Drugs Eradicate the Need For Sleep 772
MattSparkes writes "New Scientist is running an article on lifestyle drugs that claim to help you function on little or no sleep. I'm dubious, but the interviewee in the article claims they work well. 'Yves (not his real name), a 31-year-old software developer from Seattle, often doesn't have time for a full night's sleep. So he swallows something to make sure he doesn't need one.'" But, sleep is where I'm a Viking!
Re:Not good..... (Score:5, Insightful)
pills for everything (Score:4, Insightful)
Obligatory Shakespeare Reference (Score:5, Insightful)
Painkillers? (Score:5, Insightful)
but you won't need to stay awake, then (Score:4, Insightful)
But the car's going to have autopilot and land automatically. So why do you want to stay awake?
Re:Not good..... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is:
So how does modafinil work? "No one really knows," admits Vaught.
Of course should this drug turn out to cause major depression later in life I'm sure the pharma world will be waiting with open arms and a handful of prescriptions. It's pitiful how quality of life, savoring being human (yes, damn it, savoring being an absolute loaf for a day or month or year), is so readily sacrificed for the treadmill of modernity.
Work harder, get a bonus, go ski with friends in Aspen! Buy an Audi! Vacation in Bali! You too can have "it" if you peddle just a little harder!!
Pass me a good book and a sunset any day. I used to subscribe to the rat race and am eternally grateful that I learned early on what a farce it is. Sadly this country's economic model is based on the "more, more" mindset and, almost necessarily, popular culture reinforces it at every turn.
There is a huge difference... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is quite fascinating research into this subject actually with old people. Research determined that it's not that they need less sleep in old age, but that they can't sleep more and it is speeding up the consequences of old age.
So even if you don't feel sleepy, you need sleep and the effects would be quite devastating on a medium/long term. The problem with the drug industry is that it's more profitable for them to treat/mask sympthoms than to actually cure something. There are various anti-flu pills for example that only mask the sympthoms, so it will take a month or two to recover from a simple cold instead a week or two.
Re:Not good..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do it the natural way (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not good..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is that?
There can be some play in actual sleep requirements. Whereas most people need 8-9 hours of sleep per night, in long term situations, you can "economize" your sleep by appearing to make it more efficient in that latencies to certain periods of sleep may be reduced over time. But like any other economizing you see in life/financials etc...etc...etc... there are tradeoffs. For instance, I typically get about 4-5 hours of sleep per night during the week, but it does catch up with me and I have to once or twice a week get a full nights sleep to recover or there is a price to pay and I suspect that those who claim they only *need* 4-5 hours of sleep per night are doing much the same thing as I am. There are very few people in the world who have been truly documented to maintain lifestyles where they get much less sleep than on average and to remain effective long term, you need your sleep.
Re:Not good..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not good..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Playing devil's advocate here: And the problem with this is? Isn't it in man's nature to attempt to improve themselves? Assuming the negative impacts are not great, what is wrong with us having an extra limb (don't know the benefits, just for sake of argument)? It's just a natural process of evolution. We look nothing like the creatures we evolved from, but that is because our form is functional for what we do. In the future, this form may not be the most functional (i'd argue it's not right now, but all things take time).
Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug (Score:3, Insightful)
I tend to work out problems in my sleep. I'm not shitting you.
Besides phisical recovery my believe is that sleep is needed to defragment the brain. If only we had a better file system in our brain!
The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt (Score:5, Insightful)
Dont believe it? Look what happened as women entered the workplace in larger numbers in the last few decades (of course this is a good thing). As the number of workers increased, the relative incomes fell. When once a single worker could bring in enough money to support himself, his spouse, and his 2.5 kids, now it is almost necessary for both parents to work to be able to make ends meet. Think what it would be like if capitalism hadnt adapted to this influx of workers - each parent could work a 20-hour week and have the same relative income as 50 years ago.
Likewise, as waking time becomes less scarce, those willing and able to work longer hours will get the jobs and steadily raise the bar and the expectations of what's a normal amount to work each week. Maybe they'll get paid more and the increasing wealth will cause the cost of goods and services to rise, which increases the need for working the longer hours.
IANAE (I am not an Economist) so I'm probably wrong on some details, but this seems like a likely general trend, IMHO.
Re:Not good..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, what else occurs during sleep to the rest of the body (other than the brain). Is there some greater immune response? Re-charging of different systems? If people didn't sleep and just took this pill to make their minds FELT like they slept, would people be more prone to illness, disease, etc?
Re:Painkillers? (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, if you a drug solves your problem, you don't need to buy it again.
But, if a drug only temporarily removes the symptoms, you have to keep buying the drug, and the drug company makes major $$$.
There is some validity to that statement (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm... Not Good (Score:2, Insightful)
I think that's a too broad standard. Wisdom teeth are a "normal" part of human development and are not life threatening, but virtually everyone gets theirs removed. And I'm sure the slashdot group think would not care to apply your standard to the question of abortion.
I am concerned about long term effects of drugs such as modafinil, but I can't help but wish it was available OTC. Sleep is the thief that steals away my life; we lose a quarter to a third of our lifespan irrevocably, something I find truly frustrating.
Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug (Score:2, Insightful)
"Ethics" and transhumanism (Score:3, Insightful)
"Ethical" discussions tend to take the ironic form of, "Hey, stop doing that. I get to say how you live."
We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Re:Not good..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt (Score:4, Insightful)
If a typical family lived in a 1200 square foot home, had one car, only the home phone, no cable/internet/cellphone, and didn't blow money on dining out and buying things they'd only need one income to do it.
I know there has been flat/declining real wages for some time now, but our standards are higher.
I think some people would be better off working less. You end up paying a lot for child care, eating out, 2nd car, etc.
Re:Not good..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not good..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking out of my ass, since I'm no biologist, it seems that while all higher life forms sleep, the amount they sleep is strongly correlated with how often they eat, how long it takes to digest their primary food source (meat vs. grasses vs. sugary stuff) and how much food is available in their environment.
The bunnies are plotting against me! (Score:2, Insightful)
It was a sort of experiment; I was the control, and a friend was the "experiment", who did the same 8 days awake, but "aided" by dropping a 100mg-150mg pill of methylenedioxymethamphetamine phosphate (pretty good ecstasy) every time the previous pill wore off (and, of course, remaining appropriately hydrated - I don't remember how many he got through, but it was definitely over 50 in total, and looking back, I find it amazing he didn't die - by the end, they weren't having any effect except monging him out and despite frankly loving the drug, he couldn't bear touching it for the next 6 months afterwards - "too much of a good thing").
Of the two of us, I think I actually got the weirder experience. Sleep deprivation is fucked up.
I could feel myself lapse slightly after a couple of days, and really didn't know what day it was after about 2 and a half. 3 days in, I swear the rabbits that were native to the university campus (for where else do you conduct such crazy experiments?) were plotting against me.
I've done drugs since then, and I would really equate sleep deprivation to magic mushrooms in terms of the sheer depth of hallucinations - we're talking some deeply weird, very convincing stuff here. Fortunately I've always been aware that I was hallucinating because I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into - so it didn't actually turn my mind into slushie (permanently).
I needed about 1 and a half days' sleep afterwards, by the way, and woke up pretty groggy but triumphant, ate a little, played a few games to wind down again, went back to sleep for another half day, then I was pretty much back to normal.
(Posting anonymously, for obvious reasons, but this really happened (in 2001). I am not as insane as I used to be, but, as many do, had a wild experimental phase in university. Do not try this at home. You might die.)
Re:Not good..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, you don't need to be asleep to lower your body temperature and save energy. All you need to do is turn down the heat and sit down.
Sleep is a bit more than that. The problem is it's still not well understood. But in REM sleep, your mind is actually incredibly active, not passive or at rest. What it's actually doing and why is what we don't really know yet. What we do know is that people who go for just a few days without sleep often undergo profound, permanent personality changes (and those who go for more than a couple weeks or so without sleep die). There was a famous radio DJ in the 1950's that went without sleep for several days on air - by about the 4th day, he reportedly was seeing spiders everywhere and was babbling pretty much incoherently. His family and friends reported that he was never the same again, and he lost his job and faded into obscurity shortly afterwards.
I'm no scientist, and for all I know these new drugs could prove to work just fine. But from what I do know about sleep, I'm pretty skeptical of the long-term effects of taking these drugs. There is obviously something necessary about sleep that regulates our personalities, maintains our memory and keeps us from literally going nuts - and also that keeps us alive. As we still haven't identified exactly what the mechanism is that does that, I don't really see how all of that could be boiled down into pill form. We've taken an unknown and claimed to have replicated it. Something is missing here.
My sense is these drugs just cover up the symptoms of sleep deprivation, but the effects are nevertheless still there and are cumulative.
Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt (Score:3, Insightful)
My own experience is that I make a lot more in real dollars than my father did, and yet, my house is much smaller. A large part of that may be due to the fact that I live near a city and I grew up way out in the suburbs. However, if you look at the older people in my neighborhood, it was strictly blue collar at one time. The people moving in today are all professionals, often with two incomes. There is no way the people who lived in my neighborhood 25 years ago could afford to move there today.
My wife also works, even though we probably could squeek by if she didn't and we didn't haven't to pay for daycare. Because she works, we can afford many luxuries I didn't have as a kid. We can afford nicer cars, clothes, eat out a lot, etc. However, buying a signficantly nicer house would be tough even with her additional income.
Dreams (Score:2, Insightful)
If that were removed I can imagine our psychology would find another way to send messages to the conscious mind while we were awake, which might me much more dangerous and stressful on our biology.
This drug really sounds pretty dangerous if someone were to use for extended periods of time.
Re:Not good..... (Score:3, Insightful)
With all the sleep issues starting to come to the front of medical science lately, it's amazing ANYBODY is allowed to publish this research! OF course, look at how the "professionals" in medicine run their lives... you'd think DOCTORS would also focus on getting proper nutrition, sleep, exercise to improve themselves during internships and such...yet they are famous for 36-48 hour shifts with minimal sleep!!! Sleep researches have a steady stream of third shifters in their clinics... right about the time they start having serious physical issues like heart trouble, and anxiety attacks... due to the messed up sleep cycles. OUR 24x7 society doesn't work... it breaks tons of people. You'd think for being SMART beings we'd work WITH our biological necessities to be productive, not AGAINST them.