The Magic Pill Behind the World’s Smartest Minds

Scientists at Lafon Laboratories were exploring treatments for sleep disorders like narcolepsy when they noticed something remarkable with a compound they were testing. And this is the '70s, so we didn't understand biochemistry the way we do now. They figured out this stuff just enhanced mental clarity, alertness, and concentration. It was called the real-life limitless pill. It just works to selectively promote alertness without overstimulating you. Another study, this one in 2015, shows it maintains alertness circuits without the crash seen in stimulants. So, let's talk about why this might be something to consider working with your doctor or source of prescription medications that may or may not be a doctor. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

There are days when your brain just clicks. When thoughts come fast, memory sharp, your decisions just feel easy. But most of us wait for those days to happen by chance. But what if you didn't have to? What if you could just dial that up? Imagine a pill that gives you 12 hours of calm, crystal-clear focus. No jitters, no crash, no addictive spiral. A pill used by fighter pilots on combat missions. Pulled from the toolkit of presidents, founders, creatives, and elite thinkers who can't afford to have an off day. This isn't a sales pitch. It's a deep dive into something I've used personally every day for 20 years. Modafinil isn't like caffeine. It doesn't stimulate. It activates. It flips on your brain's natural wakefulness circuits. It enhances mitochondrial function and it helps you lock in for deep work without the roller coaster. In this episode, I'm taking you through the science, the myths, the hacks, and the future. We'll cover how it works, what it does to your neurotransmitters and cells, and how I use it personally, and what to stack with it if you really want to upgrade. No fluff, no Pharma warship, just the real playbook, including the risks. Welcome to the mind of modafinil.

Before we dive in, understand modafinil is a prescription drug and I am not a doctor and I'm certainly not your doctor. And the tradition in videos like this is to warn you to always talk to a qualified medical professional first. Even if that medical professional, well qualified, has never used, studied, or prescribed modafinil. You definitely need to check with them for your own safety.

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Modafinil as a nootropic is near and dear to my heart and there's a good reason for that. It's because I was failing out of Wharton business school when I discovered it. It was an off-label drug that was mostly used for narcolepsy, but some people were using it for ADHD and cognitive enhancement. This was in the late '90s. The psychiatrist, who had not yet seen my brain scan, showing that I actually had damage from mold toxins, gave me some Adderall, thinking, "Tech bro wants Adderall. I hate Adderall." I could focus in class, but it made me want to go home and curl into a ball and have no one touch me in darkness. It was not a good drug for me. In fact, it's not a good drug for almost anyone. Although, I'm sure there's a few cases where it is. Modafinil, what? It's for narcolepsy. It's not even a stimulant. What's it going to do for cognitive function? Well, you're going to learn it does a lot for that. So after seeing my brain scans from Dr. Ammon's clinic, the psychiatrist I was working with to figure out what is going on with my brain because I'm smart but it is not working no matter how hard I try. He said, "Let's test it." And I took Modafinil for the first time. And it was like the lights turned on. Colors became more saturated. In fact, if you've seen Limitless, the movie, if you watch carefully, you'll notice every time that Bradley Cooper takes that drug that the colors shift in the spectrum. And that's because the producers had tried modafinil which is known as the limitless drug. One reason it's known as the limitless drug is about 14 years ago. I talked about this online in one of my early blog posts teaching people how to make their brains work better and ABC Nightline came up to my house on Vancouver Island and filmed for 2 days with me because I was the only executive in Silicon Valley willing to talk about using this cognitive enhancer without a bag over my head. It was called the real-life Limitless Pill. And now you can still find that episode of Nightline out there right now. In fact, this is totally funny. It was Dan Harris, the CEO of 10% Happier, who was the Nightline correspondent at my house and we meditated in my backyard. It was kind of cool. It was before we had a regular practice in that. And Modafinil really does something different. But I had some other things that happened. Everyone around me got stupid. Okay, not really. But my brain worked so well and so fast that it really did feel like everyone else was running in slow motion. If you're a patient person, this is good. If you're an impatient person, it'll make you more impatient. So, you're going to have to do your heart rate variability, do your breathwork, do your meditation, your neurofeedback, whatever your practice is. You are going to have a brain that is really powerful. Think of it like being used to driving a Honda and then one day someone gives you the keys to a Lamborghini Aventador and you press the accelerator and you eat a pole. That almost happened to me once because I had a chance to drive one of those around Napa Valley and 1,200 horsepower. Yeah, you got to learn how to drive different. Your brain, you're going to have to learn how to drive different. If you're on modafinil and you're doing the other mitochondrial hacks that I talk about, it's that big of a difference. It's also profoundly effective for jet lag. One of my good friends and someone I've worked with for years had never tried it and had terrible, crippling two days of jet lag when he went to Europe. So he went there with his wife and his kid and he tried some for the first time and just texted me and said, "I can't believe this. I have no jet lag at all." So it is a really interesting drug. The dosing normally is from 100 milligrams all the way up to 400 milligrams a day. And I've tried every dose over the many years I've done it. What I do every morning is 100 milligrams. And if I'm traveling overseas or for some reason I just want an extra boost, I might do another one at lunchtime, another 100. But that's pretty rare. And I know a lot of people who will take 25 milligrams or 50 milligrams, a lower than normal dose, cuz that's all they need to just get their brain fully working and turned on. I do not look at modafinil as a crutch. Like I said, I've taken it every day since the early '00s, maybe taken a few days off here and there, but you know, close enough to every day. And you know, you just get used to having a high-performance brain. And I would not have graduated from Wharton. And I certainly wouldn't have started a company that did $750 million in lifetime revenue while I was running it. And I wouldn't have Danger Coffee and 40 years of Zen and Upgrade Labs and True Dark and all the other companies I do and a life if I didn't have a brain that just could be higher performance than it would if it was a baseline brain. I've also trained the crap out of it. I do everything. So, I'm not saying it's just modafinil. It's not. But modafinil is a meaningful contributor to my cognitive function. Here's what you're going to learn today. So, stay with me through to the end for my go-to modafinil stack and how I use it. You're going to learn about the hidden origin story of modafinil, what it actually does in your brain, and why it's not really a stimulant. The specific cognitive upgrades like focus, memory, and mental stamina that are measurable, the anti-aging mitochondrial, and non-brain benefits that most people don't know about. How to use it, dosing timing, and real-world hacks. Who uses modafinil publicly in 2025? Smart stacks and synergy with other supplements because you can use the effects of modafinil better if you support your neurochemistry. Side effects, tolerance, how to stay in control, and the risk that about five in a million people could have, same as ibuprofen, that you really need to know about. Like I said, I'm not paid for this by any pharmaceutical company. This is a pharmaceutical, but every tool on the planet has benefits and risks. And I want you to understand what those benefits and risks are so that you can make a starter plan if you decide that you want to give this a try. Even if you say, "This isn't a daily driver for me." There are times when you want to have it available. Like if you're going to fall asleep driving or when you land after 14 hours of flying. It's a useful, useful substance.

