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Caffeine is more common, but it's not always less dangerous. Drugs like ethanol and caffeine would never get FDA approval if they were discovered today. Modafin
by AngryParsley 17y ago
Caffeine is more common, but it's not always less dangerous. Drugs like ethanol and caffeine would never get FDA approval if they were discovered today. Modafinil (one of the more common study drugs) is quite safe. From the Wikipedia article on Modafinil:
Basti and Jouvet (1988) describe a suicide attempt using 4500 mg of modafinil; the suicidee survived with no long-term effects but temporary nervousness, nausea, and insomnia.
An equivalent overdose of caffeine (45x typical dose) would be lethal.
- petercooper 17y agoAn equivalent overdose of caffeine (45x typical dose) would be lethal. The majority of caffeine is not consumed in pill form, as with most nootropics. In the typical ways that caffeine is consumed, it would take an impractical amount of consumption to reach LD50 (> 100 cups of coffee within ~12 hours, for instance). Caffeine is, of course, inherently very dangerous as a raw substance, but the form in which most of us consume it prevents significant acute abuse. Modafinil is not without its problems. If you check out a lot of the journalism about it, rather few of the experimenters seem particularly keen to continue their experiences with it, citing odd heart rates, mood swings, minor personality disorders, and the like. These things are not exactly "dangerous" in the classical sense but are clearly no picnic either.