I can fall asleep with my laptop on my lap, in a slightly leaning-back chair, and the hum of Earth SpaceDock around me. But then I go brush my teeth and go to bed and...
This seems way too familiar.
Crew room couch? Front seat of truck? Back seat of truck? Cosy corner of theatre? Moderately human-contoured tree? Grassy patch and old coat? Perfectly restful.
Mattress, flannel sheets, and pillows in a dark room? Hahahahaha!
Yep. Brains are stupid. I can be up for more than 24 hours (I can't stay locked to a 24 hour cycle for more than a few days so I end up drifting wildly and skipping sleeps to try and re-sync with my Known Associate)). Then, finally, I go to bed and my ADHD brain is all "HAHA! No sleep for you."
I'm convinced I'm from another planet that has a drastically different day length. It's the only answer. (I cling to this belief in the hope my fellows notice I'm missing and come to fetch me off this godsforsaken rock.)
Maybe if we all band together we can make a big enough SOS sign for them to see it. Assuming we could all manage to be awake at the same time. Yeah, I know, who am I kidding?
we don't need to all be awake at the same time --- I think there are enough of us to work in twos & threes to build the signal fires, then light & supervise them -- that wat they'd be monitored continuously.
Not really :/ I have the worst case of non24 hour sleep syndrome any of my doctors have ever encountered and basically the option is "lie there quietly because that's at least rest" and arranging my life to accommodate my fucked up schedule.
Weirdly, the exact right timing of meds when I was taking the twice daily immediate release Ritalin in combination with the fuckoff levels of antihistamines I have to take fixed it to a perfect 24h cycle if I took the meds in a 10 minute window, but Vyvanse gives me better ADHD symptom control, so
I'm sorry it's so challenging! I'm also in the boat of, lay there and rest, from very cranky dry eyes. But I've been wondering about Non 24 for a while, reading your posts. How did you figure it out? Only if you don't mind sharing
I always had a very night owl schedule as a teenager, and then when I hit college I would just have entire days when I didn't sleep (and it helped with the crashing out of college). I picked up a job on the night shift at a call center and thought that would accommodate it--
--but the more I tried to keep to even a night shift schedule, the more I'd slip. I could just about keep a more or less consistent enough to not get fired shift on the night shift, but it was rough and exhausting. Kept getting worse as I got older, eventually went to work for myself --
Story of my life, never able to sleep more than 4h/night - until I had twins.
When I joined the UN, I took a sleeping bag and pijamas to the office so that I could at least be tempted to take a nap during my 3x/week all-nighters. Not a chance...
After the twins, would snore for 5min, anywhere...
I know this deep in my bones. I operate on a 29HR cycle and it makes everyone in my life batty. I learned to meditate so that when I couldn't sleep I could at least (try) to do that and it helped some. I wish we could borrow sleep from those who have too much to even them out as much as it evens us.
It was free running for a while, now my sleep cycle creeps around the clock, going through nocturnal/diurnal/crepuscular phases.*
I'm at least in a position to (mostly) sleep when I need to. Except when having a lovely snooze and some muscles start spasming on me! OW!!
Wakey wakey!
There's a ring of pigment around the edge of the retina, unrelated to vision, that responds to blue/not-blue (yellow) wavelengths. It may be how the body senses light to regulate circadian rhythms.
I have hEDS, left eye scarring, and torsional strabismus.
I strongly suspect it's affecting this.
Yeah. I think there's probably a lot of different things that can fuck with circadian rhythm -- mine is almost certainly histamine and neurotransmitters, for instance. Sigh.
(If you have EDS, there's a chance histamine might be contributing to yours, too; EDS + MCAS are so correlated my specialist thinks they're the same disorder and some people just have subclinical versions of one of them if they have the other and don't seem to have the one. Ditto POTS.)
Oh probably. Diagnosed with POTS (it's relatively mild, fortunately, but I'm relatively careful), and strong suspicion of MCAS. My old doctor had me on 80 mg famotidine (got GERD as well, H+ inhibitors are a no go) and 10 mg cetirizine. I upped the cetirizine to 20mg when I started itching again.
I was taking the maximum 40mg loratidine + 40mg cetirizine a day for a while, yeah. I'm back down to 20/20 now but we're about to start trying me on another drug that is gonna probably fuck with everything, sigh
I had a revelation this year when I had Covid. I discovered that if I wake up for just long enough to eat something and take my meds, I can then go back to sleep for like 30-90 minutes and wake up feeling refreshed.
Like, actual refreshed! Not crawling out of bed as if I’d never slept in my life.
Me: [gets in bed & pulls up the blankets]
Me: [sighs] "Ahhh..."
My Brain: "Hello, Friend."
MB: We need to go thru all the thoughts you didn't have today. There's quite a backlog."
Me: "What"
MB: "Why haven't you done any origami lately? CUTE DOG! Did you send out those documents at work? BIRDS!"
MB: "What are we going to do when H1N1 bird flu finally mutates to jump from human to human? Flu is so much more infectious than covid, masking won't be enough."
Me: "SCREEN TIME IT IS!"
I'm a "shorter" - my internal day runs about 20 hours. I'll cycle through standard time about once a week and that will be the day I don't fall asleep during your 8 am meeting.
It would have been a lot easier to be stationed in Antarctica but I never quite pulled that off.
Ewww.
I so relate to this. I don't have non-24, I have delayed-phase sleep disorder, but I need Ambien to get any sleep at all. Without it I just sort of sit there until I crash and nothing does any good.
Yeah, mine started as DSPS with a slight tendency to slip by about 15 minutes a day in childhood/teenagerdom, and just got worse and worse and worse over time! I'm really glad you have something that works for you even a little. (We tried me on Ambien once and I was awake for like 3.5 days, lol.)
The hallucinations started around 72 hours and that's when I was like "I will never touch this drug again", heh. The doctor who prescribed it was like "...but the half-life is around 2 hours!" and I was like "AND YET."
Comments
Yeah. Same.
Crew room couch? Front seat of truck? Back seat of truck? Cosy corner of theatre? Moderately human-contoured tree? Grassy patch and old coat? Perfectly restful.
Mattress, flannel sheets, and pillows in a dark room? Hahahahaha!
It limits your options and there's nothing to do about it but sleep. ☺️
When I joined the UN, I took a sleeping bag and pijamas to the office so that I could at least be tempted to take a nap during my 3x/week all-nighters. Not a chance...
After the twins, would snore for 5min, anywhere...
I feel Lucky ! Usually, while lying in bed, my head didn't touch the pillow yet that I'm already sleeping!
Sorry, I know it's not fair.
I sleep well still, haha
I'm at least in a position to (mostly) sleep when I need to. Except when having a lovely snooze and some muscles start spasming on me! OW!!
Wakey wakey!
I have hEDS, left eye scarring, and torsional strabismus.
I strongly suspect it's affecting this.
Like, actual refreshed! Not crawling out of bed as if I’d never slept in my life.
Me: [sighs] "Ahhh..."
My Brain: "Hello, Friend."
MB: We need to go thru all the thoughts you didn't have today. There's quite a backlog."
Me: "What"
MB: "Why haven't you done any origami lately? CUTE DOG! Did you send out those documents at work? BIRDS!"
Me: "SCREEN TIME IT IS!"
It would have been a lot easier to be stationed in Antarctica but I never quite pulled that off.
I so relate to this. I don't have non-24, I have delayed-phase sleep disorder, but I need Ambien to get any sleep at all. Without it I just sort of sit there until I crash and nothing does any good.