So what kind of a drug is modafinil if it's not a stimulant? They had to make up a new kind of pharmaceutical class for this drug. It's not a stimulant. It's a eugeroic which means wakefulness producing or arousal. Unlike normal stimulants like Adderall or even my favorite caffeine, these things flood your brain with dopamine or they're going to spike your heart rate, but the class of drug that modafinil is in. It just works to selectively promote alertness without overstimulating you. It's like a clean ignition switch for your brain and it keeps you awake and focused, but you're still calm and clear and your heart's not pounding. And unfortunately with Adderall, you take a lot of that and if you're flying a fighter jet and you have a machine gun, Adderall makes you want to shoot people. It's not a great drug. So modafinil is a better choice for that clearly and probably for you. And when I talk about the class of drug, there are two other types of drug in the class of modafinil. And one of them is called armodafinil where they changed it's called the racemic mixture of it. They did this so that they could charge more. Some people like that better. I do not like it better. You might want to try it. It's more expensive. And there's a precursor to modafinil that you probably should stay away from because it's bad for your liver, but you can get it from research compounding pharmacies. The precursor to modafinil that I do not recommend is called adrafinil and it's called a prodrug of modafinil and your liver has to activate it. And it's not legal in most countries, but it's over the counter in some. You just don't want that liver stress when you could just take modafinil or armodafinil. Modafinil is interesting because it doesn't come from plants. No one went to the jungle and stole this from a tree and its chemical name is 2-[(diphenylmethyl)sulfinyl]acetamide. It's a synthetic compound fully lab-made and it's why it can activate these pathways that we don't normally see from natural compounds. The diphenylmethyl group allows it to cross your blood-brain barrier and the sulfinyl group is a sulfur-containing structure and that plays a role in its metabolic stability and what it does inside your cells and the acetamide backbone is really common in bioactive materials. So basically it's a drug and it has a very long half-life, 12 to 15 hours, a very smooth onset. It's not jarring like espresso and it has a uniquely low potential for addiction compared to other wakefulness drugs. So yeah, that's really cool. Caffeine is more addictive than modafinil. In fact, modafinil is not addictive according to multiple experts I've spoken to. And yes, there are alarmists who say it's the same as Adderall and it's highly addictive. They don't know what they're talking about and that's okay. They probably should take some modafinil and study a bit.

