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sarahsweets · Feb 24, 2020, 04:44 AM

Hey @bpcyclist This is interesting to hear you say. Here is something interesting as well...
My husband is narcoleptic. About 8-10 years ago he was on provigil. We switched insurances and the provigil was no longer covered and (surprise) there was no generic so we couldnt afford the 800$ a month. His doctor was trying to push him into nuvigil. Provigil is made by Cephlon and they had just applied to extend their patent, preventing any generic from making it. My husband refused because he's the kind of guy who wants to take exactly what he was prescribed and if it works he sticks with it and wont switch. Then the pharmacist one day told me that it was going generic. Ironically when we got his prescription through mail order the pills still said "cephlon" on them. Which means the company was making money in the front and at the back end with their drugs. I researched Nuvigil because I couldnt understand why they were pushing it. Provigil contains two isomers I forget what they are called but nuvigil is basically 1 isomer sort of like 1 half of what provigil is. I told him about the reports I read about people still being sleepy and how it did make them feel jittery when it was "working" but that was short lived and a lot of the narcoleptic patients were still struggling with daytime sleepiness. We had to switch insurances again and it wasnt covered again so now he is not on anything and is ok 75% of the time. The rest of the time, if he is in a low stimulus environment he could fall asleep. Not while driving or working just at home. I want him to go back on it but he refuses to have the sleep study again and doesnt want to. He says he didnt like the way it made him feel.
My opinion in a tin-foil-hat world is that the doctors were getting incentives and kickbacks to promote and prescribe nuvigil because cephlon knew its patent extension would fail and provigil would go generic. The patent game is nothing but favors in my opinion. All of a sudden out of the blue nuvigil was everywhere which is ironic because cephlon owns the subsidiary that makes both provigil and nuvigil. It is my opinion that nuvigil Kinda works for some, enough that it "competes" with provigil and at the time was the bigger money maker.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bpcyclist

Nuvigil is SEDATING. It's why the drug has done so badly. It makes a large percentage of people who take it actually fall asleep--including me. It was basically a sleep med for me. Complete joke. Horrible drug, just a patent scam attempt. It did not work. It is why they fought so hard to extend the patent on Provigil for so long--they knew it sucked.

Provigil is a completely different drug. It will work, pretty much guaranteed.