Microdosing Modafinil
Some hard chargers in the workplace, especially in white collar jobs that involve "creativity", employ a drug regimen called microdosing.
This is done outside medical supervision and often involves ingestion of the illegal drugs LSD or psilocybin or mushrooms in an attempt to improve job performance in areas such as perception and creativity. Microdosing psychedelics is also said to help with depression.
Some enthusiasts also say microdosing of those drugs improves their ability to focus and concentrate. Modafinil is prized as a way to help people work longer and harder and the microdosing phenomenon sometimes finds its way to modafinil usage. But it is really a matter of opinion as to what constitutes microdosing. While a narcoleptic patient may take 200 mg of the drug every day, a healthy person looking to work harder may take only 50 mg. Whether this counts as a microdose is unclear.
Performance Enhancing Drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin have been joined by Modafinil in recent decades. Modafinil is used in the workplace and among students. Because these uses are off-label and often without any medical supervision, the dosages are up in the air and unknown. Do some individuals take such a low quantity as to be considered microdosers? Do people vary their dosage depending on how they feel and the challenge they anticipate for the day? Almost surely.
Modafinil affects both “cold” cognition and “hot” cognition. This distinction is sometimes made to differentiate between logical, machine-like mental processes and mental processes colored by (emotion). The person operating with hot cognition is more aware of and reacts to environmental factors. People say modafinil is a smart drug, but it’s wrong to think that means it just increases processing speed. There are other mental phenomena affected.
See also: Chronobiotic materials
