My DSPS has never really bothered me much, except when I get insomnia on top of it and toss and turn til 6am or later. But it’s gotten slightly worse over time… I used to fall asleep fairly easily by 2, and now 4 am is more likely; I used to wake up fairly easily by 8 or 9, now 10 or 11 is more common, and given that my scheduled working hours are 8am til 5pm… well, I tried some of the more common ‘fixes’ like slowly adjusting my sleep schedule by staying up later and later every night while on vacation, exposing myself to bright light in the morning (though I didn’t buy one of those solar lamps), and of course, multiple alarm clocks.
None of it seemed to work well. The adjusted sleep schedule fell apart within a couple of days, bright light seems to help me wake up faster when I DO wake up but doesn’t change when that happens, and the alarm clocks I sleep through or turn off without waking up enough to realize I’ve done so.
In researching, I ran across a few references to people using Provigil to treat, or at least mitigate, DSPS. It’s a medication I’d heard of before… I’ll talk about it more in another post. Basically it’s marketed as a “wakefullness promoting agent” which has almost no side effects and is non-addictive (well, everything’s addictive but it’s not addictive like, say, methamphetamines). This seemed appealing to me, as I’ve always hated the idea of sleeping pills (the primary alternative seemed to be taking ambien to force myself to sleep early), and I worry about becoming addicted. One addiction is far more than enough, thank you very much. 
So… I went to my doctor to talk about it. He was quite familiar with the topic, which surprised me a bit for some reason. He was open to the idea of Provigil but seemed to favor the Ambien slightly more. When I explained to him how I feel about sleeping pills, he agreed to try the provigil first and see if it did the job. He was concerned, though, about other possible sleep problems, so he sent me for a sleep study. I’ll write about that later, it was interesting.
Took a couple of months between my first appointment and my followup to go over the test results, and another 3 weeks after that for my insurance company to process my prescription and send me my first 30 day supply. This stuff is *expensive* — about $9.50 per 200mg pill. Through my insurance, it’s only $60 for a 30/60/90 day supply (same price for whichever). Since we’re just trying it out, the doctor had the prescription at 30 days. Not too bad I suppose, but still expensive. There’s no generic version available in the US yet.
So… we’ll see how this goes. Wish me luck.
Thank You
Hey,
I knew Provigil could be expensive, but had no idea it could cost $9.50 a pill?! I thought $1.45 per pill was expensive, which is what I used to pay.
Did you know that you can get the generic version of Provigil (modifinil) in the US, but shipped over from the UK? That’s what I do, you just order online and it costs a fraction of what I used to pay. Also great if your insurance doesn’t cover it.
I now pay just $83 for 100 tablets of 100 mg Provigil. Makes a huge difference to my outgoings!
Hope the sleep problems are faring better since your last post.
Sarah
You can, and it’s definitely cheaper, but that’s not exactly legal, unfortunately.