DOSE:
T+ 0:00
200 mg
oral
Modafinil
(pill / tablet)
T+ 4:30
1 cup
oral
Coffee
(liquid)
T+ 5:30
250 mg
oral
Aspirin
(pill / tablet)
T+ 5:30
200 mg
oral
Acetaminophen
(pill / tablet)
T+ 5:30
50 mg
oral
Caffeine
(pill / tablet)
T+ 8:30
oral
Coffee
(liquid)
BODY WEIGHT:
64 kg
Modafinil and Coffee
To start with the general part: I am male, 31 years of age, 64kg, 180cm, normal blood pressure, healthy.
Generally, caffeine hardly has any effect on me, unless very highly dosed (e.g. a lot of Guarana). Modafinil I only tested 3 times before as a stimulant, in the doses of 100mg, 200mg and 300mg on 3 consecutive days. With the lowest dose I didn't experience any effects worth mentioning, the highest one gave me a slightly edgy sensation in the afternoon, but only weakly so. On all three of those days my coffee-intake was limited to one cup of weak coffee after lunch.
After a good night of sleep (9h) I took one pill of modafinil (200mg) in the morning [8:30 a.m.], since I had to get a lot of work to be done that day -- obviously I finally failed goal. No drugs or alcohol the days before, no coffee in the morning. After lunch I had a small cup of weak coffee, as usual [01:00 p.m]. I was feeling fine and working fully concentrated. Since I felt a light sensation of a headache showing up, I took [02:00 p.m.] one tablet of Thomapyrin (a common pain killer: 250mg aspirin, 200mg paracetamol, 50mg caffeine). For a small break in the late afternoon (motivation goes only so far...) I wanted to have a cup of coffee, more for relaxation than anything else. Since the public coffee machine wasn't working I used a colleagues private coffee machine to brew some. I misjudged the amount of powder and produced a can of amazingly strong coffee, which of course no-one else wanted to drink. Since I just can't waste stuff, I did so myself. A very stupid idea, but I just didn't think about it at that time! So, at around 05:00-05:30 p.m. I digested an amount of coffee, which under normal circumstances might have made me slightly jittery. Now at that time I also realized, that I took the modafinil in the morning and the pain killer around noon. Yeah, I know that's stupid! But since I normally don't use stimulants and the combination of a bit of coffee and a weak pain killer in a low dosage wouldn't be a problem, I really forgot. Well, I won't do so again, that's for sure.
At around 06:00 p.m. I started to develop a slight trembling of the hands, like after a LOT of caffeine. Shortly after came the sensation of numbness in the hands, and a bit weaker also in the feet. You know, this tingling in my extremities when blood circulation is low and/or you're freezing. I never experienced that on caffeine alone. At 06:45 p.m. there was a short burst of cold sweat on the forehead, the pulse was slightly irregular, but only modestly accelerated (between 64 and 75 bpm). Even though I was extremely awake now, I had a hard time focusing and couldn't concentrate on work anymore. At around 07:00 p.m. the burst of sweat disappeared again, but I was starting to feel cold, my fingers were cold, the tingling sensation increased, I was feeling dizzy and sick and started to be short-winded. Additionally, I was also starting to become pretty worried, which didn't improve the situation. Every now and then I felt short of fainting but managed to avoid it. My speaking was mostly coherent, though that took me a good degree of effort. For the next 2 hours all of these symptoms waxed and waned, additionally I felt a very faint pain in heart and stomach, but may have only imagined those since I was panicking a bit. The real problem was, that I had absolutely no intention of calling an ambulance, since modafinil is not only exclusively available on prescription in my home country, but it is also a controlled substance, which implies I used dark channels to get a hold of it in the first place.
From about 09:00 p.m. on the problematic symptoms all receded slowly. Another 2 hours later I was basically fine (or let's say: uncritical) again. All which was left was a slight headache, dry eyes, a feeling of exhaustion (even while still being highly alert/awake) and an uncomfortable muscle tension, probably stress-induced. My self-medication for the whole time consisted of a lot of water to counter-act dehydration, writing a protocol of events to calm my nerves (for the case I'd really pass out and someone were to call an ambulance), and generally to sit still and relaxed to avoid any form of tachycardia as far as possible. I'm no doctor, so I can't say whether that was really clever or not. At least the protocol-part guarantees you, that the timing variables in this report are fairly accurate...
Even though I went to bed pretty early [11:00 p.m.] I didn't manage to get some sleep before 04:00 a.m.. I woke up again at 07:00 a.m., without an alarm. I was nicely awake, but didn't feel too well, probably due to lack of food (didn't have dinner). However, I didn't manage to force any breakfast into me aside a small bowl of muesli. When moving around, the pulse frequency still increased noticably. So, it obviously takes some time to get the rubbish out of the system.
Anyhow, in the end nothing life-threatening happened to me and I avoided a medical examination -- more out of stubbornness than anything else. Mentally, I felt slightly tripping and detached during the experience, but because of the general discomfort I tried my best to suppress/ignore that.
The final morale of all this is the pretty obvious insight, that it's amazingly stupid to combine several stimulants in high doses -- even though each one of them would appear to be harmless. So, from now on, I'll avoid coffee and modafinil!
Exp Year: 2006ExpID: 51796 Gender: Male Age at time of experience: 31 Published: Mar 22, 2020Views: Not Supported [ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Caffeine (11), Modafinil (217) : Alone (16), Difficult Experiences (5), Combinations (3) -->