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The Five Stages of Insomnia (six if you live in a trailer park...)

Goodness Gracious Meme

01:05 / 22.08.03

Inspired by Larry Miller, how many stages does *your* insomnia have? And how bizarre does your headstate get?

01:37 / 22.08.03

"Well....as long as I'm only going to get a few hours sleep anyway, I may as well....STAY UP ALL NIGHT!!!! Yeah! That'd be good for me. I don't mind going to that board meeting looking like Keith Richards. Yeah, I'll turn that around, make it work for me. And besides, as long as I get 31 hours sleep tomorrow ....cool."

Oh dear, how many times have I thought that?

I once thought the washing basket was pulsating up and down. That was kind of cool to be honest, but I expect it was just screen burn.

The insomnia I get is when I've stopped drinking too early and have not gone to sleep afterwards. On the other hand, you do sleep a lot better if you're not drunk.

01:51 / 22.08.03

I get insomnia in waves, and during the crests, when I can't sleep at all, I don't even feel tired. There will be a couple of weeks of later and later nights, then I'll go three or four days without sleeping, then suddenly return to normal. Happens a few times a year. Has nothing to do with beer though. Alcohol and caffeine seem to have little effect on my sleeping patterns.

I'm told this is called "mental illness".

Red Cross Iodized Salt

04:17 / 22.08.03

I once stayed awake for just under three days, initially due to insomnia and later due to not being able to get my friends to stop having a party in my parents' house. On the third day I got on a bus and hallucinated that everyone was Richard Dreyfuss dressed as a clown. That was pretty much the strangest thing I've ever seen (or thought I saw).

06:54 / 22.08.03

I sometimes feel like I'm in a Morrissey video. That's weird.

On a brighter note, Valium is good.

07:10 / 22.08.03

[Totally off Topic but in soothing hypnotic tones] BiP ... go get another dose of homeopathic drops ... you know you want to!!! [Totally off Topic but in soothing hypnotic tones]

Tryphena Absent

07:47 / 22.08.03

at level one you think to yourself, "Oh come on, this is silly, why as long as I get seven hours of sleep (snap fingers), I'm cool."

I do that every night. Mostly I can sleep atm (I'm getting the odd night where I lie awake and curse the world) and that means I'm going to bed pretty damn early. Alas my notion of early seems to be different to everyone else's- apparently some people think that 11pm is early, I think it's 11pm... certainly not time to sleep. I did manage about 6 hours last night and that was good going.

My insomnia seems to be playing a game- I can fall asleep when I go to bed but this happens far later than it should. I actually can't make myself go to bed at all. I'm sure it's just the new style of the ever present sleeping curse. I don't get prolonged waking... I always fall asleep later, it just takes me 5 hours sometimes.

11:07 / 22.08.03

But that (the Larry Miller stuff) is not *real* insomnia. Thats drinking too much when you are old, get serious hangovers and have a job in the morning. Its a drinking thing. Insomnia is more like staying up when you have absolutely no reason to do so.

I've had some interesting times with no sleep. Giving lectures whilst hallucinating and blinking in and out of microsleep is no fun at all.

13:07 / 22.08.03

I usually get by on 4-6 hours a night, 72 hours without sleep is the longest I have done and that produced a mild hysteria where everything was fantastic whilst I concentrated on it the second my mind wandered (and it did frequently) I forgot how fantatstic it was. Also I had a really itchy forehead above my right eye, which no matter how hard I rubbed it would'nt stop.

I once spent a night wired to a machine which checks out sleeping patterns of the four stages of sleep R.E.M. is 1, 2 is transitional (I think) 3 and 4 are the closest we get to death (It's been a while).

Normal pattern would be to slowly sink into sleep through 1-2-3 and 4
then slowly rise again 4-3-2-1 spend some time in R.E.M and go back taking approximately 1 1/2 hours to complete this cycle ebbing and flowing through the night about 4-6 times over approx an 8 hour period. Until you wake, hopefully from R.E.M. sleep, sometimes from stage 2 (which is when you don't remember dreaming).

I however, went from awake and crashed straight into stage 4, spent about 2 1/2 hours there (whish really concerned the guy on the monitor) rose into R.E.M then spent the rest of the night there, sometimes dipping into stage 2. The chap running the tests said it was the weirdest sleep pattern he'd seen and that he would keep it on file to show others. His theory was my brain gets all of the stage 4 sleep out of the way first, and then just spent therest of the time in R.E.M sorting out whatever R.E.M. sorts out (sort of like filing/indexing for the brain) And this is probably why I can work on so little sleep. However Alcohol makes me sleep really well usually, sometimes I get drunk, fall asleep and then only sleep for 4 hours waking, bing! Wide Awake!!! A bit groggy but just can't get back off.

Of all the things I have tried when sleep won't come, Lavender oil massaged into the temples, with a breathing exercise whilst counting back from 100 works like a charm.

Anyone else have a tonic for sleeplessness which doesn't resort to popping a pill?

14:26 / 22.08.03

Masturbation.

Apparently.

Tryphena Absent

14:29 / 22.08.03

Ha! That doesn't work!

14:30 / 22.08.03

Well you know what they say, What's the difference between Light and Hard?

19:22 / 22.08.03

i have almost no trouble going to sleep. hardly ever do i have a problem.
i do, however, have a problem where i wake up and can't get back to sleep. it is so maddening to be so extremely tired and yet unable to sleep. you feel like punching yrself in the face.

23:06 / 22.08.03

sometimes I get drunk, fall asleep and then only sleep for 4 hours waking, bing! Wide Awake!!! A bit groggy but just can't get back off.

apparently this is because booze disrupts your nighttime melatonin cycles, or something along those lines

08:27 / 23.08.03

Well you know what they say, What's the difference between Light and Hard?

like, i can get to sleep with a light on?

21:46 / 24.08.03

Welcome to the bane of my existance. Insomnia sucks! I went through a period of a full year where I only slept every other night. The days in between I was completely useless because I was so exhausted. Maybe that's why I've been suicidal so much in my life?

The feeling of being too tired to even read or watch TV yet not being able to sleep is infuriating. Some nights just feel like plunging a knife in my chest just so I can get some rest.

I had to teach a class at a university early this morning, so I planned out my night. No going out, no excessive drinking etc. etc. So I rent a movie, stay in, go to bed early, and then I tossed and turned until 7am when I had to get up. Admittedly part of it was nerves about giving a presentation, and somehow I managed to pull it off on ZERO sleep, but DAMN!!! WHY CAN'T I GET A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP??!!!

Dreams are another matter. When I DO sleep I have the most horrific, violent and stressful dreams you could imagine. Sleep is probably the most stressful part of my day.

Sorry I'm ranting, but I've been awake for almost 36 hours right now. Who knows if this will make sense to me tomorrow, or even if I'll remember it.

22:58 / 24.08.03

Usually I sleep like a baby. Well, I don't wake up and cry all the time. So actually I don't sleep like a baby, which is very well.

Not tonight.

Soon three in the morning, and I just had to get up and start reading e-mails and shit. After sleeping for only four hours LAST night whe I was on door duty in our new squat, and five hours the night before, due to partying followed by squatting the next day.

I should be sleeping the deep sleep of the exhausted. But no. Bloody mushroom season starting, I eat one tiny TINY Psilocybe coprofila that I happen to find on a field and now can't stop the thoughts from spinning.

Good thoughts, but I'd rather sleep.