Kinda sorta. Sleep paralysis with hypnogognic hallucinations is believed to occur when you enter REM sleep while you’re still awake. That is, you lose voluntary muscle control and begin dreaming, but you’re eyes are still open. Many people find them terrifying because in addition to hallucinating scary children and vicious animals like dogs or bears, you can’t make yourself move. Or breathe. You won’t stop breathing just like you don’t stop breathing when you sleep normally (apnea aside), but you can’t make yourself breathe.
Sleep paralysis along with hypnogognic hallucinations are two of the four indicators of narcolepsy (the other two are excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy). If you suffer SP and HH once in awhile, it’s not so bad. If you have these episodes 2 or three times a week, it starts to affect your health. For one thing, you’re going straight to REM sleep instead of going through the stages of sleep. Without that Delta sleep for a few nights you start getting a little punchy.
For awhile, I took a light dose of Prozac to prevent these. Now I take Xyrem. That may seem extreme to some people, but being able to work all day without the words on the computer screen changing or falling asleep driving is pure gold.
Yes, SP is most definitely a possible indicator of a sleep disorder, but FWIW, narcolepsy is NOT characterized by sudden sleep attacks. The people you see falling asleep in unusual places usually have severe obstructive apnea.
I have never had sleep paralysis as far as how i’ve seen people describe it, aside from feeling like there were people from my dreams in real life, however I have never seen anything or anyone, and as soon as I opened my eyes, nothing was there.
However, since I was a toddler I would have extremely horrible night terrors. I would feel like I was sick to my stomach, and what I would do to get it to go away is walk in a circle to wake myself up along and get my mind off of things. They would last for well over 20 minutes! In an instant, I would go from sobbing and clutching my stomach, to completely better and ready to go back to bed. I also have sleep troubles, I don’t think i’ve ever been fully energized since 7 or 8 years old. I haven’t had a sleep study, maybe I should have one to figure out what the heck is wrong with me, but it seems to me I can’t ever enter REM sleep.
But wow, sleep paralysis sounds /horrifying/. I don’t know how you can get used to that stuff!
Probability. Though many narcoleptics experience sleep paralysis, that does not mean it is probable that someone experiencing sleep paralysis has narcolepsy. Sleep paralysis occurs in 4 in 10 people. Narcolepsy occurs in 1 in 2000 people. Likewise, hypnagogic hallucinations are only rarely associated with epilepsy. What Cecil wrote is the equivalent of saying, “You feel tired lately? Could be nothing, but it sounds like you have scurvy.”
I experienced sleep paralysis once. It was interesting, because I was in a 20028 year old inn that was (supposedly) haunted. What I recall was that I went to sleep, and seemed to awake-but I could not move. I tried to scream, and I heard my voice …very faint , as if from far away. What was terrifying was that I was conscious…but could not move.
You are young, my friend - you get used to whatever there is to get used to.
IIRC, you are 15 - a time of many (horrible (just kidding)) changes. If your sleep disorders persist, you might look into a sleep analysis. I have puberty-onset insomnia - cannot get to sleep without drugs. Fun. The sleep docs did nothing, but I didn’t sign up for the whole electrodes-everywhere-now-go-to-sleep-while-we watch-and-record analysis. I’lll just keep the drugs handy, thank you.
Of course, if your disorder started about the time girls hit the per-pubescent growth spurt, you might end up joining the club.
You are most certainly getting to REM and dreaming - people who can’t will go insane and die. Yes, really.
And it is definitely only “many” narcolpetics. My dad has never experienced it. I thought he had, the last time this came up, but he set me straight. His hands and legs just often go to sleep, so he doesn’t want to wake up.
I also wonder if the hallucinations are inherently scary, or if it’s because you are scared at the time. Dreams seem to correspond to your current emotional conditions.
That said, I’m not sure how easy it would be to experience this and not be at least somewhat frightened, even if you know what it is. The initial response to not being able to move at all may be instinctual, your body ramping up to try and get you to move.
You cut off my parallel, and missed my point entirely. The part you cut out was "What Cecil wrote is the equivalent of saying, “You feel tired lately? Could be nothing, but it sounds like you have scurvy.” I bolded that so you could catch it the second time.
What Cecil did is forget Occam’s Razor. That’s why I don’t trust him. He hand waved over the most likely explanation (which I think would have been more interesting anyway) in order to write about something that was much, much less likely. Maybe calling him “wrong” is a bit harsh, but he sure wasn’t fighting ignorance there.
Addendum to the above, in Cecils’s single sentence handwave, he said 15-20 %. It’s not. It’s 40. I linked to that.
“Cecil Adams” is just an amusing columnist at a newspaper. For the vast majority of the columns, he doesn’t do enough research and just tries to fill paragraphs.
I could maybe look some up, but we are getting way off topic, here. This is supposed to be a MPSIMS thread about peoples experiences - not a thread about Cecil Adams. I think I’m probably to blame for the hijack, but I don’t want it to be a highjack, so let’s just stop it here.
So start a new thread about the ways in which Cecil is wrong (as you said, in “the vast majority of the columns”). Otherwise, what you’re doing is asserting that it’s O.K. for you to make inflammatory off-topic remarks, but it’s wrong for anyway to ask you to back up those statements.
I don’t want to start a new thread because I haven’t read his column in years due to criticisms already stated. If you want to pit me over this you can, otherwise, let’s move on.