I have cursed my body’s need for sleep. And, I have cursed when my body needed sleep but my mind refused to turn off. I’ll admit that at times I’ve turned to the pharmaceutical industry to help me cope, but this one scares me: a nasal spray with a drug that helps your mind compensate for lost sleep. I get that it’s being developed for military pilots on long-range missions, but talk about a potential market. The drugstore might replace Starbucks. My cynical side says there’s no way this could actually work long-term without serious side effects, but desperate people trying to compete in our capitalist society may not care. It seems to me that we ought to hold this drug to a very high safety standard and control its distribution like other prescription drugs that are easily abused.
-Andrea Kalfoglou