Modafinil Tolerance 101: What It Is & How to Manage It

Have you ever noticed that after drinking coffee every day— you become less affected by it?

You can have two, three, or even four cups without any apparent side effects?

What you’re experiencing is tolerance.

You’re “tolerating” the caffeine in the coffee because you’re body is less responsive to it than before you drank it everyday.

Tolerance is a common phenomenon in the medical industry with pharmaceutical drugs— and it can be a big problem.

The problem is that as tolerance increases, the dose also needs to increase.  Eventually, the effective dose can become so high it becomes dangerous through its effects on other organs, especially the liver and kidneys.

It’s therefore useful to understand ways to manage tolerance so that the effective dose can remain within safe levels.

What is Tolerance?

Tolerance is a concept that describes the bodies resistance to a medication. As tolerance develops, the drug has less of an effect on the body.

In order to keep producing the desired effects, the drug has to be taken at increasingly higher doses.

Many different drugs cause this effect, including:

• Opioids like morphine, codeine, and heroin
• Caffeine
• SSRIs (antidepressants)
• Benzodiazepines
• Alcohol
• Nicotine

In most cases, drug tolerance is a bad thing, because it means the effects of a drug are reduced. In some cases, however, tolerance can be useful.

Take for example the use of allergen therapy.

This involves exposing the body to small doses of a compound it’s allergic to.

By exposing the body to these compounds in small amounts every day, and gradually increasing the dose, the body will eventually start to tolerate it and becomes less allergic.