When I was a child, I suffered from insomnia. I also suffered from a serious lack of being able to communicate why I couldn't sleep. I'm sure some of it was physiological, but I am just as sure it was partly psychological.
Starting around the age of 12, I became aware of my own mortality. There wasn't a near-death experience, or even anything particularly traumatic, at least to my adult mind, that I can recall. I don't recall it being an epiphany, either. It was more like one night as I lay there staring through the darkness at the ceiling I knew must still be above me, it was like I just said, "Oh yeah, I'm going to die someday." and then went right on staring.
In the fall of 1984, I entered Junior High and a particularly dark time of my life. Though I wouldn't read it for another couple of years, I was acutely aware of the truth of Sartre's "No Exit". This contributed to my mood as I try to get to sleep and 10 turned into 11 turned into midnight turned into 1 turned into 2 turned into 3. By the holidays, the realization of my mortality had turned into, "I might die tonight."
1984 was a presidential year and I avidly followed the media coverage of all of the campaigns and formed my own opinions. No offense to my family, but I've never agreed with them politically or thought that their political views held much merit at all. I have always felt that they voted based on knee-jerk reactions and what the television (and then radio) commercials told them were the important issues. As such, I began to learn all I could about nuclear proliferation, which was not easy for a 12 year old a full 9 or 10 years before the world wide web would be in public use. Fortunately, I had an excellent relationship with the library and the librarians. I was allowed to read some of the adult magazines, the ones that had to be checked out. This was when I first discovered Rolling Stone, but it would be another couple of years before I would appreciate it's political commentary. I was mostly interested in U.S. News & World Report. I already had access to Time and Newsweek, and never have figured out why they kept that one back and not the other two. These magazines and other things I read, like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, and other influences lead my fears to become "We might all die tonight via nuclear annihilation." This fear stayed with me in a very real sense until Ronald Reagan was out of office.
I tried talking with my mom about this, but her response was something along the lines of "don't worry about something you have no control over", which was exactly what I didn't need to hear. None of my friends wanted to talk about this at all with me because they were thoroughly uninterested in politics, for which I can not blame them. I think I may even have talked to my Sunday School teacher or her girlfriend, both of whom I was really fond of. But, if I did, I did not find what I was looking for.
As I got older, I began to do stuff during the time I should have been sleeping, if for nothing else than to keep about thinking about dying. I read a lot of books and watched a lot of television, well at least until midnight or 1 am when the stations went off the air.
In college, I finally cured my insomnia, if not the reasons behind it. But, the cure was worse than the disease, so to speak. I drank enough alcohol and smoked enough pot for nine or ten college students, all of whom would have been considered hardcore partyers. This took it's toll on my health, both mental and physical. At this point I despair that I will ever recover enough to live a normal life, whatever that means.
I also learned during those years, more from my friend Beth than from personal experience, that sleep could be used to battle your demons. And if it took the bottom of a bottle to find sleep, then so-be-it.
Snap back to the present, and I have a real love-hate relationship with sleep. I don't like to sleep, but I like to dream. I take that back, I'm rather indifferent to sleep, what I don't like is that period of time when I'm falling asleep, which is now mercifully short, or that period in the middle of the night where sleep wanes and evades me for an hour or two.
Showing posts with label sleep apnia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sleep apnia. Show all posts
Friday, August 07, 2009
Friday, July 03, 2009
The Hypnogogue
I've always had an interesting relationshiop with sleep. At times I might even go so far as to call it a "Love-Hate" relationship, whatver that means.
When I was a kid, I usffered from insomnia something horrible From the age of six through 18, I spent at least one night a month awake, and the vast majority of hte rest sleeping three to four hours per night. I've neither or hated this circumstance of my earlier years. What would be the point? I can't change it now, and I couldn't change it then, it was just the way my life was. On the few times the family physicain was brought into the mix, the best that could be offered was that I 'probably' had sleep apnia. Probably because my mom never wanted to go the next step of having me put throughthe tests at a hospital or clinic somewhere. I never could understand why not, as I was a military dependant and covered by pretty decent health insurance.
