Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep

Sounds healthy.

In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers, Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate sleepiness.

Wait, are we talking about cocaine? It sounds like we're talking about cocaine.

A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.

So this is where we are as a species huh? Spraying chemicals up an animal's nose in order to elminate being sleepy? Is that really the worst of our problems here?

The discovery's first application will probably be in treatment of the severe sleep disorder narcolepsy.

Wish I had narcolepsy. That would have been the perfect excuse to why I was drooling on my keyboard at my desk the other day.

The treatment is "a totally new route for increasing arousal, and the new study shows it to be relatively benign," said Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a co-author of the paper. "It reduces sleepiness without causing edginess."

This is how the zombie plague begins. I think I'll just deal with yawning every once in awhile instead of spraying some drug up my nose directly into my brain. I can sleep when I get home. Besides, I need sleep. It's the only escape I get from a world that thinks up this shit.