Chatterbox: Down to Earth

As of forty minutes ago, I'm initiating Project Change Sleeping Cycles.

Since, you know, winter break starts in a few days and Cornell's OCAAT schedule lends itself absurdly well to the Uberman sleep schedule and... I want to. Because the traditional monophasic sleep cycle doesn't work (If I feel energised at all after sleeping, it only lasts for a few hours, not the full awake stage like it's supposed to. And it's touch and go, I can sleep for an hour and then go for the rest of the day, but turn around and sleep the full eight and barely be able to make it through morning class. And then there's the fact that I've had chronic insomnia problems since elementary school.) and I'm curious as to whether a polyphasic cycle would work better for me.

For those of you who don't know: The Uberman sleep schedule is a polyphasic schedule of sleep, in which you take periodic, half-hour long naps throughout the day, as opposed to the traditional monophasic 6-8 hours of sleep in one big chunk. Apparently it feels like being repeatedly run over by a cement truck for the first two weeks or so, and then supposedly it's awesome. So if it works, I'll be sleeping for a half hour at 12, 4, and 8 in the morning and then again in the evening, with 3 and a half hour gaps between each nap. There is some debate as to the long term health effects of doing it but, as I mentioned, I'm not getting the supposed oh-so-magical energy and cognitive benefits from attempting to stick to a purely monophasic or even the psuedo-biphasic schedule I've switched to here (afernoon naps on days I don't have afternoon class, basically) and, at this point, I'm willing to risk not operating at my quote-unquote maximum capacity in exchange for actually being able to feel awake consistently. So I'm going to give the Uberman schedule a go, since there isn't much scientific data at all, pretty much everything I've been able to find is entirely anecdotal or speculation, so why not? The alternative is free running sleep, which... isn't feasible in a college setting. Because from what I can gather from my own natural tendencies towards sleep, it would entail going to bed around 2-3 am and then getting up at 3-4 pm. Sorry, proponents of free running sleep, but society does not work that way.

For the record, these are the various things I've done previously to attempt to "fix" and/or compensate my insomnia issues (stop judging me, I'm in a list mood):

~Going to sleep at a predetermined, specific time every night no matter what, with several different bedtimes (mostly in elementary/middle school, with bedtimes ranging from 7-10 o'clock at night) and getting up at the same time every morning (usually 6:30). 

~The "free running" sleep thing (vacations, weekends) wherein you go to sleep when you're "sleepy" and get up when you wake up naturally (always late afternoon, regardless of when I go to sleep, which results in things like sleeping for twenty hours straight when I'm not sick). Which is, again, not socially acceptable and I would still get tired pretty quickly. Mother said it was "oversleeping" but it happened regardless of how long I'd actually slept.

~Just trying to get eight hours no matter what. 

~Eight hours a night + an hour or so nap in the afternoons when I feel ABSOLUTELY LIKE I'M GOING TO DIE (recently. Because college is tiring, guys.) 

With all of these various strategies, I have very specific sleep patterns, as follows:

~Stereotypical insomniac 'tossing and turning', usually for periods of 2-3 hours, but occasionally much longer (just last night, for example, I literally went to bed at ten and then didn't drop off until well after 3 am. And then I woke up at 4:30. Boo.). I've tried both of the two most-cited "solutions" to this, namely either relaxing/meditative techniques (deep breathing, calm thoughts etc.) and getting up and doing "relaxing activities" like reading for 15-20 minutes. Neither works. (Neither does cutting out caffeine. Basically I've tried everything short of sleep meds which I will never do, because I hate taking medication of any kind and only do it in dire circumstances, like when I had that GIANT cavity and would literally wake up screaming because it hurt so much. And even then I only had like... three tablets of aspirin over a period of a week (after which I got it filled and there was no more pain yay!). /unrelated rant)

~Following the tossing and turning, I spend fairly long amounts of time in a semi-conscious haze, which mostly entail lying very still with my eyes shut, thinking about random things but unable to actually get to sleep. This is how I spend the majority of my sleep time, and sometimes I can trigger it pretty quickly, if I'm at the right amount of sleepy/awakeness. It's... pretty restful actually. And often mistaken for sleep by people who see me in it, because usually the most I can muster whilst in it is a vague mumbling-- I'm fully aware of what's going on around me, just can't be bothered to respond to it because I'm trying to zarking sleep.

~Sometimes I eventually slide into actual sleep, which rarely lasts for longer than an hour and a half-ish. I always know when I've actually gotten to sleep, because I'll black out entirely and wake up again seemingly seconds later, but the clock has changed. From what relatives have told me, I'm like a rock when I'm like this.

~After a period of 1.5-2 hours, I re-enter the semiconscious state, with slightly more consciousness than before. That usually doesn't last for more than an hour, at which point it's back to the restless tossing and turning, or I get up. Whether I get up or toss and turn depends largely on whether it's a socially acceptable hour to be up doing things (is it four in the morning, or nine in the morning?)

~Once I'm actually up, I feel pretty groggy regardless of how much or how little I've slept and/or been semi conscious. This lasts for 2-3 hours usually, and it's almost impossible to stay properly awake during this period (I keep wanting to go straight into the semi-conscious state).

~After that, I feel pretty awake, still noticebly tired but alert enough to function for another few hours. It starts to ebb off after a short period (during school years, when I'd be up at 7ish every day, the ebb reaches its lowest point around 3-4 pm). That's followed by a brief (<hour) return of super grogginess.

~Next I start to develop that over-energized, annoyingly glassy wide awake feeling you get if you stay up SUPER LATE/ALL NIGHT. You know, the one where you feel like you've been vacuum sealed into Saran rap but you aren't tired so you can't sleep. It gets progressively worse as it gets later, but never entirely goes away, which is what causes the extended tossing and turning described at the top of this list.

Usually when I refer to sleep, I mean the semi-conscious state, because I so rarely actually sleep (assuming your definition of "sleep" is one which excludes a continued cognizance of events happening around you. And no, I don't dream about those events. I spent awhile postulating that that's what was happening, so I tried an experiment, namely, writing out lists of everything that happened while I was semi-conscious, and then checking it with the people who had been in the room at the appropriate times. I got basically everything right and was often able to figure out what people had been doing in my room just from what I had heard, i.e. Quinn coming in through the bathroom, saying "Haley are you awake?" then immediately going to rummage through my bookshelf for about five minutes. From which I surmise that I was either (a) having psychic dreams [unlikely] or (b) actually pretty conscious, just functionally nonresponsive).

Yeah. [Yes, I have been obsessively analyzing my sleeping habits and patterns since I was... elevenish?. If you had developed chronic insomnia when you were a nine (and nobody believed you because "kids don't get insomnia" and you're actually getting enough sleep and not realizing it, and the fact that you toss and turn for hours every night is irrelevant and that you're tired all the time isn't because of insomnia, it's because you're basically making up symptoms to get attention not that I'm bitter or anything but, seriously!), you would be neurotic about sleep too.]

Has anyone else here experimented with/contemplated alternative sleep cycles? Or had/have insomnia problems? Or... something? Night terrors? (never had those, they don't sound fun) Exciting dreams? I don't know. Talk about sleep, darlings!