My mom often objected to going to the doctor, or it seemed to me, sending my brother or I to the doctor on religious grounds. My mom was a Christian Scientist, but not a very good one. A good one, would not have gone to the doctor at all. A good one would have taken the time to explain to her own children why they didn't need to go to the doctor instead of giving them a pamphlet provided by the church or having the Sunday School teacher talk to them. Hell, she could have at least been present when one of these 'talks' were occurring. Well, I guess I"ve hit a nerve that I wasn't aware was still so raw, and now I'm full of piss and vinegar. Where is a scream therapist when you need one?
Anyway, when I went off to college, the sleep/no sleep issue got a bit out of hand. It became pretty common, as in weekly, for me to stay up for a couple of days straight and then sleep for like twelve hours, then a couple of nights at maybe five or six hours before starting it over again. Not only was I really fucking up my body's natural rhythms, I was doing a bunch of other shit to myself that I would pay for later. Add a bout of Mono to the mix, stir in some mysticism and shamanism and I developed a sleep disorder.
Hynogogia is a state of being on the cusp of both the conscious and the unconscious/subconscious mind. For an average person, it's never a big deal because they only spend between 15 and 90 seconds in this state. To someone suffering from this sleep disorder, the hypnogogic state extends from seconds to minutes. A hairy guy I once knew quite well told me that he thought I was trying to break down that border between my two levels of consciousness.
I won't get into what I was trying to do, that's a story I would rather tell in person.
By the time I was out of college, four to five nights a week I spent 30 to 40 minutes in a hypnogogic state as I tried to get to sleep. I had spent so long trying to achieve this state, that I couldn't turn it off.
There are two phenomenon of this brain state that are important to note. The most significant is that your body is locked down. No matter how much you want to move, or think you are moving, you can't budge, and I"m told someone trying to move your arm, let's say, can't because your fight against it. The second feature is that your eyes may or may not be open. If they are open, whatever thoughts/dreams you may be having can be superimposed over your field vision as some kind of ultra-real-seeming hallucination. Start thinking about every alien abduction story you've ever heard when filtered through the above information, with a firm base in Jungian psychology and you will come to understand the phenomenon in a more meaningful way.
I think probably some of you would like me to take a stand and dismiss alien abductions at this point, but I would rather think that they are misinterpretations of real phenomena and beyond the ability for anyone to decisively dismiss as false. But, I'm not saying that literally little grey men are coming down and anal-probing people. I think that's probably a load of horse shit.
Recently, I was reading a novel in which the main character talks about hypnogogia and that he's experienced it not only on falling asleep, but upon waking as well. This seemed new to me. How I could only have experienced it one way? The answer is the modern (in)convenience of the alarm clock. If it's doing it's job, it snaps you awake. I've used an alarm clock somewhat religiously since I was 12, I say somewhat in that I do it every day out of force of habit, not for 'religious' reasons.
I discovered a couple of days ago, however, that there are circumstances in which one can use an alarm clock and not be jarred awake, and in fact due to environmental conditions be brought gently enough out of the unconscious state to enter the hypnogogic state. I didn't plan this, nor do I plan on repeating this, but it's very interesting that it happened a couple of days after reading the passages mentioning it.
As an aside, in a book by the same author, there was another moment of synchronicity that slapped me in the face and said, "Hello, Martha!" The author, incidentally, is the late Roger Zelazny and I was reading his series of Amber books - ten books in 14 days.
To set this up, it's important that I often listen to music or NPR while I read or write, though mostly just music when I'm writing. On this particular afternoon, I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. The books were told in the first person and the main character begins to compare his current situation to Joyce's Ulysses. Just as I read the word 'Bloom', I hear it on the radio. As I turn my focus away from my eyes to my ears, I realize that they are indeed talking about the same character and that the context of the story is almost identical to the situation that the main character is describing in the book.
Needless to say, aster I read a couple of short stories by Zelazny, I will be cracking out my copy of Ulysses and getting to work.
When I was a kid, I usffered from insomnia something horrible From the age of six through 18, I spent at least one night a month awake, and the vast majority of hte rest sleeping three to four hours per night. I've neither or hated this circumstance of my earlier years. What would be the point? I can't change it now, and I couldn't change it then, it was just the way my life was. On the few times the family physicain was brought into the mix, the best that could be offered was that I 'probably' had sleep apnia. Probably because my mom never wanted to go the next step of having me put throughthe tests at a hospital or clinic somewhere. I never could understand why not, as I was a military dependant and covered by pretty decent health insurance.
