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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1410 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 25, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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What mitigations can you enact if you know that you have an unavoidable stretch of sleep deprivation and intense physical exertion coming in the near future? I'd like to avoid doing anything that would run a afoul of US federal law, but otherwise I'm pretty open to suggestions.

Blue collar workers use copious quantities of nicotine and caffeine.

Way ahead of you. I've got a 24 pack of five hour energy sitting in my trunk.

It's not exactly hard to convince a doctor to prescribe you stimulants for "your adhd" and then you're in the clear legally. Not trying to delegitimize real diagnoses/legit use of the meds (e.g. my own), but the fact remains

Import Indian modafinil? It's only skirting law, I believe, and the package might get stopped, but it is legal. Or find a source for the hepatic prodrug armodafinil, I think that's unregulated if you don't mind the QA issues.

I'm going to endorse this. I previously asked the question, got this answer, and you know what? It works. I can skip a night of sleep with few or no ill effects.

Some people report it fucked up their sleep cycle. I did not have that experience. I can typically choose to fall asleep at any point by standard tricks, and certainly within a day or two I'm back to normal.

Modafinil and armodafinil are both scheduled, but enforcement is practically nonexistant for quantities below a kilogram. See gwern's modafinil explainer for details.

If I were buying I'd stick to unscheduled adrafinil to be on the safe side but risk is probably minimal either way. Absolute worst case scenario you get a letter from customs telling you to stop importing unapproved drugs.

The first thought that comes to my mind is take a lot of naps and sleep during the day as much as you can. This is the routine that is used by many professionals who must be vigilant for tens of hours without break. I would take a long walk before or even better do a little jogging (depending on your physical condition) to prepare body for the effort. I may also suggest Wim Hof breathing but this one is more esoteric.

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