any better than Adderall or anything, just a bit different and easier to get.
Does it affect attitudes to risk? Hopefully you can already predict my answer to that question: all dopaminergics affect attitude to risk in complicated ways we don’t really understand, but for most people these effects will be too small to notice. There’s one case report of modafinil causing pathological gambling, and various contrived studies where neuroscientists investigate how modafinil shifts some technical parameter in a risk curve; these kinds of studies often don’t replicate. I think you can really just stick to your prior of “all dopaminergics affect risk curves in ways we don’t understand, but it’s usually fine when your job doesn’t require perfectly-tuned risk awareness”.
Inline links: one case report, various contrived studies