Do You Fall Asleep?

I decided that my reply here would make a http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1352972#post1352972 good MPSIMS topic.

As I said in that thread, I don’t “fall” asleep. As I understand it, many people fall asleep gradually enough to realize they are actually falling asleep. It usually take me a good half hour of being in bed before I actually sleep, and when I do it’s like someone finally threw the switch between Awake and Asleep. Since I’ve never slept through a night without waking at least twice, except when sick and taking cold meds, I know that my experience with sleep is probably atypical.

So, what about you? Do you generally know you’re falling asleep or not?

I generally know when I’m falling asleep, but the next morning I can’t remember what time I went to sleep the night before.
Peace,
mangeorge

I generally know when I’m falling asleep and can remember about what time it was the next day but it does take a while. Usually a half hour or more. It’s kind of weird because even when I want to sleep if I feel myself drifting off I end up fighting it. It happens to my Mother too. As she put it “Sleep has to come and get me.” Must be a control thing I suppose. I do have OCD.

And I’m pretty tired most of the time.

I guess I’m lucky, relative to some of you folks anyway, because for me it never takes nearly that much time. Rarely over five minutes. Like you, elfkin, I’m pretty much an on/off type. At least, when I’m in bed and attempting it. Sitting at a desk or whatever, and trying (unsuccessfully) to stay awake, that’s a whole 'nother matter, usually. Although, I have fallen asleep at a red light before. And yes, I was driving.

Richard Feynmann, the Nobel physicist (and one of my personal heroes), writes an interesting chapter or so on this phenomenon in his earlier autobiography, Surely You’re Joking, Dr. Feynmann. He decided to do one of his college research papers on sleep effects of some kind, and for his research he would go back to his dorm and fall asleep each afternoon and evening, but try to maintain consciousness of what he was doing. He actually got quite good at it, being able to recognize, consciously, when he’d (physically) fallen asleep, even retaining some measure of logical, sentient thought afterwards. Damn, I may have to go reread this book now.

  • Dave

By the way, IIRC the average awake-to-asleep time for Americans is seven minutes. At least, it was when I heard the results of some study, on the radio, back in '89 or so.

Ok, how about waking up?
When left to my own devices, no alarm clock or compelling reason to get up, it can take me a long time to become fully awake. And I feel totally rested when I do get up.
Peace,
mangeorge

I’d just like to note that waking up during the night is not at all abnormal. It’s said that most people wake up several times during the night, but promptly fall asleep and forget that it happened. I would suspect that most people wake up after every period of REM sleep, if only for a moment.

I used to struggle to fall asleep. These days, I usually lay down when tired, and am out within a few minutes. It’s not unusual for me to wake up after two-three hours, and actually feel quite awake–but I’ll usually be asleep again in just a minute or two if I don’t get up. Although if I do get up in that situation, I’m surprisingly functional for a good stretch of the day, fading fast a lot quicker near the end of it.

I fall asleep gradually over about 15 minutes usually and I’m almost always very aware of it. I really like being aware of it because that almost-asleep feeling is lovely. It’s that kind of awake-dreaming stage. I’m especially appreciative of this because i used to be a chronic insomniac. I have to be careful though - if i acknowledge too firmly that I’m falling asleep, that ruins it and wakes me up again. It’s kind of a mental version of the physical jerk you often do when your body is falling asleep.

If i wake during the night mid-dream I can go back to same dream fairly easily and occasionally retain some consciousness to the extent that i am aware I am dreaming and can manipulate my dreams. I love it when that happens.

Fran

I’m in the switch category. I don’t know how long it takes me (because I can’t see my clock without some effort), but I’d say anywhere from 10 minutes to 30+. I find it useful to blackmail myself asleep - I’ll tell myself “If I’m not asleep by 11:30 I’ll get up and do chores”. Works nearly every time.

This is weird but works for me…I do a self-hypnosis type thing where I visualize myself asleep. No matter what position I’m in, I mentally look to the upper right and see myself curled into a fetal position, sleeping. It takes me 2 minutes or so to fall asleep.

When I’m awake and trying to puzzle through things, I tend to lean my head to the right and look to the left; to sleep I (mentally) look to the right. Have been told it’s the right/left brain thing, used for whatever portion of the brain stimulates the thought process required.

I sometimes know I am but then I usually snap out of it and have to relax again… I can recall at approximately what time I fell asleep but it usually takes me a bit unless I am really tired… like 30 minutes or so.

Sometimes though there have been times when I just dozed… I know I’m almost asleep or somewhere between and floating but I stay like that and snap out of it after a few moments. I usually feel a little better for a bit but then I get tired again. It’s happened to me a couple of times at work… I stop what I’m doing and stand there almost dazed before I snap out of it and go back to what I was doing.