( PopSci.com ) -- As a species , we 've hit the bedtime barrier . You can eat at your desk , socialize in the break room , and answer text messages on a date , but sooner or later , you 're going to have to sleep . Your a.m. routine may involve downing a burst of liquid energy , boosting your performance for 22 hours at a stretch . `` After 18 , 19 hours awake , your brain function starts to fail , '' says Dallas , Texas , sleep-medicine specialist Andrew O. Jamieson . Coffee might keep you up , `` but you 're not going to be focused . '' Coffee ? You might as well be commuting by buggy . Old-school stimulants like caffeine , amphetamines and the drug Ritalin are about to be marginalized by eugeroics . This emerging breed of `` wakefulness '' pills promises to keep the workers of tomorrow not just awake , but alert , on-task and feeling fine through the night and well into the next day . Remember these names , because they 're your future : Modafinil , approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1998 for the treatment of narcolepsy and marketed in the U.S. as Provigil , is already giving a competitive edge to everyone from Air Force pilots on 40-hour missions to ( less legally ) college students cramming for exams . The drug 's maker , Cephalon in Frazer , Pennsylvania , is awaiting FDA approval for armodafinil , which promises even longer periods of wakefulness on a single dose , and Irvine , California-based Cortex is working on its own drug , code-named CX717 and developed with funding from the military . The drugs are targeted at sleep disorders like narcolepsy , but it 's their dramatic potential influence on the workplace that has researchers and efficiency experts buzzing . Scientists understand how the drugs work only broadly . Unlike traditional stimulants , eugeroics do n't simply jazz up the whole body . Instead they tweak specific sleep-related mechanisms in the brain , so users do n't feel jittery or wired , just alert . And in experiments with CX717 , sleep-deprived rhesus monkeys on the drug often outperformed their own well-rested but undrugged best efforts on mental-performance tests . Modafinil , too , `` is definitely a cognitive enhancer , '' says cognitive psychopharmacologist Barbara Sahakian of the University of Cambridge . In her studies of alert human volunteers , the drug improved planning , concentration and impulse-control skills , and even boosted some forms of memory . Here 's the rub : The drugs do n't replace sleep , and decades of research show that sleep deprivation prompts immune dysfunction , depression and other disorders . Sleep is n't something we should be looking to phase out of our lives . Yet the economic pressure to stay out of bed is intense . Cutting out four hours of sleep a night would free up almost 1,500 extra hours a year . That 's an additional nine months ' worth of standard 40-hour workweeks -- plenty of time to earn a promotion or start your own company on the side ( or , worst case , slog away in obscurity ) . From Napoleon to Edison to Churchill , many of history 's most notable figures got by on only a few hours of sleep a night . Give an entire workforce the energy of a Thomas Edison , and you 've got a new Industrial Revolution . For better or worse , when the trend takes hold , there will be no going back . Imagine sticking to double lattes while everyone else in the office -- or at the start-up down the road -- is juicing on the latest eugeroic , and you 'll seem as naive and obsolete as the NFL linesman who swears by protein shakes alone . Any worker could benefit , says University of Virginia bioethicist Jonathan Moreno , author of the recent book Mind Wars . `` But for consultants or contractors , people who are n't on a salary ? The incentives are ridiculous . '' E-mail to a friend . Copyright © 2009 Popular Science .
`` Wakefulness '' pills promise to keep future workers alert through the night . They tweak sleep-related area in brain so users do n't feel jittery , just alert . One drug is already giving an edge to Air Force pilots on 40-hour missions .