The rumour is Limitless (the movie with Bradley Cooper in the early '10s) was modeled on Modafinil, the side effects being "inspired by" as well. I didn't have the peripheral vision failures to register, but the death like fatigue is real.
Limitless is the film version of Alan Glynn's book The Dark Fields. It was published in 2001, so it would've been written before or at most a year or two after modafinil got FDA approval, and long before modafinil was popularized by Wired, etc in the mid-2000s.
The book is really, really good. Much darker than the film, however. The ending is completely different, particularly the implications of the last paragraph.
If you're on a Dark Fields kick, Ted Chiang's 1991 short story Understand is worthwhile. Geekier and not as philosophically weighty, but way more fun.
