Comment by esperent
7 days ago
> The effect is pretty mild and the effect usually only happens when I'm in bed and drifting off towards sleep. A few minutes before I'm fully out, while I can still hear and see everything going on around me, I'll start to dream. The dream can be either vivid or fuzzy, but it plays out in just the same manner as when I'm asleep, just kind of superimposed upon my normal waking senses
I absolutely don't have narcolepsy - quite the opposite, I tend towards insomnia unless I practice fairly strict sleep hygiene. But, this "symptom" is a common and enjoyable part of falling asleep to me. I think it's common for a lot of people, near sleep, to have a dreamlike state, and it's possible to make interesting connections that you wouldn't make while awake. Often, but far from always, nonsensical. Sometimes deeply meaningful. I've solved maths equations that I was stuck in this state, or rather, I've seen the final connection I was missing to be able to solve it. Salvador Dali was famous for using this technique to come up with ideas, taking a nap while holding something that would fall from his hand and wake him to aid in remembering the connections.
Far, far be it from me to tell someone that what they experience as a symptom of a disease isn't. But I don't think that this particular symptom is abnormal, or only experienced by narcoleptics, and I do think there's a risk for the sufferers of any disease, to attribute many of the weird, sometimes confusing parts of simply being a haphazardly evolved animal created by evolutionary pressure as aspects of their disease. As a migraine sufferer, I do that too with any headache or weird aura effect. But sometimes a headache is just a headache. Sometimes a dreamlike state is just a dreamlike state.
Author here:
> I absolutely don't have narcolepsy - quite the opposite, I tend towards insomnia
FWIW most people I know with Narcolepsy also have trouble sleeping at night, so that's not so much an opposing symptom as a fully compatible one.
Narcolepsy is generally associated with the following classic symptoms:
- Excessive daytime sleepiness and/or "sleep attacks"
- Sleep paralysis
- Cataplexy
- Hypnogogic hallucinations ("dreaming while awake")
But also, every narcoleptic I know, when untreated, has significant issues with sleeping at night. I myself had full blown insomnia (not sleeping at all) several nights out of the week back in high school for years on end.
Not all narcoleptics have all of the symptoms, for instance many will have E.D.S. but not cataplexy, or the reverse, or won't have sleep paralysis, etc. I'm not a doctor, and I'm not trying to diagnose you over the internet. But it is interesting that you have what pattern matches to 2 out of 5 common narcoleptic symptoms.
On the other hand, just having one or two symptom doesn't mean you have the full blown disorder. Plenty of people have a motor tic or too but don't have full blown Tourette's.
I write this mostly to clear up a misconception -- that many people assume Narcoleptics have no trouble sleeping at night.
Yeah on the opposite I'd say it's pretty clear that the insomnia and poor sleep during night contributes heavily to why we are so spent and sleepy during the day. Aside from general insomnia I also had so much night terrors. Terrible nightmare, then waking up, then resuming the terrible nightmare again. Sometimes I'd try to stay awake just not to experience the night terrors. I inadvertently learned lucid dreaming to handle them.