At a dinner party in the winter of 2011, a famous novelist, who’s in
his mid-50s and whom I’ll call Paul, told me he’d used the neuroenhancer modafinil to
help him get through a long, gruelling book tour. He also told me it
was another novelist, of equal fame, intelligence and reputation, who
had given him his first sample of the drug.
Paul and I had met many times before, and he was among the few people who knew that, in 2008, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And so, when Paul had finished his bowl of soup, I mentioned Margaret Talbot’s New Yorker article about neuroenhancers, and asked what he thought about them.
That’s when Paul told me he’d used the drug, and changed my life.
Talbot’s article, like many published since the mid-1990s, turned, in part, on the fuzzy ethics of the use of neuroenhancers. These controversial drugs, strictly licensed for the treatment of narcolepsy, sleep apnea and ADHD, have become immensely popular among users without prescription because they promote a keen sense of wakefulness and sharper cognitive focus.
As is the case for many people with multiple sclerosis, the effects of weakened limbs, spasticity and fatigue had cut my working life in half. Yet not a single GP, neurologist or nurse, and none of the MS websites, Nootropics Mexico had mentioned the use of neuroenhancers for the treatment of neurological fatigue. Although I knew that surgeons regularly use modafinil as a substitute for the ratty and short-lived perks of caffeine, and so, too, do hundreds of sleep-deprived domestic airline pilots, Ivy League students (both average and brilliant), many of the brightest minds in academe and hundreds of women and men in the US military, until that night, I’d never met anybody who’d used the drug – and I wanted to know as much as Paul was willing to tell me.
Paul and I had met many times before, and he was among the few people who knew that, in 2008, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And so, when Paul had finished his bowl of soup, I mentioned Margaret Talbot’s New Yorker article about neuroenhancers, and asked what he thought about them.
That’s when Paul told me he’d used the drug, and changed my life.
Talbot’s article, like many published since the mid-1990s, turned, in part, on the fuzzy ethics of the use of neuroenhancers. These controversial drugs, strictly licensed for the treatment of narcolepsy, sleep apnea and ADHD, have become immensely popular among users without prescription because they promote a keen sense of wakefulness and sharper cognitive focus.
As is the case for many people with multiple sclerosis, the effects of weakened limbs, spasticity and fatigue had cut my working life in half. Yet not a single GP, neurologist or nurse, and none of the MS websites, Nootropics Mexico had mentioned the use of neuroenhancers for the treatment of neurological fatigue. Although I knew that surgeons regularly use modafinil as a substitute for the ratty and short-lived perks of caffeine, and so, too, do hundreds of sleep-deprived domestic airline pilots, Ivy League students (both average and brilliant), many of the brightest minds in academe and hundreds of women and men in the US military, until that night, I’d never met anybody who’d used the drug – and I wanted to know as much as Paul was willing to tell me.
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