My Poison of Choice

Modafinil is the tradename given by it's inventor and current patent holders, Celaphon INC of Pensylvania USA to the compound 2-[di(phenyl)methylsulfinyl]acetamide or

C15H15NO2S

For those of you who, like me, are familiar with some of the hazily remembered aspects of organic chemistry studied more than a decade now in the past and not touched on since, it's a fairly non-descript looking chemical to the untrained eye. A couple of Benzene rings with some small traces of Sulphur, Oxygen and what looks like Amonia thrown in at some point for good measure to add a bit of class to the proceedings.

What makes it different if not unique is the way that this chemical interacts with others found within the human brain. It is related closely to the amphetamine series of drug molocules which both Herr Hitler's science division, Tour de France cyclists and beat poets with berets hanging out in coffee bars had discovered by the mid-point of last century.

The difference is, while amphetamine and it's brothers literally crank everything in the brain up to 11 and ge you through the day with sheer brute force tweaking and stimulation, Modifinil stimuates principally only the cognitive functions of the brain but does so somehow by supressing to some degree the build-up of other chemical byproducts of thinking hard in the brain, leaving your thinking largely clear of their muddying effects and all the while supporting your ability to concentrate and focus for extended periods of time.

All well and good, I hear you say, but what's the use? How different is that from a 3am esspresso enema to get you up an running again long enough to catch a taxi home?

Put simply, it reduces the need for sleep whilst blocking most of the cognitive in pairments associated with being awake and up all night for hours on end.

And because the effect is largely achieved in the brain itself the body is subject therefore to much less harsh treatment - you breathing may become easier but your heart will nor race and you mind remain alert at all times until your body washes it out.

Who wouldn't want to give that a try?

No rest for the wicked and no time to waste

Sunday, ever Sunday.

My Sunday nights occasionally can stretch out longer in scope that some people's entire preceding weekend.

My problem I guess is, was, has ever been, I just don't want my weekend to end. It seemed to short a season, so much left undone and so much more that can be doing while the rest of the world rests in the arms of Morpheus.

My weekend is MY weekend I tell you, MY time, and Sunday ebbs away as you watch, leaving you feel cheated.

I'm not sure when I became one of those people, one of those silly people who just will not go to bed, no matter what. It's been so long, I might always have always been that way, it's hard to tell - there were so many other confounding factors influencing my childhood and adolescent behaviour patterns, it becomes now impossible to draw any kind of conclusion from the data set even if one were available for third party research at this distance.

In any case, my Sundays never end these days, it seems. Nor my Tuesdays, Saturdays or Thursday or any other day the fancy takes me.

For I have an addiction. Not a conventional one, a habit or a dependency might be a more conventional means of beating around the bush but I harbour no illusions at all that my conscious, deliberate management of my own brain chemistry through pharmaceutical means (for well over a year and a half now) can really fit to almost no other term or label so well.

I'm not proud, but I'm not ashamed either.

I regularly use a drug for which I have never received a Doctor's diagnosis or prescription, to make me behave in a way that I would not do otherwise and to achieve things and improve my performance in a way I would not be able to without the drug affecting the chemistry of my brain at the time.

Whether this makes me a bad person or not is obviously not for me to judge, as introspective as I can be at the best of times, as you will no doubt learn. The morality of drugs and drug use generally in our society is a complex one and littered with hypocracy and double-standards on both sides of the debate. For example, using the wrong flu remedy or decongestant in the world of international athletics can dirty a person's name forever and literally ruin their life, even when the charges are totally refuted on subsequent tests and yet powerful steroids are a vital part of modern medicine.

As far as illicit drugs go, I have traditionally been more inclined to believe that laissez-faire enforcement (as we sometimes seem to have in this country, in spite of everything) is the best way to balance personal freedom with the need to protect vulnerable people in our society, so lean more towards a total decriminalisation of almost all of the most common illegal drugs. I've tried my share of most and probably more besides that than most, but still draw the line (so to speak) with Cocaine, rather than some of the stronger, more addictive opiates you might expect; Cocaine is for me far too tied up always with conspicuous consumption, the 80s, ego, fountains of champagne bought for strangers to make them like you, greed, averice and fleeting thrill. To that end, I have never done it, to the extent that I do not even ever allow it into my house when carried by lovers or the closest of friends... I won't try to insult your intelligence by suggesting that not having many disposable funds about my person did not contribute to my forming that view, but it's something more that that... I know too much that is extraneous, I read too widely sometimes and I chastise myself enough as it is most days, and that's without villages full of butchered Columbian peasants on my conscience as well. Not a position I feel maybe many people share, but morality always as previously noted is a very personal thing and so it is so for me in this case.

I am not writing therefore to try and promote my practices and this lifestyle to anyone, just merely to get the word out there and tell you what it means to me to be like this and why I choose it (or if indeed it choose me).

The agony and the ecstacy, the perils and the pitfalls, warts and all. My promise to you.

And without further ado - What is this Modifinil stuff anyway?

The Witching Hour

Welcome to the Shadow World.

This is the half-life, the place where you become a partially-remembered echo of your true self.... Your life as viewed through tracing paper, not wholey you and yet not fully recognisable as someone else.

This is the 3am club (where youare the only member), my secret, stolen free time... Where I come to find the silence and still point, the object clarity our lives lack in the early 21st Century because we're too busy or too tired or too hungry, too full or too drunk to make sense of who we are and what our lives mean.

This is where I come to see myself.

Welcome to the Secret World of Modifinil.