We are a people pressed for time; we would not like to be slumbering while the world bristles with feverish activity around us.
One student, who tried to keep awake for five days at a stretch, puts it - life is too exiting to simply sleep away. Oh yes he managed to become psychotic afterwards.
Most of us would like to keep alert 24 hours of the day and even then would barely find enough time for our mounting interests.
This is where stimulants come in. At one time it was coffee, caffeine was supposed to be good at keeping you alert all the time. Then it turned out to be not good enough to keep ones attention span on the up all the time. A friend of mine has ADHD (attention deficiency syndrome) and there are medicines to correct it. Ritalin is one of them. (I think my friend was prescribed Adderall ). I have heard stories where normal people took these drugs to boost their brains.
This is not a wise thing to do for the drugs can cause cardiovascular problems and can lead to addiction.
Internet seems to the source of the purchase of the drugs because people won’t normally get their hands on them without a prescription from a registered medical practitioner.
All the same smart drugs are being researched into and marketed by firms to cash in on the frantic quest for a magic potion to drive away sleep. Eugeroics is the name for the drugs in this category.
Provigil is such a drug which is widely used by everyone who has to keep themselves awake for a span of 48 hours. I do not know what it contains but they use it in the Yankee land it appears. There are other drugs too in the anvil that offer a much extended span of alertness, if the reports are to be believed.
They say these drugs are superior to their predecessors in the sense that they stimulate specific regions inside brain which produces sleep. The drugs are supposed to have enhanced the subject’s performance over the control group which consisted of normal well rested individuals. The experiments were conducted on monkeys!
Methamphetamine is also widely used by those seeking brain boosts. The drug has has several side effects including chances of heart failure, brain damage and paranoia. (The good thing is it is addictive.)
Narcolepsy (a sleep disorder causing daytime drowsiness) is currently being treated by a drug called Modafinil in the west. The ‘speed’ seekers are on to this one too, it is supposed to have no side effects “It's a dopamine reuptake inhibitor” (whatever that is) it was tested on pilots whose motor functions were better after 72 hours without sleep than at the beginning.
There is a big community over internet after brain boosters and there seems to be sites selling them (eg. bulknutrition.com) in powdered form for low prices. ‘Piracetam’ is said to be the favorite ‘general cognitive and memory enhancer’ with these. In fact there seems to be several ‘racetam’s!
[I saw some one advocating cod liver oil as a brain booster. I used to take it once when I was very young. Terrible stuff. Seven sea’s have it in perfumed form I think.]
No one believes that such drugs could replace sleep. Sleep deprivation could gradually lead to many health related problems and even death in extreme cases. But who would mind that in these hectic times. If your neighbor is starting on it you just can’t sit idle and watch him prosper can you.
Most of these modern drug takers belongs to the intellectual class of the society like engineers, scientists doctors, politicians etc. The psychedelic drugs seem to have been replaced by smart drugs now. The trend is catching up on the lesser developed countries too.
No wonder today’s generation has no ‘despair’ in them, in fact they ‘aspire’ for big things
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