My mom often objected to going to the doctor, or it seemed to me, sending my brother or I to the doctor on religious grounds. My mom was a Christian Scientist, but not a very good one. A good one, would not have gone to the doctor at all. A good one would have taken the time to explain to her own children why they didn't need to go to the doctor instead of giving them a pamphlet provided by the church or having the Sunday School teacher talk to them. Hell, she could have at least been present when one of these 'talks' were occurring. Well, I guess I"ve hit a nerve that I wasn't aware was still so raw, and now I'm full of piss and vinegar. Where is a scream therapist when you need one?
Anyway, when I went off to college, the sleep/no sleep issue got a bit out of hand. It became pretty common, as in weekly, for me to stay up for a couple of days straight and then sleep for like twelve hours, then a couple of nights at maybe five or six hours before starting it over again. Not only was I really fucking up my body's natural rhythms, I was doing a bunch of other shit to myself that I would pay for later. Add a bout of Mono to the mix, stir in some mysticism and shamanism and I developed a sleep disorder.
Hynogogia is a state of being on the cusp of both the conscious and the unconscious/subconscious mind. For an average person, it's never a big deal because they only spend between 15 and 90 seconds in this state. To someone suffering from this sleep disorder, the hypnogogic state extends from seconds to minutes. A hairy guy I once knew quite well told me that he thought I was trying to break down that border between my two levels of consciousness.
I won't get into what I was trying to do, that's a story I would rather tell in person.
By the time I was out of college, four to five nights a week I spent 30 to 40 minutes in a hypnogogic state as I tried to get to sleep. I had spent so long trying to achieve this state, that I couldn't turn it off.
There are two phenomenon of this brain state that are important to note. The most significant is that your body is locked down. No matter how much you want to move, or think you are moving, you can't budge, and I"m told someone trying to move your arm, let's say, can't because your fight against it. The second feature is that your eyes may or may not be open. If they are open, whatever thoughts/dreams you may be having can be superimposed over your field vision as some kind of ultra-real-seeming hallucination. Start thinking about every alien abduction story you've ever heard when filtered through the above information, with a firm base in Jungian psychology and you will come to understand the phenomenon in a more meaningful way.
I think probably some of you would like me to take a stand and dismiss alien abductions at this point, but I would rather think that they are misinterpretations of real phenomena and beyond the ability for anyone to decisively dismiss as false. But, I'm not saying that literally little grey men are coming down and anal-probing people. I think that's probably a load of horse shit.
Recently, I was reading a novel in which the main character talks about hypnogogia and that he's experienced it not only on falling asleep, but upon waking as well. This seemed new to me. How I could only have experienced it one way? The answer is the modern (in)convenience of the alarm clock. If it's doing it's job, it snaps you awake. I've used an alarm clock somewhat religiously since I was 12, I say somewhat in that I do it every day out of force of habit, not for 'religious' reasons.
I discovered a couple of days ago, however, that there are circumstances in which one can use an alarm clock and not be jarred awake, and in fact due to environmental conditions be brought gently enough out of the unconscious state to enter the hypnogogic state. I didn't plan this, nor do I plan on repeating this, but it's very interesting that it happened a couple of days after reading the passages mentioning it.
As an aside, in a book by the same author, there was another moment of synchronicity that slapped me in the face and said, "Hello, Martha!" The author, incidentally, is the late Roger Zelazny and I was reading his series of Amber books - ten books in 14 days.
To set this up, it's important that I often listen to music or NPR while I read or write, though mostly just music when I'm writing. On this particular afternoon, I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. The books were told in the first person and the main character begins to compare his current situation to Joyce's Ulysses. Just as I read the word 'Bloom', I hear it on the radio. As I turn my focus away from my eyes to my ears, I realize that they are indeed talking about the same character and that the context of the story is almost identical to the situation that the main character is describing in the book.
Needless to say, aster I read a couple of short stories by Zelazny, I will be cracking out my copy of Ulysses and getting to work.
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