Today is just one of those days. I stayed home from the lab, thinking that with my backlog of experiments temporarily clear I could get stuck into the mountain of written work that has been languishing lately. Instead, I have somehow managed to sit in front of the computer for hours with absolutely nothing to show for it. It’s not that I have been procrastinating. I’ve written hundreds of words of literature review, played with a number of primer designs and even written the opening paragraphs of a few blog posts. It’s that the muse has simply gone mum, a haze has descended on my brain and while my fingers are moving on the keyboard, only garbage is appearing on the screen.
We all have days like this, and we all wish we could do something about them. I first heard about Modafinil a few months ago, though I’m not sure where. Cliched as it is, the phrase “too good to be true” has never been more appropriate. Modafinil is supposed to increase alertness, focus, and functional intelligence, and eliminate sleepiness without preventing the user from sleeping whenever they want. Side effects include such horrors as not wanting to eat as much as you normally would and the minute chance of a headache. There is no chemical addiction, no come down or hangover, no long term effect on body or mind. You don’t feel the jitters like you would from speed, nor experience any kind of hallucination. Modafinil sits squarely in the class of “nootropics” or smart drugs. These are not your grandfather’s conciousness expanders: boosters of Modafinil say it’s the real, transhuman deal.
So why isn’t everyone popping a Modafinal each morning instead of a jolt of caffeine, with its addictiveness, hyperstimulation, painful comedown and the rest? Journalists Johann Hari and David Plotz have both written of their experiences road testing Modafinal and their accounts are surprisingly similar. Both took the drug on working days, and both worked better and more efficiently then they ever had before. They continuously caught themselves having just breezily completed a task that would normally have meant hours of procrastination interspersed with tedious effort. Both guinea pigs had friends or coworkers comment on their energy and sociability, and both relished the control it gave them over their sleep and fatigue. Yet both, within days, stopped using the drug and put it away with a firm resolve to use the pills only on rare occasions. They were afraid that it would become a addictive psychological crutch.
Jonah Lehrer, responding to Hari, also had words of warning about the drug although it seems he has never taken it himself:
If only intelligence were so easy. Before you run out a get an illicit supply of Provigil [Modafinil], let me remind you that the brain is a precisely equilibrated machine. Even drugs that don’t appear to have any negative side-effects – who wouldn’t want a more focused brain? – can actually have deleterious consequences.
In this case, the tradeoff involves creativity. Some of my friends who relied on crushed Ritalin during college used to joke about how the drugs were great for late-night cramming sessions, but that they seemed to suppress any kind of originality. In other words, increased focus came at the expense of the imagination. It makes perfect sense that such a cognitive trade-off would exist.
It’s not impossible that such a trade-off exists. However, Lehrer offers no direct evidence for it. Even if it did, is that really a worse trade off then, for example, buying energy now to pay back later with caffine? How about buying euphoria at the expense of decreased intelligence and motor function, as well as a constellation of health risks, with alcohol? Having never tried the drug, I can’t comment on Hari and Plotz’s fears. It’s entirely possible that, after a few days, the sense that you are on the verge of addiction is truly overwhelming, despite the lack of any addictive properties in the clinical trials. I think a more likely explanation is the naturalistic fallacy.
Yes, the brain has evolved to be a precisely equilibrated machine. This does not mean that altering the brain will always result in a net loss of function. The naturalistic fallacy is to assume that the brain as it is now is the best it could possibly get. My computer, too, is a precisely equilibrated machine, with incredibly intricate system of components all working in harmony. If I hit my motherboard with a sledgehammer, this would almost certainly result in a net loss of function. However, if I opened the computer and installed more RAM, this would result in a net gain. There’s no particular reason to assume that, with the right drug, the human brain cannot also be improved. In fact, as with the examples of caffeine and alcohol, we often accept side effects and health costs to get the benefit of a drug. Why not Modafinil?
Here in Australia, Modafinil is only available when prescribed for conditions such as narcolepsy and hence is illegal off-script. I won’t go into my views on drug legalisation, but suffice it to say that I don’t consider the government’s opinion relevant when deciding what to put into my body. Of course there are ways in which the drug could cause harm; going without REM sleep for extended periods, for example, is never a good idea. All drugs can be abused.
I would like to have sharp focus and motivation all through the day. I would love for the mental haze of fatigue to lift more often, and productivity to become a normal state rather than a rare pleasure. If the hype is true, this is possible through the use of a simple and reasonably cheap pharmaceutical. If it’s not, there’s nothing to lose but a little money. I can’t be the only one who would like to try Modafinil. So why is the drug described as ‘viagra for the mind’ still so little known and used by so few?