So, how do we figure out that modafinil is real? Well, just like Okay, I have to pause for a second here. There are more people who say croissant than or however you're supposed to say it. So, if you believe in democracy, French people would have to say croissant, wouldn't they? Unless you don't believe in democracy. Just saying. Okay, I have no idea how to speak in French. But anyway, in the late 1970s, French scientists who are really good by the way, discovered modafinil almost by chance. Scientists at Lafon Laboratories were exploring treatments for sleep disorders like narcolepsy when they noticed something remarkable with a compound they were testing. And this is the '70s, so we didn't understand biochemistry the way we do now. They figured out this stuff just enhanced mental clarity, alertness, and concentration, but they weren't tweaking on it. So early on, it stayed under the radar. And that's because its predecessor, adrafinil, did make rounds in the European medical community. So doctors were taking something that made them cognitively better, but it wasn't something that patients use. But it was modafinil when they purified it and made it stronger that scientists said this is really powerful. And for two decades, modafinil was something that you could find in Europe, but you didn't find in the US. Modafinil became popular in the US during the Gulf War in the early '90s because US Air Force pilots started using it for these prolonged intense combat missions and word spread. It wasn't like caffeine or amphetamines, the jitters, anxiety, and crashes. And plus, if you drink a lot of coffee and you're a pilot, you're going to have to use your pilot diaper and that's just not really a fun thing. So, pilots stayed sharp, alert, and steady even on very, very long missions, which is really kind of profound. Then in 1998, the US Department of Preventing You from Having Information or Medical Freedom, also known as the former FDA before it became under its new leadership, well, they approved it and that made an official entry into mainstream medicine. So, this sounds like a long time ago, but it's 27 years ago and there are many, many people 27 and older on the planet right now. And I heard about it and I started taking it in 2001, four years after it could be prescribed. And it took me a while to find a doctor who would even give it to me. Silicon Valley tech founders like me, CEOs, Wall Street execs and heads of state started using modafinil. And they were getting it because they could stay sharp. Even poker players, in fact, two World Series of Poker champions that I've worked with with neurofeedback at 40 Years of Zen um were using modafinil and I'm sure all of them are using it now. Card counters use it all the time. So people who needed unique mental function. Heads of state would be that if anyone would. Well, they started using it. You will find that most of the just incredibly important advancements in human performance come from the military. Remember that Gulf War stuff or from high pressure, cognitively demanding, physically demanding situations. So, Navy SEALs, professional athletes, and people under high cognitive load like hedge fund managers and heads of state, people who need excessive attention. That's where we discover all the cool stuff.

So, how does modafinil work if it's not actually a stimulant? Well, it flips a wakefulness switch. It stimulates neurons in your hypothalamus that release orexin. And some people call it hypocretin. And this is a powerful neuropeptide that acts like your brain's natural on button. Orexin keeps you awake, alert, and motivated. And it's what your brain uses to stabilize wakefulness so you don't drift in and out of sleep all day the way I used to. People with narcolepsy actually have damaged or missing orexin neurons. Kind of like how in Parkinson's, they have a problem with dopamine neurons, but if you can't stay awake all day and you're just in that narcoleptic loop of just drifting off, it's neuron damage. Modafinil helps you to fire up that system so your brain stays locked into alertness but not stress and high functioning state without tweaking. And you're not relying on traditional stimulant pathways like overloading your dopamine system. Orexin itself is a really interesting chemical because orexin comes from eating lots of protein and actually turmeric can stimulate this. So if you feel much better on a high animal protein diet like a lot of people, orexin could be a part of it, but it's nothing like the way you feel on modafinil. Modafinil does gently and slightly elevate dopamine, but not like the addictive stimulants, but enough to help you with motivation and attention. Probably the worst stimulant for dopamine would be something like cocaine, which you should never use as a cognitive enhancer. In fact, you probably should never use it at all, even though it's probably fun because it's going to lead to dopamine problems. The other thing that modafinil does that is not known by most people unless they're neuron nerds, is it increases histamine and norepinephrine. You say, "What? It increases histamine in the brain? I thought histamine was bad. You know, antihistamines, allergies." Well, histamine is a neurotransmitter and you actually need some of it. So, it turns out the combination of histamine and norepinephrine going up makes you more alert and mentally sharp without anxiety. And you may not have heard of norepinephrine or noradrenaline. And this is pretty much a sister to adrenaline. And it is critically important for things like alertness, motivation, and even getting turned on at the beginning of sex. And if you like some of the adaptogenic herbs like Rhodiola, it has a major effect on norepinephrine. That's why they work. So you're getting some of that with modafinil. Modafinil also plays around with glutamate and GABA balance. Now glutamate and GABA are both neurotransmitters and glutamate boosts learning and memory. Unless you have too much of it, then you kind of short circuit. And GABA calms your brain. So modafinil is optimizing that balance so you have this clearheaded calmness. And that we discovered just in 2008. And for those curious, GABA is your primary inhibitory neurotransmitter. So, it's calming the brain and promoting relaxation so you're not anxious. So, it's kind of interesting. You're getting a promotion of glutamate, which is like putting your foot on the accelerator, so you have more power available, but it's also chilling things out, maybe putting the brakes on a little bit, but it's not a negative thing. It's a beneficial thing. So, you have the peace of GABA and the power of glutamate. You could think of it like modafinil tuning your brain's engine so that it runs smoother and more efficiently and effectively, not just stomping the pedal to the floor.

