Sleep deprivation sucks
What’s up, guys? Your boy has been struggling with insomnia for the past few weeks for reasons beyond his comprehension.
Now, do not get me wrong: it is absolutely not over. I am still extremely sleep deprived as I’m writing this very post, along with the PGP one, since I’m writing them in unison, for some reason. So, if my prose sucks or I say something stupid… womp, womp. I have dealt with weeks of insomnia; you can deal with a sloppily written blog post, okay.
I am not exactly sure why this has happened or how exactly it started. However, I can confidently say one thing: it was most likely completely my fault. So gather up, dear RSS readers, gather around the symbolic virtual campfire, as I am about to tell you a cautionary tale of how I managed to ruin my own sleep and almost went insane (or more than I already was).
It may have started earlier, but I think I could roughly pin the start back to my weekend trip to Alicante, where we celebrated Gregory and Kayra’s birthday. The night before the trip, I stayed up too late and slept for four hours. Not that outrageous as a one-off thing, especially for a student in his 20’s; the nights that came after is probably what killed it.
The trip was pretty fun. I remember we stayed up until 4am only to realize we had to check out at 9am, not very fun. None of us actually slept more than four hours that day, and I am pretty sure I was the one who had it the worst.
Apparently, I spent a sizeable chunk of those hours sleepwalking. I, of course, don’t actually remember any of what I did while it happened, but after wandering around, I came back into bed with Kayra (we were sleeping on the same bed), who immediately woke me up as my movements caused her to go on a ten-minute curse-infused rant in Turkish while unconscious.
At 8am, Gregory and Kayra decided to wake me up with the USSR anthem (very funny, guys). I could see the stars, I could feel my body crumbling and my mind rotting. We watched Pink Panther on the TV and shattered our shins with the inconveniently hard-to-spot glass table in the living room (lol). The best way I can describe how I felt at that moment is this quote from I Have No Mouth:
AM said it with the sliding cold horror of a razor blade slicing my eyeball. AM said it with the bubbling thickness of my lungs filling with phlegm, drowning me from within. AM said it with the shriek of babies being ground beneath blue-hot rollers. AM said it with the taste of maggoty pork…
Anyway, not long after that, we clearly needed a break. So we took the only reasonable action: we went nightclubbing. It was a long night, I had too much alcohol, and went into an abandoned fruit processing plant where I devised innovative ways to torture my poor friend who went after me.
Alcohol messed with my sleep, and I didn’t get more than five hours that night either. At this point, the sleep debt was really starting to stack, and it showed. I was only feeling worse.
The hangover wasn’t brutal, as I have Pavlov’ed myself into drinking water and electrolytes while drunk to avoid the worst symptoms. However, post-alcohol depression is very real and can hit very hard.
For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God, for no man understandeth him, however it may be that in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.
- 1 Corinthians 14:2
I had work the day after, and I couldn’t get myself to sleep sooner than 01:00… yeah, I slept five hours that day too. This is the part where the horrors truly start.
I stopped going to the gym because I was too tired, the sleep debt - well, or the general debt - was genuinely a lot. I had a horrible day at work, and I tried going to sleep sooner.
I managed to crash at 00:00, not bad. However, to my own surprise, my body woke me up at 04:00. “Not a big deal,” I thought, “I’ll just go back to sleep.” It didn’t quite work out, as paradoxically, I was feeling too energetic!
I tried everything. Had a warm drink, walked around the house, and even had a cold shower. Nothing could put me back in bed. I was tired, but my heart was beating too quickly, and my mind felt too laser-focused.
I decided to give up for the night and began my normal daily routine, as per usual. But then, it happened again.
… And again.
Suddenly, I was waking up at 4-5am every day. Making my nightly sleep time 5 hours at best. No matter when I went to sleep, as soon as 5am hit, a rush of adrenaline would jolt me awake, depriving me of the sleep I so very needed.
My mind was degrading quickly, so was my body and strength. I genuinely do not think I can use words to describe the absolute pain and psychological torture I was dealing with.
My insulin resistance shot up. Dramatically so, as a matter of fact. I went to sushi, got enough insulin to kill a horse (20u), and still needed 10u more to bring myself down from the migraine-inducing hyperglycemia of 350mg/dL (19.42 mmol/L). Which didn’t go away until the morning after, anyway!
For the record, my insulin ratio normally comfortably sits at 1:50 (that is, for every unit of insulin, my glucose goes down by 50). The amount of insulin I got that day would have normally been enough to bring me down by 1500mg/dL and instantly kill me; still, it wasn’t enough. Let that sink in. :)
After the seventh day of jolting awake at 5am, I decided it was enough. I sent an (somewhat ominous in retrospect) WhatsApp message to my boss:
I am not going today. I am going to the hospital. See you tomorrow.
I scrambled through GVA Salut and made a cita at 12:00 with my GP. I spent the dreadful five hours that led up to the cita playing computer games. Almost perfected a 10-star song in Project: DIVA while I zoned out (rare moment of flow state) and spent two hours playing Final Fantasy VII, only to forget to save before closing the game.
Finally, when I arrived at the GP’s office, I explained the situation to him and begged him to give me anything that wasn’t melatonin (melatonin wouldn’t have helped here).
He decided to prescribe me some Ambien (God bless his heart), which I instantly dispensed at the Pharmacy as soon as I left the hospital. Shortly after I arrived at my house and tried getting some rest until bedtime.
Eventually, 22:30 came by. It was time to take the pill and hit the sack. I was strangely excited to finally get some good sleep for one night. I remember progressively feeling groggier and more comfortable until I passed out.
… So my GP didn’t bother to mention that Ambien makes you more prone to sleepwalking, with me already being a sleepwalker. Though asleep, I spent the night messaging friends and also ate some Greek yogurt.
But to be honest, eating yogurt and texting while fully blacked out on a sedative is the most mild version of an Ambien trip imaginable, especially given how much of a hardcore sleepwalker I can be (like that one time I sleptwalked 8 miles — really not letting that one go ever, probably).
Other than that? I slept for 6:45 hours until I got jolted awake! Yay!
Not ideal, and I definitely got some recovering to do, but that is officially outside of deprivation territory. That’s a win! My goal is to extend this to 9 hours and hopefully get off Ambien.
My sleep hygiene has been mediocre at best this past year, so this has been a very valuable lesson: don’t fucking mess with sleep, or sleep will make a fucking mess of you instead.
Published on 2026-06-30