Comment by sudosteph

+1 here, no narcolepsy diagnosis (do have sleep apnea though), but I also have that exact same awake-dreaming experience semi-frequently, or at least enough that it's not distressing to me for the most part. I also assumed this was a universal sleep experience.

I do vividly remember one experience though, I was riding the bus to high school. It was a very long ride very early in the morning and I started to fall asleep. My head was doing the thing where it would droop suddenly from tiredness. Usually the feeling of suddenly falling like that would wake me up a little and I'd snap my chin back up, but this time I guess I was extra tired so my head stayed drooped down and I continued drifting asleep while mostly upright on the bus. The dreams started, but in one part of the dream I heard someone call my name. I immediately became fully awake again, because I was aware I was on the bus the whole time and had thought someone had called to me and I might need to respond. But there was nobody behind me. Freaked me out a little because I wondered if that was a hallucination, but everything about it just felt like falling asleep. I get hypnic jerks a lot too, so I am used to suddenly coming back out sleep halfway through, and about half the time that happens I can remember bits of dreaming.