So, let's talk about specific benefits of modafinil and why this might be something to consider working with your doctor or source of prescription medications that may or may not be a doctor. Number one, sharper memory and quicker thinking. This is a study from 2003, right about the time I started taking it. It enhances neurotransmission in your prefrontal cortex that controls memory and fast thinking. Proven in a study looking at brain imaging and prefrontal cortex activation is going to make you a better student. It's going to make you more focused. It could make you a calmer parent even, but it lets you be more in charge of yourself with your thinking logical brain. You also get sustained mental energy and stamina because another study, this one in 2015, about 10 years ago, shows it maintains alertness circuits without the crash seen in stimulants. So, this is better than stimulants for sustained mental energy and for stamina. And if you want to do something like card counting in Las Vegas, this stuff is magic. It also improves your reaction time and productivity. This is a study in 2004. Modafinil improves task switching and multitasking accuracy under stress. So when someone says you can't task switch, maybe that person hasn't tried modafinil. It's still optimal to not task switch unnecessarily, but if you're going to do it, you'll be better at it on modafinil than without. You also will see reduced impulsivity and clearer decisions on modafinil. That's because it helps to stabilize your frontal lobe function, which is something that, well, by definition, the way the brain works, it reduces impulsivity and it helps make better decisions when you're tired. So, think of it like the mental clarity you would get after a really good workout. You've got lots of blood flow in the brain. Your heart rate has dropped. You're not tired, but you're just charged up. Or maybe like the way you feel after you get out of a cold plunge when you get some of the endorphins going, but without your heart racing and your brain is just there. And when you want to tap into it, it's just like driving a high-performance car. I used to have this 1969 Pontiac convertible 20ft boat. Uh, I bought it as a classic car cuz it was it was funny. And you like move the steering wheel and 3 seconds later it would drift over. And then when I was driving my BMW 550, you touch the steering wheel and it just goes like it's it's a sports car or sports sedan. Anyway, so the difference in the amount of precision that you have in your brain, it feels like it goes up on modafinil.

Okay, here's the part that's going to piss off people who believe all pharmaceuticals are bad. And this is stuff that you're not going to hear about in the fields of longevity, even though you probably should. Well, modafinil enhances mitochondrial energy, direct ATP production in your neurons, which protects them from oxidative stress and supports the health of your brain. In fact, I wrote a New York Times best-selling book. It hit the science bestselling list between Homo Deus and Sapiens about cognitive function. If you haven't read it, you probably should. It's called Headstrong. And the whole thesis is neuroplasticity and more ATP or more electricity in your brain equals cognitive function and not getting the diseases of aging in your brain. Wow. Modafinil which improves your performance today makes your brain better at making ATP. Oh, and neurons everywhere else in the body too. That's a study from 2012. We've known this for 13 years, but I don't think this is part of your longevity pharmaceutical stack, but you might want to make it that. It also has anti-inflammatory potential. These are early studies, but they show that modafinil can lower inflammation markers specifically in brain cells. You want less brain inflammation. That 2017 study. Oh, interesting. Modafinil reduces free radical damage. And it does this by optimizing mitochondrial function, which means your neurons can manage reactive oxygen species better, which is really the source cause of neurodegeneration. There are also theories, ones I think are likely true, that say modafinil can stabilize mitochondrial membrane potential, which would make your brain cells and all other cells actually more resistant to environmental and metabolic stressors. A major part of living to at least 180 the way I am planning to, and I hope you are as well. In fact, I hope you beat me. We've got to protect the cells. And it turns out the cell membrane is where all the good stuff happens in your cells. So if you can improve your membrane potential, it means your cells can make more energy. And of course, since we already showed that modafinil makes more energy, it really follows that that could be a mechanism. And there's something called wakeful repair. So if you promote your wakefulness via your orexin circuits, it could stimulate glymphatic activity after you use it. And glymphatic activity is this pump that takes out toxic proteins that build up in your brain overnight. So this is very recently discovered, just in the last 10 or 15 or so years. And I've referenced a couple papers where we talk about how the lymphatic system is driven by mitochondrial activity in two different papers. So, we know that that's likely to be real. Well, if you can promote wakefulness via orexin, it could help glymphatic activity because when you go to sleep, you go to sleep better and that could enhance nighttime detox. And you need to have proper sleep recovery cycles. You have darkness at night. You go to bed early and do all the right stuff, control red light exposure with your TrueDark glasses, all that stuff like that if that's going to work. So that's like a little asterisk, probably works. So more awake during the day, more sleep at night makes sense. And bottom line, if you're a biohacker, knowing that you have high-performing healthy mitochondria means that you will age less quickly. That's another win for modafinil and one that no one talks about.

