Bed Time

It's 9:45pm, and I know I should be heading to bed. This is a nightly argument with myself. I have narcolepsy. Well, the current official diagnosis is ideopathic hypersomnolence. I take an anti-depressant, which suppresses REM sleep (in addition to its other effects). The nature of one's REM sleep is one of the ways narcolepsy is detected and diagnosed, so for insurance purposes it can't be called "narcolepsy" if you're taking something that effects it. Last time I fully went off meds it took a month and a half so that I didn't have to feel incredibly sick.

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9:06pm and I just took a pizza out of the oven... the previous half of the post actually ended in sleep, ironically. To pick up where I left off, I need to get a certain amount of sleep each night for the meds that treat the narcolepsy to actually work and help me be awake. Granted, I have not actually figured out what that amount is, but so far it seems that I need to be in bed, lights out, pillow to head, by 10pm if I have to work the next morning. I turn down requests to hang out to make this happen, but the truth is it rarely does. Half the time I'm not even doing anything important, urgent, or productive-- I'm playing mahjong, or doing a crossword puzzle, or repeatedly checking Facebook. I'll sit there, doing whatever I'm doing, and think "I should really go to bed. Mmm, maybe after one more game..."

It's the same story in the morning. I hit "snooze" so many times I lose count-- but seriously, I've snoozed my alarm for an hour... on multiple occasions. I'll consciously sit up, contemplate the time and if I'm waking up for this alarm, decide no, and snooze it again. I'm not actually sure what makes me decide whether I get up or not. When I ultimately get up, it's because I have absolutely run out of time--if I don't get up right then, I'll be late, or more than late. Some of it is feeling sleepy still, regardless of what time I go to bed. Sometimes I'm have super weird dreams that will continue and resolve themselves if I snooze enough times. Other times... I just really don't understand the struggle. I recall having a series of thoughts, ending in a decision about waking up, but in the morning I can't remember what the deciding factor is. The feeling is that there was something wrong about the minutes-- "no, it needs to be 6:20... no, 6:30, 6:35... maybe 6:38... It could just be me making rationalizations for going back to sleep. Even so, it really feels like I'm missing an explanation there, especially with the amount of anxiety I can feel about both going to bed and waking up.

My current thinking is that I'm really just not a morning person. I seem to be more functional starting a little later in the morning, and that continues thru until later at night. If I didn't need to wake up so early (for me), I could stay up later, until when I felt ready for sleep, and still have my meds work in the morning. This hypothesis could be totally off base. I already have an idea of what else could be adding to the situation, but that's for after I've thought it out a bit more.