Modafinil (marketed in most countries as Provigil) is a narcolepsy drug that has been used in France for 20 or so years and gained FDA approval in the US in the last few years.

The main point of modafinil is to keep you awake, but not jittery like caffeine or high like amphetamines. It is described by its manufacturers as providing a "gentle wakefulness". Obviously, it was designed for people with narcolepsy, but it can be used "recreationally" but other people to stay awake for long periods of time.

Tests conducted on modafinil users, amphetamine users, and a control group (perhaps kept awake with electric shocks or something... I'm not sure) showed the modafinil users consistently scored higher that the other two groups on tests after long periods of wakefulness.

The cost is $160 for 30 100mg pills and can be purchased at a few different (overseas) places on the Internet if you look hard enough.

I was finally able to get my hands on some (after reading about since 1996) a few weeks ago from a friend who paid a quack doctor in Brazil for a prescription. I used four pills  and stayed awake for 39.5 hours. I did feel tired at several points because I was spacing the pills too far apart. Ideally, I imagine you'd want to take five pills for perhaps 41-42 hours of wakefulness. Afterwards, I slept 9.75 hours and woke up to a normal day.

If you figure that a person normally sleeps one hour for each two hours of "awake time", that means I gained 20 hours of awake time. Again, there were about 4 hours (at various parts of the day) where I was too tired to be useful, but with increased dosage, that shouldn't be a problem. The remainder of the time I was at or near full mental capacity. That means I paid approximately $1/hr for additional time to work.

Sounds like a deal to me.

Of course, I'm sure there are health risks in using it too frequently, but I'm still young enough to believe I'm invincible, so I'm willing to take drugs to give me more free time. Ha.

-- AnonymousDonor

''Yeah, thanks. Anonymous. So we can't hunt you down and kill you when our bosses hear of this. -- PhlIp''

I am old enough to know that you have to pay more for this than dollars and physical health risks. -- MarkoSchulz

If you don't have a serious fatigue problem or narcolepsy, you don't need it. Of course, that covers a lot of people in France.

''Or most developers I know.''

39.5 hours? And you could do this only with a drug? Or maybe the drug didn't really work (coming from a quack). See the links below.

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See also SleepDeprived, SleepIsOverrated, ThirtySixHourDay, TwentyEightHourDay