As you heard earlier, the clinical standard is 100 to 200 milligrams in the morning and possibly doing it again at lunchtime and the half-life is 12 to 15 hours. And I want to make it really clear, if you take modafinil, you can still go to sleep. It is wakefulness promoting. You just won't want to and you'll feel like it's hard. But if you really need to go to sleep, it won't be great sleep, but you can go to sleep on modafinil. I've done it plenty of times. So, what I do is I wake up in the morning and I take 100 milligrams just as part of my standard morning handful of supplements. I do 150 supplements a day. And so, it's not a big deal. To save money, I get a prescription for 200 milligram pills and break them in half. Uh, which is easy to do. And I'm not above taking one of those half pills, breaking it in half again to have 25 milligrams if I wanted to have that at lunch. I do days where sometimes I will interview seven guests back-to-back on this show. These are in-person interviews. Full cognitive function under crappy studio lighting. Best I can get. But hey, how do I do that and stay focused and attentive and interested? Yeah, modafinil helps. I'm going to take an extra one. I do a bunch of other things, too, that you can stack with modafinil. And you probably want to. One of them would be L-theanine, which can calm overstimulation. It smooths your mental edges. I normally like to use it at night, but I'll take one in the morning, especially if I'm doing extra coffee along with my modafinil. You can pair it with CDP-choline, which is an acetylcholine donor that helps with faster thinking. Some people also like Alpha-GPC, which is a similar one. I prefer CDP-choline or a combination. Rhodiola rosea balances out cortisol, supports your mood and focus, and it helps with norepinephrine. The combination is very powerful. Lion's mane. Yeah, you can use it. I'm so excited by the research in lion's mane. The vast majority of it that you find out there does not work at all. It needs to be heat and alcohol extracted from the fruiting body. So sadly, lion's mane in your coffee is not going to do anything because you're basically getting mushroom sawdust. Um, sad to say, if you don't feel a noticeable kick from your lion's mane by itself, it's not the lion's mane, it's the caffeine. Besides, mushrooms don't taste good in coffee. We tried that at my coffee shop in LA years ago. I just take pills or drops and then I enjoy my Danger Coffee. You can also take NAD+ precursors, things like Qualia NAD+, which is what I use. I've been an advisor to Qualia for a long time, and their NAD product is shown clinically to raise NAD levels in cells more than an IV, which is why I like it. You could also try methylene blue along with your modafinil. They both increase ATP and reduce free radicals.

So, what are the things uh to pay attention to? Well, some people get an occasional headache, insomnia, mild nausea. That's uh all pretty unusual. I have seen about 20% of people, they take it and nothing happens. And it's probably something with their neural architecture, orexin. Who the heck knows? No one's figured that one out yet. So, it may not work for you, but it probably will. And there's a rare but very serious and potentially life-threatening possibility with the same actual symptoms and the same risk level as ibuprofen. So it's not particularly high risk and it's called Stevens-Johnson syndrome. It's an extremely rare autoimmune skin reaction. Five out of a million people who are genetically prone to this can get it from adrafinil or from ibuprofen. I've come across one report online uh and a comment on one of my early blog posts about someone getting this one in 15 years of talking openly about modafinil. But it can and does happen. And if you just do a quick search, you can figure out which genetics are the cause of it and whether you have them or not if you have any of your genetic scans done. Again, it is exceptionally low risk, but it is a real thing and I want to be clear about that. If you were to take, you know, half dose or a small dose and you get itchy, stop. As with all substances like this, you know, occasional strategic use, well, they'll tell you it's safest, but that doesn't make any sense. It appears to have longevity benefits. So, occasional use would not be safest. That's choosing to age more quickly than necessary. So, my perspective on this is I take it most of the time, but like most supplements, pulsing it is good. So, don't take it on weekends, on chill days, but I've noticed increases in the power of my brain waves when I'm on it, when I'm doing advanced meditation at 40 Years of Zen. We're measuring brain waves and I make more raw power on modafinil than when I'm not on it. H. So, I would say the safest thing to do is to take modafinil if it works for you and you're not experiencing side effects most of the time because you want a brain that works and you want a brain that doesn't age as quickly. However, that is not the majority opinion where well, there's a lot of namby-pambies out there saying despite the evidence more research is needed. Well, you could wait till you die for there to be enough research. Or you could choose to do something about longevity and about mental cognitive function. That's weird. What What happens people start biohacking? You start for a specific reason and pretty soon you're like, I want to live a lot longer because I feel so good and I have the energy back. So then now you're a longevity person. Oh, and I want my brain to work really well. So you become into cognitive enhancement and you say, I want my body to work. So then you figure out how to work out and not be fat and feel good all the time. And then you say, "I want to be happier and more conscious." So you become a consciousness person. Like it's I designed this movement that way. Choose your on-ramp. You're going to be into consciousness and longevity and go on a brain that works. When I do my consciousness work with a computer measuring my brain waves, modafinil helps for most altered states, but not all of them.

