CQ: Johann Hari in Evening Standard: modafinil (Provigil) & Modapro-200 brain upgrade to new operating system… Doctor Peter Venn cautions… Sebastian Shakespeare for Evening Standard on Cherie Blair memoirs…
08h23-BST Wednesday 14 May 2008-CE
Johann Hari in Evening Standard for Tuesday 6 May 2008 reported on his taking modafinil (trade name Provigil). A picture with the piece showed a packet of Modapro-200.
It is a brain stimulant and treats narcolepsy where sleep is inconveniently turned on in error. Caution is urged by Doctor Peter Venn at Queen Victoria Hospital, West Sussex. He is Director of Sleep Studies. Liver and Immune System hazards are feared. Johann Hari:
START OF SELECTED QUOTATIONS:
My heart wasn’t beating any faster. I was just able to glide into a state of deep, cool, effortless concentration. It was as if I had opened a window in my brain and all the stuffy air had seeped out, to be replaced by a calm breeze…
The next morning I woke up and felt immediately alert. Normally it takes a coffee and an hour to kick-start my brain; today I’m ready to go from the second I rise. And it continues like this for five days: I inhale books and exhale articles effortlessly. My friends all say I seem more contemplative, less rushed -which is odd, because I’m doing more than normal. I keep waiting for an exhausted crash, and it doesn’t seem to come…
Normally, one day out of seven I have a day when I’m working at my best -I’ve slept really well, and everything comes easily and fast. Modafinil makes every day into that kind of day. It’s as if I’ve been upgraded into a new operating system…
END OF SELECTED QUOTATIONS
Sebastian Shakespeare in the Evening Standard, yesterday, says:
“Cherie Blair’s memoirs are quite toe-curling in their candour. She has complained for years about press intrusion and declining media standards but now she has the temerity to invade our privacy with a series of unedifying revelations about her sex life…”
You can get the rest from standard.co.uk/sebastianshakespeare
I ought to take some Provigil in Los Angeles, whenever I get there for my final countdown. I ought to write a clear and comprehensive account of my psycho-sexual illness but the thought of plodding through it all puts me off. I have attempted autobiographies before and deleted them. This web log has many autobiographical snips but the idea of editing them into a readable sequence does not appeal to me one bit.
FIN 09h12
EDITED Monday 08 June 2009
