Eliminating Sleep is Closer Than you Think

[Jim]

Get ready for 24-hour living - health - 18 February 2006 - New Scientist

[Lonewolf]

A close friend used modafinil for about two years, taking about 4 hours sleep per night during the week and catching up to some extent on the weekends. He had greatly improved concentration and motivation at the time, but he crashed at the end of that 2 year time period. He was so sick that he thought he had cancer and his immune system was shot - he contracted one illness after another. 5 years later he has not recovered psychologically and has bouts of depression and general malaise frequently.

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

5 years later he has not recovered psychologically and has bouts of depression and general malaise frequently.

That doesn't sound good. It's an interesting idea (the premise of the article), but not quite ready for prime-time.

[ditto]

I personally hope the average amount of time spent sleeping will remain the same. The less sleep the average person gets, the longer work hours will be.

[David Hausladen]

ditto: Yeah, while I love the idea of minimizing sleep, my biggest worry about it becoming mainstream is that employers would use it as a tool to increase work hours. I personally don't think anyone should be required to work more than six hours a day (or, for that matter, pressured into doing so by inhumanly low wages).

[Dimitry]

I have mixed feelings about that article, simply because it's just another pharmaceutical company releasing the drug. Of course it'll only show the good side of the drug for now, who knows what can happen (as one example described above showed) down the road.

I also think that tampering with our bodies through drugs or science isn't always the best way. You can probably alter you sleep schedule (as was shown very successfuly by Steve through polyphasic sleep), but that seems to be a more natural way of just simply switching to another type of sleep schedule.

At the end of the day though, it's hard to say what's optimal in the long run. Maybe only the normal 7-8 hours a day is best and anything else after years isn't that great for you.

[Andrew Brunelle]

"Drugs are bad, m'kay?" I would never, ever take a drug like that. Sleep is one of the inegral parts of my life. I dream and let things run wild in my sleep. It's where I get a lot of new ideas, and to think that we should try and get rid of it at the eventual expense of our health? I don't think so. Drugs ARE bad, m'kay?

[Wanderer]

I agree with Andrew, I wouldn't be happy to take drugs to deprive my sleep (I dont even take coffee), but I would have no problem with sleeping polyphasically to try to get more hour for me.

As for those above, longer work hours are already happening, the full timers at my work are 10 hours a day 5 days a week, and I can think of other people who have much higher hours

[maryelyn]

drugs good, drugs bad...??

i don't worry so much about that. i just think that sleep is...pleasant.

nah, i think i'll stick with sleeping.

this reminds me of those who think giving up food would be a good thing.


some of you guys are just plain nuts!

[JTierney]

Modafinil's the only drug I could ever see becoming habit forming for me. I was lucky enough to get a prescription for it a while back, and there's times when I rather miss it. It doesn't work for everyone, and not everyone takes to it in the same way. But for those who get the effects mentioned by the articles author, it's simply amazing. I'm not exagerating when I say that it bordered on a mystical experience for me. Being able to be aware of the body's messages about sleep, but being able to shrug it off as an itch instead of what can feel like a gaping wound the shape of a nights sleep, is incredible. Even more so for the fact that one is, for the most part, left mentally and emotionally unaffected. The only side effect seemed to be better ability to concentrate, and better ability to harness creative ideas into concrete product. I'm a programmer, and I wrote some of my absolute favourite programs during the timeframe I was on it.

And that is also the downside. Humans, or at least this human, have a great ability to overplay experiences in the past. It's really easy to find myself moving at a good clip with a project, but still not be able to feel 'quite' as good about the progress from that glow of modafinil fueled work that was in my past. And, sadly in some sense, the science does seem to back the subjective feelings of not only being more awake - but just plain more intelligent. It's gotten pretty good results in increasing performance across a fairly wide range of mental tasks, some of which don't respond much to traditional stimulants. There's cousins of the drug being worked on that seem, potentially, quite a bit better in that respect. But it's way too early to really speculate too much on that.

Oh, and hi. First post here. I should have done a traditional intro, but I couldn't help registering to comment on this while doing a search for nap help

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by maryelyn

this reminds me of those who think giving up food would be a good thing.


some of you guys are just plain nuts!

Hey, I used to be one of those guys. _Used_ to - I love eating now

[Zulu]

I have used modafinil extensively and have found it to be very useful. I'll usually naturally stop using it and then catch up on sleep.

From my sleep log:

2 months while on modafinil about 50% of the time: 7.8h of sleep per night
2 months without modafinil: 8.3h of sleep per night

[dor]

But what are you missing by not sleeping -
dreams- letting the subconscious mind work....
improved concentration, motivation...what about creativity? as andrew says:

Originally Posted by Andrew Brunelle

"I would never, ever take a drug like that. Sleep is one of the inegral parts of my life. I dream and let things run wild in my sleep. It's where I get a lot of new ideas, and to think that we should try and get rid of it at the eventual expense of our health??

we still don't know what sleep really is - taking a drug to block the desire to sleep might be as dangerous as taking a drug to block the desire & processing of vitamin d - you might still 'live' but how well.
i agree with others work with the body.
I am not 'anti-drug' but I would rather try to do non-essential things through the body first - if i had snake venomon in me i would take whatever drug it took to stop it from killing me, but I wont' take pills to 'be less shy' 'more happy' or whatever.