Now let's talk about sourcing this. This is a prescription-only drug, Schedule 4 in the US. It is widely prescribed for shift workers, for narcolepsy, and for people with sleep apnea. It's also widely prescribed off-label for ADHD or attention issues. So, if you were to go into your doctor and you had looked at the specific types of symptoms of someone who has delayed sleep phase onset disorder or shift work and you talked with your doctor about that and they could tick the boxes on their little prescription algorithm to make sure it's the right thing for you, your doctor probably will write it for you and your insurance company will cover it. And if your doctor says they won't, there are many, many people who go into gray market access with international pharmacies. And this is 100% legal because you have a right to import with a doctor's prescription. The doctor can be from outside the country to import 90 days of any prescription drug that is not specifically listed as something you're not allowed to buy. So you can get it from an international pharmacy with a doctor's prescription from overseas. Some of them are more strict than others. Some have their own pharmacist doctor working there and I can't recommend one specifically, but they're definitely out there. The most common one you'll find overseas is called Modalert. M-O-D-A-L-E-R-T. Comes out of India. If you go to Mexico, India, and most of the world, you go into a pharmacy and say, "I'd like some." And they'll just give it to you. You can buy a bunch and bring it home. There is an alternative that's easier to get as a research chemical here called adrafinil, but don't do that. It is not good for you. And you could also tell your doctor that you'd like to try armodafinil which is like modafinil but newer and fancier and some people think it works better but not me.

Now I want to share a quick story with you about modafinil years ago when this was very unknown. I was with three friends. One of them was in the middle of working on a proposal for the Dalai Lama Foundation. Another one is a clinical hypnotherapist and another one is an author of New York Times books. This is 20-some years ago. And they somehow procured 100 milligrams of modafinil each and went home and took it the next morning. And 2 days later, I got the most amazing notifications from these friends. The hypnotherapist had created a whole new kind of hypnotherapy. The guy doing work for the Dalai Lama Foundation on this proposal rewrote his entire proposal. He'd been working on for 6 weeks and submitted it and it was accepted and they did whatever the proposal said and the author wrote an outline for a new book and said, "I've never had my brain work like this." Like writing is fluid and effortless. By the way, guys, did I mention nine major books? Half of them New York Times bestsellers. There's caffeine, nicotine, and modafinil in my system when I do those. And nicotine will do a different episode on. I don't smoke. It's bad for you. But in low doses, nicotine is also something that stacks well with modafinil. But I wrote a blog post back when people still read blogs. And the headline was "Why You Are Suffering From a Modafinil Deficiency." And people got so mad. And I went through the early research about all this. And it was so funny. And that's what caused Nightline to give me a call and to come and film about it. But it was kind of a joke. It's not a deficiency. This isn't a natural compound at all. It's just a compound that is worth your time and attention. In the longevity world, there's a rich history of using low-dose or off-label pharmaceutical drugs that can do things that plants can't do or that lifestyle can't do. For instance, I take low-dose Cialis because it protects your blood flow in the brain. And people take metformin, although I'm not a fan of that. They'll take that for longevity or rapamycin again, which has been proven not to work, and many other drugs at small doses can help you with longevity parameters. Modafinil belongs on that list both because you feel great the day you take it but also because it appears to have protective effects in the brain. So there you go. What else is going to happen in the future with modafinil? Well, there are trials right now, early-stage trials exploring modafinil for neuroprotective effects, especially in slowing memory loss and preserving executive function in Alzheimer's and cognitive decline. Remember, I wrote a major science book on enhancing brain function that had the theory that this would work and we're doing the trials on it right now. There are also new analogs coming out. Thank you. AI makes analog production so much easier. Researchers are developing nasal sprays, sublingual tabs, and even skin patches so that you can control the pharmacokinetics. And