Few numbers are available, but experts say that as modafinil grows more widely available, it is becoming a fixture among college students, long-haul truckers, computer programmers and others determined to burn the midnight oil. Some worry that an array of common disorders, like diabetes and sleep apnea, will go undiagnosed if doctors dole out Provigil instead of seeking the underlying diseases that cause fatigue.” (New York Times )
The advent of Prozac and its congeners ushered in the era of so-called ‘cosmetic psychopharmacology’, in which psychoactive medication was used to tweak personality style instead of merely to treat distress identified with psychopathology. Now a second front in the battle over lifestyle pharmacology is recognized in no less an authority than The New York Times, and one side has already won. Some wonder what long term side effects or complications might emerge later in the saga of a modafinil-happy nation. Let’s not forget the cost to our soul of putting off, sometimes indefinitely, the debt we owe to fatigue. How will the piper come to collect on this one?
