Modafinil also, in my experience, does not make you likely to sleep less over time. What it does let you, similar to caffeine - but totally different feeling - let you portion out your sleep differently. Whether I delay sleeping with caffeine or modafinil, I end up wearing down until I catch up.
In my opinion, efficiently using our current methods for deferring sleep boils down to understanding that you're merely deferring it, and using it to "schedule" your most awake/concentrated periods when you need it most, rather than try to force yourself to work well all the time.
Maybe one day we have something that can let us cut sleep entirely, but we're still far away from that.
EDIT: As I've clarified in another comment below, my sleep amounts without anything are already fairly low, and that may certainly affect my ability to push it further down with modafinil over the long term.
I take armodafinil for a chronic fatigue condition that has been ruled out as any of the diagnosable sleep disorders. It absolutely causes me to sleep less, but that probably has to do with it making me want to go to sleep just a little bit later and not having room to add more sleep in the morning.
It also builds tolerance in a kind of annoying way; it prevents me from napping or sleeping even when it no longer makes me not tired.
> It also builds tolerance in a kind of annoying way; it prevents me from napping or sleeping even when it no longer makes me not tired.
Interesting. I can sleep just fine on modafinil, but I still have greatly increased focus if I just choose to stay awake. Also, I've never noticed any increase in tolerance (which I get very quickly with caffeine and alcohol), even taking it every day for two weeks, although maybe that's not very long.
I've been taking it for about two years, often skipping it on days I don't have to work, and it's definitely not as effective. Once, though, I did lose about three weeks' worth when it got accidentally tossed during a move. Insurance doesn't tend to cover that sort of thing, and the stuff is $500+/month, so I just struggled without. When I refilled it and started taking it again, I was bouncing off the walls a little bit.
Aside from the above hiccup, I come out ahead on cost if I go through my insurance rather than try to buy from India. There would also likely be some lag time involved that wouldn't have helped in that instance.
You read reviews of suppliers. Lots of reviews. And you look up images of the genuine packaging from reputable manufacturers like Sun Pharma, and compare.
You might very well be in a different situation to me if your fatigue previously made you sleep more than you necessarily need. For my part I sleep less than average already without taking anything at all, so I might very well be pushing the lower end of the viable long term sleep amounts.
In my opinion, efficiently using our current methods for deferring sleep boils down to understanding that you're merely deferring it, and using it to "schedule" your most awake/concentrated periods when you need it most, rather than try to force yourself to work well all the time.
Maybe one day we have something that can let us cut sleep entirely, but we're still far away from that.
EDIT: As I've clarified in another comment below, my sleep amounts without anything are already fairly low, and that may certainly affect my ability to push it further down with modafinil over the long term.