there are combination therapy trials where people are studying how modafinil stacks with BDNF-promoting compounds. Remember my major theory about cognitive function is BDNF for plasticity plus mitochondrial function for energy. Get the two together, IQ can go up, clarity goes up, focus goes up, emotional regulation goes up. This is this is what I did to my own brain to let me do all this stuff, along with a lot of training for efficiency which comes out of neurofeedback in 40 Years of Zen. But these trials about BDNF and maybe even psychedelics like micro-dosed LSD and NAD+ they're stacking them to say well what happens when you have the the massive boost from modafinil and these other compounds. I will say I don't think it's a great idea to stack modafinil with psychedelics until we know a little bit more. Uh, and my experience with that hasn't been positive or negative, but I think sometimes coffee is better stacked. At least we know what that does all the way. There are also new trials expanding beyond just narcolepsy and specifically for long COVID, for chronic fatigue syndrome, and for MS-related fatigue. It seems to have great benefits. Now, if you know my story, I had fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome in my late 20s and early 30s when I started taking modafinil. I have seen people, friends who have for years struggled with crippling tiredness from chronic fatigue and now long COVID, and they take one 100 milligram tab of modafinil and literally tears in their eyes because they feel like themselves again. It's it's like you set down the chains that you were carrying around with your brain all the time. It can be profoundly life-changing if you're dealing with fatigue and exhaustion. If you've been a healthy biohacker your whole life, you are incredibly blessed as a 300 lb chronic fatigue guy with that crippling brain fog. I don't want anyone to go through that. It's one of the reasons I I record the show. There's some other things going on in research with modafinil that's really cool. They're figuring out that it may help calm inflammation by lowering something called inflammatory cytokines, specifically TNF alpha and IL-6 or interleukin-6. Now, I wrote a well-researched blog post about 4 weeks into the pandemic about all the compounds that could lower IL-6 because interleukin-6 is what's causing the cytokine storm that is a major problem with any viral illness. And I proposed that you might want to take some of these things just to be protective in case you got what was floating around. Uh, I did get a warning letter and they reduced my reach. Uh, the warning letter is today, it was from FactCheck.org, I believe. But I have that on my wall of trophies because yes, that's winning when they tell you to shut up when you say something true. So if modafinil can lower IL-6, which it is in these early trials, that would be really, really helpful if you have brain inflammation. It also looks like modafinil can ease chronic pain by raising your pain tolerance, especially for nerve-related pain or fibromyalgia, which I used to have. Oh, and when you're sick, it fights fatigue. So they test people to exhaustion when they have MS, Parkinson's, cancer, and even post-stroke. And when they have modafinil, they don't get exhausted as quickly. They're finding in newer studies that there is slight appetite suppression and an increase in calorie burn. And so they're now looking at modafinil for what it might do to blood sugar regulation, but we don't have the data yet. Modafinil can also help to fix your sleep cycles. If you're a flight attendant, a pilot, or a shift worker, or just someone who's burned out, it's really hard to get back into a normal rhythm. But modafinil can help you rebalance your brain signals for sleep and waking. And from personal experience, I was a go-to-bed-at-2-a.m.-every-night guy since I was 10 years old. Reliably 2:02 a.m. I could not go to bed before that to save my life till I was in my about early 40s. And I finally figured out, yeah, modafinil first thing in the morning, coffee first thing in the morning for a mild and healthy cortisol increase that should happen when you wake up. And then controlling light in the evening with the TrueDark glasses that I invented about a dozen years ago, the red ones. And that combination allowed me to reset my circadian window where I go to bed at 10 or 10:30 and it's effortless and I get tired like a normal healthy human. I wish I'd had that when I was 20. And modafinil helps with orexin in the morning where it belongs. Newer research on modafinil shows that it may support stress recovery like a pharmaceutical adaptogen would by interacting with your HPA axis, which means some people feel more resilient under pressure. So this is some cool stuff.

