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My flat-mate Sam called it the “Monday pill.” He’d crawl out of bed at 05:45, pop half a 200 mg tablet he ordered from some Polish pharmacy, and by 06:05 he was whistling while the kettle boiled. No doctor, no insurance forms, no awkward questions about why a graphic designer needs a narcolepsy drug. If […]

Last Tuesday my neighbor Dan waved me over to the fence, phone in hand, face flushed. “I just paid two-twenty for thirty pills that taste like chalk,” he hissed. “The tracking number died after ‘Singapore customs.’” Same story every month: Reddit link, flashy landing page, money gone. I told him what the sleep-clinic nurse told […]

I was standing in the pharmacy aisle of a Farmacias del Ahorro in Playa del Carmen, sweat sticking my shirt to my back, when the clerk shrugged and slid a foil-backed strip of Modiodal across the counter. Same molecule as Provigil, half the price I used to pay back in California. No questions, no triplicate […]

Last winter my alarm rang at 4:30 a.m. and I was already on the Tijuana trolley with a backpack, a passport, and a note from my doctor that said “modafinil 200 mg, patient travels.” By 8:00 a.m. I walked out of Farmacia del Sol on Avenida Revolución holding a sealed box of Modiodal–the Mexican brand […]

Last April my editor called at 2 a.m. demanding a 5 000-word brief by sunrise. Coffee had stopped working somewhere around midnight and my eyelids felt like garage doors rusted shut. A friend in Phoenix texted back: “Order Provigil, it lands in 48 h, no Rx drama.” I clicked, paid $149 for thirty 200 mg […]

Last Tuesday my neighbor Dave–48, two kids, never misses a Little-League game–texted me at 6 a.m. from the office parking lot. He wasn’t bragging about beating traffic; he was sitting in his Honda, engine off, forehead on the steering wheel, unable to remember why he’d driven in. Brain fog had eaten his morning. Two days […]

I still keep the empty blister pack in my desk drawer–like a tiny plastic trophy from the winter I pulled double shifts at the hospital and still made it to my daughter’s Saturday basketball games. One half of a 200 mg Provigil tab at 5 a.m., cold coffee, and the drive felt almost normal. That’s […]