SleepLess

Jan. 20, 2009

I would not try to call me. You may get a full ear load of exhaustion, emotion, and delirium. I haven’t gotten much sleep in the last 3 days or so. I can’t find sleep. I just lay there restless, sometimes in pain, but most the time, my mind will not wonder into fairyland. I’m on 80 hours and counting. Sure, I got an hour here and an hour there of sleep, broken up at least 10 or so times to a total of 7 hours in the last 80. I’m not my crazy-usual self. I’m crazy-extreme self. I think it may be better for you to email or text if you need to get a hold of me. It might be the best route to take, for right now.

Yea, I did the drug thing to relax. I ended up writing for hours. I did the red wine thing too. It just gave me a migraine later and then I took my Imitrex to get rid of it. That’s when I got 2 hours straight of sleep, the most I got in one sleeping shot in the last 3 and a half days. But the migraine is gone. My good old Imitrex buddy came thru for me. He works for me 80% of the time. I also did the wine thing--the cry of exhaustion, pain, & helplessness. It didn’t work either. Nothing is working for me. My mind is going crazy and I can’t seem to stop it.

I’m not trying not to sleep. Warning: Even though I don’t work now, I still want to sleep now. This is not a Sleep-Less experiment. However, I do remember a brother of one of my dear friends who did a similar sleep-less experiment back in the old college days.

His name was Chris. Very good-looking, smart, cute personality, & good kisser. He was studying to be a doctor. I was friends with his sister, Amy. Chris was always pushing the envelope of discovering and trying out new things. One day, he thought he would experiment on not sleeping. He wanted to find out if the human body actually required sleep if it was properly trained into not sleeping.

So Chris outlined an 8-week, very detailed & well thought-out proposal on how to train his mind, body, & soul not to sleep. His studied plan was to delete 1 hour of sleep each and every night for a week until he could sleep no more. Soon Chris would be the Master of Non-Sleep. The Pre-Master thought we as humans waste a lot of time sleeping. In his strong opinion, Chris believed if we did not sleep, we could get more things accomplished. He was very confident in his thought process.

During the experiment, Chris kept an accurate count of the hours and minutes of actual sleep verses actual wake. He marked his calendar daily while adjusting to the extra hour of wake and looking forward to even more efficiency the next week. The young experimenter recorded notes along the way on how he felt each night during the 8-week exercise. Sometimes there were lots of notes and sometimes few on the development of non-sleep.

I never did find out what the result was right after the 8-week duration of the experimentation. Chris and I lost contact over the years. However, about ten years later, we bumped into each other. Still gorgeous and cute and nice as ever. Dr. Chris and I talked for a while, remembering the few times we hung out, remembering our past. It was very nice running into him. Chris and I got to talking about his Sleep-Less Experiment as well. I asked him how that experiment ended for him. He shyly smiled and admitted his result. “Not that well, I fell asleep."

I’m sure my unplanned sleep-less experiment will not work for me either. I'm sure I will crash soon. And I think I know the reason why I can’t sleep...Pat’s back.

disturbed, deb