Now, let's compare modafinil to something like other stimulants. So, there's caffeine. And yes, I am a longtime caffeine fan. That is caffeine on my bicep. And caffeine is shorter acting. It isn't necessarily jittery, but if you're drinking moldy coffee, it certainly will be. And caffeine is provably addictive. It takes 3 days to wash it out of your system. You might get headaches for a couple days. It's pretty easy to do it. Not highly addictive. There's also Adderall. It is a much stronger dopamine effect. Therefore, it is substantially addictive and people crash from it and it makes you like want to choke people. It's not a good thing. Ritalin, pretty much same as Adderall but has a shorter half-life. And then there's another class of cognitive enhancers and let me know in the comments. I'll do a whole episode on these called the racetam family. I take some of those every morning. It's a big family. Uh, you might have heard of Noopept, which is a newer one, or Aniracetam, which I've talked about for many years. These are much less stimulating and they're more memory-focused. They're also neuroprotective. So you can take those with it, but they don't have the same effect. You can think of it like this. If Adderall is a jackhammer for your brain, modafinil is a laser scalpel.

So, who shouldn't use modafinil? If you have heart arrhythmia, severe anxiety, or a history of mania, the psychiatrists and the medical regulators say you ought not to do it. And that makes good sense to me. Although, if your severe anxiety is related to fibromyalgia, there might be an asterisk for you. That really is work with your doctor. If you're chronically sleep-deprived, the way most tech execs are, and certainly the way I used to be, you might want to fix that first. If you use modafinil to just sleep less for years, you will not like what that does to your aging. But if you needed to get that paper out the door for your final exams or for your IPO roadshow, yes, modafinil is a sleep substitute. Do it for a couple days, get 4 hours of sleep, kick some ass, but then catch up and don't do it regularly. Modafinil, it doesn't work in isolation. It amplifies the system that you put it in. All the definition of biohacking um when I first wrote it was revolutionary about that that made it take flight was it's the art and science of changing the environment around you and inside of you. So you have control of your state, control of your biology. So modafinil is part of that system. So here's some things that you might want to stack with it. Cold exposure with modafinil is like neurochemical rocket fuel. I like to do the Upgrade Labs cryotherapy now that we have one in Austin. And by the way guys, Upgrade Labs, you go to own and upgradeabs.com and you can actually become a business partner with me and open your own biohacking franchise in your neighborhood for longevity with AI. It's cool. And well, we don't provide modafinil there cuz it's non-medical, but if you're on modafinil and you go in and do some cryotherapy or do a cold plunge in your backyard, you'll feel a difference because it amplifies dopamine and norepinephrine on top of what happens with modafinil. Let's make up a name for that. Let's call it instant Jedi mode. Take a modafinil, wait 20 minutes, and then hit a cold plunge or cryotherapy. You can also use modafinil when you're in a fasted state. Uh, call it ultra-clean brain fuel. Cuz when you're fasted or in ketosis, your brain is already burning ketones for cleaner fuel. Modafinil on top of that is like this razor-sharp clarity when you really want to just go deep on something. You can also pair modafinil with red and infrared light therapy. We have the giant bed at Upgrade Labs. There are lots of home devices. I started TrueLight, one of the first uh companies that did that years ago. And the idea there is that red and infrared in combination will enhance mitochondrial ATP and circadian rhythm anchoring. And since modafinil is helping with ATP production, you're getting one positive effect on top of another. Something else that I haven't seen written about, but that I really think helps is get yourself a pair of high-quality noise-canceling headphones. I actually like the earbuds that cancel, but I had to buy these for an airplane and put those on. So, single-tasking apps, a distraction-free workspace. Modafinil helps you lock in and just having no distractions. You might do 2 weeks' worth of work in 4 hours on modafinil. You should track your heart rate variability and your sleep because modafinil does extend wakefulness. So, don't take it in the late afternoon unless you're going to pull an all-nighter. Yes, I will use modafinil at Burning Man multiple times. Uh, but the rest of the time, don't really do that. Make sure you're recovering fully or take a day off. Movement breaks really help to keep your brain plasticity high when it's amplified. And if you do those types of things, you don't have to do all of them. I'm going to give you everything. Just pick a couple and it'll be better than not doing them.

Here's how you would want to go about starting with modafinil. So, number one, you got to get a prescription for it or find a way to source it uh legally and pick a low-pressure morning like a Saturday morning. You're not going to run a marathon or something and take just a half dose, 50 milligrams, again, with your doctor's support and track mood, focus, and side effects like did it make a difference? Next session, try 100 on the next day, but maybe do that on a deep work day when you know it worked for you at lower doses. And maybe even separate it out from the effects of caffeine. Although if you do caffeine every day, you'll still probably want to do some, but just don't go heavy on the caffeine. And you can try adding Rhodiola and L-theanine. And you can stop taking it by noon so you have good sleep. Remember, if you take it at noon, you're still going to have half of it in your brain at midnight. But that's okay. It's arousal-promoting. It is not a stimulant. You want to rotate it around. If you start out, do it two or three days per week. And I did that for a long time. I was like, "Screw this noise. I love my brain on this. I'm going to take it Saturday morning. I'm take it Sunday morning. I take it all the time. Literally every single day, unless I'm doing something weird and I'm testing something because it's part of my baseline high-performance state." And I like to think I kick ass.

So, let's recap this for you. Modafinil is not a stimulant. It's a eugeroic and it promotes alertness through orexin and other non-jittery pathways. Safe, strategic use of it can give you calm, sustained focus where just everyone in the world is moving a little bit slower than they did before because you feel so fast. You can micro-dose it for light clarity, full dose for deep work and focus and showing up on stage and just really being able to bring it effortlessly. You can stack it with L-theanine, Rhodiola, omega-3s, and the other substances in this episode so you have more calm, more resilience, and long-term support in your brain. Modafinil helps your mitochondria. It fuels cellular energy, and it can protect your brain against aging and inflammation. And emerging studies, I believe that to be the case. Environment is everything. If you do it with fasting and red light and cold and structured work blocks and all the other biohacking things that you've learned on the show, you'll get even better results. And respect the compound. Use it to elevate already strong habits, not to mask poor sleep, nutrition, or just burnout. A word about alcohol. It is metabolized in your liver, and the official warning sheet says don't take it with alcohol, but I know many people do. It seems to have a mild effect. When I do the research on the effects, it doesn't have a strong liver effect, but they tell you not to do it. You shouldn't be drinking at night if you are into longevity or high cognitive performance anyway. So, I would say if you're going to go out drinking that night, maybe skip the modafinil that day, but I know a lot of people do it and it doesn't seem like it's changing their liver markers, but just be a little careful on that one.

So, that's it for today's deep dive on modafinil. If you learned something new or this episode got your gears turning, well, they're turning too slow unless you're already on modafinil. Drop me a comment and share this episode with someone who needs more clarity, more alertness, or more effortlessness in their life. And remember to subscribe so you can get more upgrades like this. You may not ever see something from me again if you're not subscribed. See you next time. See you next time on the Human Upgrade podcast.