I meant to post something about my experience with armodafinil about a year ago, but I never got around to it. My overall experience was strongly negative. Looks like I did write a long post in a text file a day or so after taking armodafinil, so here's what I had to say back then:

Some background:

I'm a white male in my mid-20s. I have excessive daytime sleepiness, and I believe this is because I'm a long sleeper who has difficulty getting an adequate duration of sleep. There are several long sleepers in my family. My mother and I tend to not like how stimulants make us feel, e.g., pseudoephedrine makes us fairly nervous, though it will help our nasal congestion from allergies and help wake us up. I was interested in trying modafinil because I hear it has proportionally less of the negative effects compared against its wake-promoting effects.

My neurologist gave me a few samples of armodafinil, which is basically a variant of modafinil. I was busy in the month after I met my neurologist last and didn't think about taking it at all, but come mid-February I remembered to try it.

Saturday, Feb. 15, 2014:

I woke up at 8:30 am, as I usually did, and started eating a chocolate chip muffin for breakfast. During the breakfast I took 4000 IU of vitamin D and 150 mg of armodafinil. I took these at 8:37 am.

I started organizing files on my computer. I still felt fairly tired, and considered going back to sleep, but I did not because I try to keep a very regular sleep schedule. I will take naps in the afternoon (before 8 pm, or so, to avoid delaying my bedtime) if necessary, but I try to wait until then. Until around 10:30 am, I thought armodafinil was doing absolutely nothing. I know armodafinil takes some time to kick in, but I didn't expect that long. Maybe I'm one of the people for which modafinil doesn't work?

At around 11 am I realized that I felt weird. It was obvious that the armodafinil had kicked in fierce at that point. I checked my heart rate: 75 bpm, which is higher than normal, though not as high as other stimulants take me. I wouldn't quite describe how I felt as more awake, though I don't think I could involuntarily fall asleep now. It felt as if I could fall asleep if I wanted to, but I didn't want to. I felt a bit more nervous, perhaps, but that might just be the placebo effect. It certainly was not as strong as what 60 mg of pseudoephedrine does to me. I got a phone call from my apartment manager saying that they'll be showing my apartment today, so I (slowly) started sweeping and vacuuming to make my apartment a bit more presentable. I was pacing around like crazy while doing this.

At about 11:30 am I took a shower. I started realizing that I have no impulse control. Instead of washing myself, I'd start, get distracted by some thought, think about that for a while, realize I'm in the shower, forget where I was in my shower routine, etc. I started thinking that armodafinil might have given me ADHD, which is odd given that I've read it might be useful for the treatment of ADHD.

After the shower I consulted the note packet that came with the armodafinil. Given what these notes said, I think I was experiencing a side effect. The notes said to discontinue use of armodafinil if you experience these symptoms. "Okay, can do." is what I thought.

I went to the LessWrong meetup and told Vaniver that I think armodafinil is not doing nice things for me. Another LWer suggested that perhaps these effects go away with repeated use; I said that I didn't know, but I don't intend to find out. During the entire meetup I had a lot of difficulty sitting still. I got up a few times to get water, or a napkin, or a bag of chips, but I don't think I actually wanted any of those things; I guess I just didn't want to stay still.

The early afternoon is the hardest time for me to stay awake, and this meetup spanned that time entirely. I yawned a few times during the meetup, but I didn't become so drowsy that I had to take a nap, as I often do. I take this as evidence that armodafinil helps my EDS, though it's not that strong because I never really felt "awake" during this entire process. I felt really weird in a way that I can't quite describe.

After the meetup (about 4 pm), I rode my bike to the downtown library to return a book. Purely subjectively, I'd say armodafinil increased my endurance. I'm in reasonable shape now, but I felt that I could maintain 20+ mph easier today than a few days ago. Objectively, though, it doesn't seem that my average speed increased much if at all; it was about 13 mph on Saturday and 12 to 13 on most days.

When I got back to my apartment, I felt a little better. Still fidgety and easily distracted, but slightly better. Perhaps the exercise helps, or the armodafinil was wearing off? I go running around now usually anyway, so I hoped this would help more. I went on a run, but it didn't have quite the effect the bike ride did. I then started making dinner, but I was continually distracted by my computer through that.

I noticed that my tinnitus was much worse today. Not sure if this was due to the armodafinil, but it sounded at least 10 dB louder than usual. Ambient noises could not mask it.

Around 10 pm, I started feeling more tired, so I figured the armodafinil must be wearing off. I still felt odd and easily distracted, though. I read on my couch for a while until I felt as if I could fall asleep quickly, and I slept briefly on my couch. I woke up and moved to my bed, where it took me a while to fall asleep again, but I did. I woke up several times during the night and felt I had to try quite a few positions before I found something comfortable. This wasn't particularly restful. Otherwise, I don't think armodafinil did much to my nighttime sleep. I think if it hadn't caused some manic symptoms, I probably wouldn't have had any issues sleeping.

Sunday, Feb. 16, 2014:

I still felt a little odd when I woke up, but it was very obvious now that these effects were wearing off. I had read that armodafinil has a half-life of about 12 to 15 hours, so using a simple exponential decay with a conservative half-life, I saw that I still had the equivalent of about 45 mg of armodafinil in my system. Tomorrow morning that decrease to about 15 mg; after the third day it's down to 5 mg. I can't wait for this to be out of my system.

Overall, I'd say taking armodafinil was worthwhile as I learned something about myself, which is that I probably should avoid stimulants as much as possible.

(Not from my original intended post: I want to note that I'm doing much better now, after getting more sleep. No stimulants necessary. I haven't seen a neurologist since I wrote the post above and probably won't again.)