About 2 days ago, I woke up in the same way I always wake up, and went to work. After my shift was over, I went home, stayed up for a couple hours, then went to bed, even though I didn’t feel tired. I tossed and turned for the next 7 hours or so, then at 10:45am got out of bed and went to work again. I never slept, but I still wasn’t tired. I finished my shift today at 8:30pm, came home and laid down on the couch, expecting sleep any moment, but it never came. It’s now close to 6am, and I’m approaching 36 hours without sleep. And I’m not tired. At all.
Now, I’ve worked in a similar way to how I am now (I’m a programmer in the games industry) but this time, I’m not getting tired. Last time I worked like this, I was exhausted and slept for about a day straight. Instead, I feel completely normal. As if I slept last night. But I didn’t. Or the night before. I’ll be going to work again in about 6 hours, and I won’t be expecting a day off for another 2 weeks at least. So my question is, what the hell is going on with me? Again, I feel normal, but I’m never getting tired; in fact, I feel pretty good. Still, this isn’t normal, and I know that. Should I be worried?
I occasionally “skip” a night of sleep with no ill effects and without any, uh, external help. I don’t know why that is. Although it is far less frequent now than when I was in my mid- 20s.
Scry did you have a dream about a man standing over you the other night while you slept? Do you feel sensitivity to sunlight? Have you had anything garlic to eat recently, and if so, did it taste like hot peppers?
That’s a little strange, because alcohol disrupts healthy REM sleep, so you actually don’t get as restful a night’s sleep when you’ve boozed yourself into oblivion. But it’s better than nothing, I guess!
Sometimes just getting to sleep is good enough. I killed a bottle of Pinot Grigio last night to take the edge off. One hour to dirnk it, ten to enjoy it. Ahhh…
Yeah, I think if you’re at the point I was, where you just need to be able to fall asleep, anything will do. The first few hours were probably nothing more than unconsciousness, but I do remember dreaming after waking up once and going back to sleep. I felt a lot better after being at work for about 3 hours and the hangover wore off than I would I have if I just stayed up and went again.
I’m taking a class on sleep and chronobiology right now. Yeah, you’ll certainly have to catch up soon, but your body does help you out by sending you straight into REM sleep when you do sleep after having missed out.
Your symptoms sound like that drug I read about in Wired recently (helpfull, i know). Wired was on about pharmacologically controlling our own lives in the future, and one drug mentiond was a drug for narcoleptics which people are using as a ‘lifestyle’ drug too. People can be awake for a couple of days, feel just fine, and then have a restfull night of sleep with no side effects. The drug doesn’t stop them from sleeping (you can sleep after taking it, no problem), but you don’t -need- to sleep.
For me, it sounds bloody ideal, because I have a bad time convincing myself to go to bed when there’s anything else, at all, to keep me up.
