Safety Concerns Raised Over Popular Wakefulness Drug

March 17, 2009

If ever there was a safe recreational drug, modafinil seemed to be it. The greatest little pick-me-up since the cup of joe — or so its enthusiasts said — the anti-narcolepsy medication has also helped recreational and casual users stay peppy without the benefit of sleep. As for addiction? Not to worry. The drugs that hook you most powerfully do their work by mucking about with the pleasure-inducing brain chemical dopamine, but modafinil doesn’t go there. “Modafinil,” as Slate Magazine claimed in a 2003 posting on the drug, “tiptoes around dopamine.” (Time)