Modafinil - the time-shifting drug

In 1970, the average american drank 36 gallons of coffee and 23 gallons of carbonated soft drinks. By the year 2000, coffee consumption had more than halved to 17 gallons and soft drinks had grown 130% to 53 gallons. Caffeine consumption has grown significantly and a large proportion of that caffeine was imbibed with the sole aim of performance enhancement.

Unfortunately, the benefits of caffeine are such that constant use builds immunity, leaving the jitteriness but not the enhanced performance and most of the world's habitual coffee consumption is used to stave off the effects of caffeine withdrawal. Modafinil does not appear to have such drawbacks, though users should be acutely aware that prolonged and regular use of the drug will lead to health issues.

Almost any profession requires being switched on (mentally alert) at least some of the time, and if it's good enough for the most scientifically-analysed elite warriors on the planet, we suspect it'll be good enough for all other armed forces personnel, emergency and rescue workers, police, firefighters, and doctors, who are faced with very long hours of making potential life and death decisions ... and all those who need or choose to work long hours in their profession, from truck and taxi drivers, through to computer programmers.

Sportspeople are another likely marketplace - at the June 2003 United States Track and Field Championships, a star studded field of athletes tested positive for modafinil including sprinters Kelli White, Chris Phillips, Calvin Harrison and Chryste Gaines, hurdlers Sandra Glover and Eric Thomas and hammer thrower John McEwen. Modafinil now attracts a two year ban from all elite sports, but can be expected to proliferate at any level where drug testing does not occur.

Then there will be those who will take Modafinil for recreational purposes - it just might be the ultimate party drug with the user awake, alert and balanced and no problems remembering what happened or what got said the next morning.

So how good is it? Researchers recently had the opportunity to compare a group of America's finest with and without modafinil.

The testing was done using elite F-117A Nighthawk pilots - an F117-A Nighthawk is one of those black triangular stealth attack aircraft used with surgical precision by the US airforce in all recent wars.

Just over 60 Nighthawks were built and only one F-117A unit exists - the 49th Fighter Wing, at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M. The single-seater can fly at high subsonic speeds for unlimited distances with air refuelling. On their first deployment to Kuwait in 1992, a group of F-117s flew non-stop for 18.5 hours, a record for single-seat fighters that stands today.

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