On some days i don’t get enough sleep. I find that on those days around 4pm or so if i lie down and close my eyes i don’t fall asleep but my mind wanders and i almost start hallucinating. My thoughts become alot more vivid and rambling while outside stimuli doesn’t register nearly as well. However i am not asleep, i can come out of this state anytime i want. After an hour or so of this i am no longer tired.
It was my understanding that when you go to sleep you enter Delta brainwaves, which are next to impossible to obtain when you are awake and which i heard are a sign of mental illness if you have them while awake, so i don’t get whats going on with me. Maybe im only having theta waves but when i look at the description for theta, that doesn’t describe it. theta seems to be about daydreaming, this is something different. This is like being asleep but knowing it and not (completely) shutting down external stimuli.
I’m of no help in answering the scientific part of your query, but as for whether or not it’s a normal experience, I can say that I find myself doing the same thing a lot. Or at least something that seems to match your description fairly well.
Often, when I haven’t gotten enough sleep lately, I’ll find myself drifting off mentally, sometimes in the middle of a task. My train of thoughts turns into an extremely-effed-up-authobahn of thoughts, with different notions, metaphors and ideas zooming around and morphing into one another. A simple thought that is pertinent to my present situation will evolve and re-evolve and re-re-re-re-re-evolve until it’s turned into something else entirely, often totally unexplainable once I come to, as truly bizarre dreams often are. Then I’ll “wake up” and wonder how the hell I ended up thinking about that. This whole time, though, I remain at least partially aware of external stimuli.
Does this come close to what you are talking about? I have always been curious about this, and wonder how often it happens to others, why it happens, if there’s a technical term for it etc etc.
I think I can confidently state that this is completely normal, as it happens to me too. On the other hand, maybe we ARE all nut cases, and this is so far the only exterior manifestation of it that we are aware of.
I quite often find myself in a similar state to those described: with very little control over my thought processes, (although sometimes the weird perambulations of my mind will astonish me enough for me to realize that I am not really awake); no physical sensation in my body, even though I may be lying/sitting at an awkward angle; an awareness of my surroundings, and of external happenings (doors opening, people standing over me saying: “Yes, she’s asleep”, etc.) coupled with a complete inability to physically react to them.
For years I had a long train commute, and I could make myself automatically enter this state as soon as I sat down in my seat, and remain fully aware of where I was, which station the train was stopping at, and when I would need to wake myself up. I only once ever fell into such a deep sleep that the other passengers had to wake me up.
I sometimes get this. But only as I’m drifting to or out of sleep. I’ve never been able to control or willfully prolong it. I either end up falling completely asleep, or waking myself up.
It’s a pity, too. My creativity always seems to get a boost around this period. (At least, judging by what I can remember to write down later.)
I’ve had these things happen to me when I was at work or on the bus, but those cases involved drugs like vicodin or ativan. (Don’t worry, I rarely use the stuff and then only when medically necessary.) In those cases I was able to be aware that I was drifting off and to allow it to last for no more than about 15 seconds each time.
Pointless aside:
Last night I had an odd dream about an Iraqi weapon of mass destruction, which was a killer tree frog. (Really) Suddenly I was awake, or half awake, and I knew that I was in my bed in my room. Trouble was, so was the tree frog. I tried to get my hand on it to squish it, yelled something, and heard my birds shriek (they were asleep); then I heard large loud footsteps approaching and I fully woke up.
There was no one there, but I did manage to smash the tree frog before I awoke.