Could you cope with 24 hour living?
Imagine this a few years from now "For sale, semi detached, newly decorated, kitchen/diner, lounge, bathroom, no bedrooms.."
Doesn't quite sound right does it? What's missing? Well everyone's seen episodes of Star Trek TNG, Stargate, Deep Space Nine, (and Space1999, Blake 7, Flash Gordon if you go back a bit further!) where nobody needs to eat anymore and everyone survives on one small pill everyday, but a pill that can remove the need for sleep?
Well it might not be as far away as it sounds. Modafinil, launched around 7 years ago can allow you to function for nearly 2 days without needing the ZZZZs. Modafinil, developed by the pharmaceutical company Cephalon and marketed under the trade name Provigil, is a mood-enhancing psychostimulant that wakes you up without causing the same jitteriness, anxiety, or eventual crash that can come after using more conventional methods of giving yourself a 'lift' such as amphetamines or even caffeine. Developed originally as a treatment for narcolepsy, it seems that it might have wider reaching appeal.
Of course we all know caffeine keeps us awake and we've known this for centuries. We all probably take in more caffeine a day than we realise - tea, coffee, soft drinks, chocolate. But the other thing that has always been recognised is that loss of sleep does catch up with you - the real problem is always the accumulated sleep-debt. You know you can get by for a week on 3 hours sleep a night if you have to, as long as you can have back-to-back espressos during the day, but come the weekend, you know you're gonna have to sleep for 14 straight hours.
What modafinil would seem to suggest is that the next generation of wake-performing drugs may offer constant wakefulness without the associated sleep debt. Modafinil's not quite there yet, but who knows what's next?
John Caldwell, with the Air Crew Health and Performance division of the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory, conducted a study of modafinil with army helicopter pilots. The study showed that modafinil can allow people to remain awake and alert for 40 hours, and still retain their ability to function normally and deal with complex problems - something that's usually missing in people that have been awake for too long. Then, after 8 hours' sleep, they can get up again and do another 40.
Joel Garreau wrote in the Washington Post that one of the oddest things about trying the drug for his article, was having to learn to distinguish between being tired, and wanting to sleep, because that's what modafinil does, removes the desire to sleep.
Could this mean that the graveyard shift is a thing of the past? In 50 years's time, will our children look on disbelievingly when we tell them that we used to drink coffee with caffeine in it and spent one third of our lives asleep?
