Body. Work. Radical. Why Migraines Strike. For the more than 300 million people who suffer migraines, the excruciating, pulsating pain that characterizes these debilitating headaches needs no description.
For those who do not, the closest analogous experience might be severe altitude sickness: nausea, acute sensitivity to light, and searing, bed-confining headache. “That no one dies of migraine seems, to someone deep into an attack, an ambiguous blessing,” wrote Joan Didion in the 1979 essay “In Bed” from her collection The White Album. Historical records suggest the condition has been with us for at least 7,000 years, yet it continues to be one of the most misunderstood, poorly recognized and inadequately treated medical disorders. How Many Silicon Valley Startup Executives Are Hopped Up On Prov. Is someone you work with taking Provigil to give them an extra competitive edge?
I’ve spoken with one executive who says he uses it regularly to work twenty hour days, and the buzz lately is that it’s the “entrepreneur’s drug of choice” around Silicon Valley. Over the last week two separate entrepreneurs have mentioned it casually in conversation, and one said he tried it once and loved it. Provigil (aka Modafinil) is marketed by Cephalon in the United States and is available by prescription only. It’s only approved use in the U.S. is to treat narcolepsy, a sleeping disorder.
But since the main effect of Provigil is to keep you awake and able to concentrate, a lot of people who get their hands on it use it to be able to work longer hours, even though it has not been deemed safe for that kind of use.