Never considered Modafinil.....I have rarely if ever touched or ingested substances which have the effect of what the pharmacologically naive would describe as "UPPERS", or stimulants. I am by nature aggressive and edgy, too much so in fact....my condition/disability is essentially "Brittle bone disease", and even though I have the mild form of it, I am still at risk for fractures. Being a "Type A" alpha cripple doesnt work for me, in fact it is dangerous and counterproductive. So if I and when I am in position to choose substances to ingest, I go for the "soothing" effect of what everyone else terms downers, and there are a plethora of substances which have this calming effect. But since my condition actually, truly involves shitload of pain, opiates tend to be the first (and only) thing I will allow down my throat. One of the reasons I am still here in this world living, breathing, complaining, spending, (on whores), splooging (on whores), and posting on XPT is I never EVER ever NEVER ever ever Never mix drugs, specifically taking another form of a "downer" when taking opiates for pain. Especially Booze and or Benzodiazepines. The vast Majority of so-called opiate related overdoses and deaths involve Polypharmacy, the consumption of multitudes of drugs that have a potentiating impact on the system.

When mixing drugs, 1 plus 1 is not 2. There is a new "front" in our governments "war" on drugs, whereby they are ballyhooing the last 5-10 years of an epidemic of prescription drug abuse, especially painkillers/opiates-oids. They point to the fact that Drug Overdose on prescription pain pills is now the greatest source of fatalities outside of car wrecks. This, in turn, causes them to wage yet another battle on the drug front, this time against doctors-pharmacies-patients who may be overdoing it with the painpills. It's bullshit, for quite a few reasons, but the reason that burns Daburglar's gonads the most is the way Data (statistics) are so easily manipulated and twisted to support a bogus or sketchy conclusion, or "Casus Belli", by the government to justify their latest war on drugs, which is really infringements of our constitutional rights. These so-called increased incidents of Death by O.D. on pills VERY often involve people who consumed a lot of booze AND/or other drugs along with their pain pills, which greatly distorts what is going on....it is actually very difficult for a otherwise healthy person to O.D. to the point of DEATH on Opiates ALONE, unless they consume a HUGE HUGE amount as would happen, say, in a DELIBERATE SUICIDE!!! Furthermore, even though toxicology reports can specify the level of a specific drug in a person's system at the time of death, this too is not an ironclsd conclusive tool to use in proving the cause of death and can also be misleading.

First and foremost, every single person is different from everyone else in almost every facet, including general metabolic system and rates of ingestion, metabolization etc. Tolerance is also a huge factor in evaluating death by O.D., and tolerance is a subjective and nebulous concept to apply/evaluate for any individual case....we cannot ever know, beyond any reasonable doubt, just HOW much of a drug a person can or cannot tolerate before death ABSOLUTELY results. If a person has been consuming a substance, such as Methadone or Oxycontin (or really any substance over a period of time) it gets stored in various parts of the body....immediately AFTER death, those reservoirs of drugs inside the body release their drugs back into the "system", thus DISTORTING the true amount and timeframe of what the person ingested immediately prior to croaking. You get the picture.....

THUS....There is no "Epidemic", just greater awareness of pain and how to treat it, with the resulting inevitable increase in the availability of opiates in the average person's medicine locker..

And Lou, as for which Hah-vahhd shithead I'm voting for, the answer is (as I already alluded in previous posts) ...... NEITHER of the two pricks. Why? Both parties (not candidates, PARTIES) are completely bereft and bankrupt of realistic and effective ideas/plans how to resolve and fix the handful of truly IMPORTANT ISSUES/PROBLEMS facing the US of A right now, Both parties have been hijacked by special interests, and by the far LEFT(Dems) and RIGHT(Repubs) extreme elements within each respective party, and neither party understands just how imporTant bipartisanship really is for long term success. If I cast my vote for the party that I believe is the lesser of two evils (in this case Romney), win or lose I'd nonetheless be contributing TO the "mandate", or total influence or power that the Repubulicans wield in all issues. Cannot do that for either party.