Let’s say there’s a pill and that if you take it, you (just you, nobody else…unless they take the pill too) will NEVER have to sleep again. You won’t ever get sleepy, in fact, you wouldn’t ever be able to fall asleep again…
…however your body would be okay with this. You wouldn’t suffer any adverse effects or slowly get weaker over time or develop any mental changes or die eventually. You’d be fine. You just wouldn’t have to sleep any more.
Would you do it?
I’m not so sure I would. I sort of LIKE sleeping and I really like dreaming.
Not to mention how bored you would become if you didn’t kill 7-8 hrs a day with sleep. You might actually find the end of the internet when everyone else is snoozing.
I’d probably take the pill. I wouldn’t do much constructive stuff with my free hours but if you eliminate sleep then a full time job only takes up 1/4 of your waking hours during the week.
For one thing: Everyone else already seems to have more hours in the day than me. You guys somehow have time for work, hobbies and family. I barely manage to have a sandwich during a normal day, before it’s bed time again. Having ca. eight extra hours would help, at least some.
For another thing: I’m always sleepy at the wrong time. I want to sleep during the day, and stay up all night. This is often incompatible with the demands of society. So much of my life has been made so much suckier than it otherwise would have been because I’ve had to drag myself through it, desperate to go back to sleep. In fact, basically all of it that takes place before lunchtime. I want to eliminate this problem.
Absolutely. I think I have narcolepsy or sleep apnea or both (yeah, I should get it diagnosed but I haven’t had proper health insurance in a while - working on that), and sleep issues such as oversleeping and excessive daytime fatigue (like, really excessive sometimes) regardless of hours slept have been huge issues throughout my life. If I don’t have to wake up by an alarm I’ll sleep for a solid 10-12 hours straight and even then may end up taking a nap later. I hate it, and feel like it’s been a big obstacle to being able to work a normal job and have a “normal” life. Reading about people who say they regularly only sleep for like, 5 or 6 hours then get up at the crack of dawn, plow through a demanding 8+ hour workday, go home, engage in hobbies and cook dinner and maybe even go out somewhere at night - that’s just incomprehensible to me. So it would be wonderful being superhuman on the sleep front for a change.
There’s no such thing as a free ride. There’s always a price to pay.
From what I’ve read, sleep is a time for your body to repair itself without having to take on the struggle to maintain daily operations. And since your brain uses so much energy, it has to go into a state of somnolence too, in order to repair itself.
Personally, I think if you had no sleep, you’d lose your creativity and become a machine (metaphorically). I like sleep. It gives my brain freedom to range over problems and solutions. They probably come up as random garbage in my dreams, but I’ve had some of my best work pop out of my dreams.
I’m on the fence and giving it some serious thought. Taking it would mean more time to do some of the things I love, but I also genuinely like to sleep. If it meant that I could never again truly “quiet” my mind and thoughts - then no. Sleeping to me is more than just letting my body rest and reenergize - it’s a way to “check out” (temporarily) from the never ending activity in my brain. I realize that it doesn’t stop while I sleep since we all have multiple dreams whether we remember them upon awakening or not, but at least I am not aware of it while I sleep.
So probably not. I like to check out, even if only for a short while every night.
zzzz…
Wow! I find it hard to understand how that’s even a question! It’s almost like doubling your life span. Is the problem what to do with the extra time? What does anyone do with ANY of their available time?
I suppose I’m biased by the fact that I don’t run on a schedule – day or night, all the same to me, except that night is quieter. Yes, I do have to sleep, unfortunately, and I do it when I’m tired, and I wish I didn’t have to. Looking at it from that perspective, instead of the traditional concept of what you’re “supposed to do” at particular times of day, how is sleep of any use except as a burdensome necessity?
Sure it’s lovely to crawl into a nice comfy bed when you’re really tired, but who would voluntarily render themselves into a state of horizontal unconsciousness for absolutely no reason? If you were feeling great and ready for all kinds of activity and I offered to hit you over the head with a baseball bat to render you unconscious for eight hours, would you really have to think over the pros and cons of it?
In a heartbeat. I already regularly stay up later than my body wants to, so that I can do the things I really need and want to do, and suffer the consequences the next day. So, there’s no reason for me not to take the opportunity to do the same thing without any detrimental side effects.
Absolutely, if my body really didn’t need it. But if there was only one such magic pill, I’d give it to a friend who has a doesn’t-sleep disorder similar to the one Marion_Wormer is talking about (hers is not FFI; no one else in the family has it that anyone knows of, and she doesn’t test positive for that specific genetic mutation). Seeing her suffer from the very real world consequences of not being able to sleep is heartbreaking. I would find the extra hours and lack of sleepiness convenient…the pill could actually restore her sanity and save her life.
Beat me to it! I first encountered that one in an old Odd Bodkins comic strip.
I loves me my dreams! I dream damn well. Full color, three-d, remarkably coherent plot lines – I’ve gotten many ideas for stories and books from my dreams!
Now, yeah, I wouldn’t mind the increase in my productive longevity. But…why the heck am I wasting time here on the SDMB, debating things with strangers? Isn’t that the moral equivalent of sleep? And how about the time I waste on computer games, or reading comic books…
This is getting close to the aphorism, “No one, at the end of their life, looks back and wishes they’d spent more time at the office.”
