On the dread of night

I'm going to write about something very personal, something I've shared with 3 people (who aren't doctors) on this Earth. I don't know why I'm suddenly going to expose something deeply personal not only to friends and casual acquaintances, but to the Internet at large. Maybe it's time. In any event, here goes.

I suffer from night terrors.

What are night terrors? Let us check Wikipedia.

A night terror, also known as a sleep terror or pavor nocturnus, is a parasomnia disorder that predominantly affects children, causing feelings of terror or dread. Night terrors should not be confused with nightmares, which are bad dreams that cause the feeling of horror or fear.

Night terrors are biologically distinct from dreams. Night terrors occur within 30 minutes to 1 hour after sleep, well before the REM cycle where dreams occur.

In my case, I can pinpoint the time when they started. It was in graduate school, though surprisingly not from graduate school. No, they are the result of the bat infestation I had in my second apartment. If any folks from graduate school are reading this, you may remember the episode at best as a crazy hijink, or at worst as a weird episode. Little did you know it had larger implications in my life. Over the course of six months, I discovered 5 bats in my apartment on separate occasions. I mean IN my apartment, not in the attic, though that's where they came from. I could hear them, like mice. We never found out where exactly they got in. The climax of the situation occurred when I woke up at 2 AM to find a bat circling the ceiling of my bedroom. It scared the shit out of me. Ever since then I have had a deep-seated phobia of bats. I can't watch one fly without having a panic attack, and even thinking about them now has my skin crawling.

Again, some people found the situation odd, some even envious because they thought it was cool. They didn't know what the situation did to me. After those incidents, I slept in my recliner in the living room with all the lights on, with the TV on, out of fear. For 6 months. After 6 months I managed to turn the lights out and turn the TV off, but still slept in the recliner. That lasted another 6 months. After that I managed to retrain myself to sleep lying horizontally on my futon in the living room. I say retrain because at the start just lying down on the couch would send me into a panic attack. That's how I slept the rest of my time in graduate school (about a year), sleeping on my futon in the living room. I never could go back to sleep in either of my bedrooms. The door to my back bedroom, where the flying incident occurred, was closed for about 2 years, I never went in that room. It effectively closed off a portion of my wardrobe that was in that closet that I couldn't get into. The night terrors started at shortly after the bats.

What else contributes to night terrors?

These night terrors can occur each night if the sufferer does not eat a proper diet, get the appropriate amount or quality of sleep (eg. Sleep apnea), is enduring stressful events in their life or if they remain untreated. In addition to night terrors, some adult night terror sufferers have many of the characteristics of depressed individuals including inhibition of aggression,[4] self-directed anger,[4] passivity,[5] anxiety, impaired memory,[6] and the ability to ignore pain.

Pretty much reads as a laundry list of my life, doesn't it.

What are night terrors like? I can only really describe what they are like to me. I go to bed. After tossing and turning anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours (I also have insomnia, as well as restless sleep and probably apnea), I manage to actually fall asleep. 30 minutes later I wake myself up screaming. And I don't mean yelling; I mean screaming at the absolute top of my lungs. I am lucky to have a well-insulated apartment because the downstairs neighbors have yet to complain. Most people that have heard of night terrors know about the screaming. What people don't get is why the screaming exists. It is because I wake in absolute...mortal...terror. And I'm not talking about the terror of a really scary movie, or the terror of narrowly missing a car crash. I wake up in the absolute highest fear that I am going to die that instant. It is the highest level of fear I have ever experienced. I wake up screaming, my heart racing, sometimes sweating, in dread that I am going to die the next second.

This happens to me every night.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, for a few years there my night terrors were under control with the use of medication. In fact, that was the original reason I started using antidepressants (first Prozac, then Lexapro). The fact that these drugs also helped fight my depression and anxiety were just happy byproducts, though they did not come without their price. Namely, the side effects killed my sex life, which was one of the (many) reasons my relationship failed. Nonetheless, the drugs worked. Instead of having night terrors every night, I would get them once every 6 months.

A few months back my fellowship ran out and my job status changed. I became an actual employee again, and I got real benefits again. Which is a good thing. Unfortunately, with the change in insurance I have to switch doctors. Which actually isn't a bad thing because I absolutely hated the pretentious fucking prick I was seeing at the health center, and now I get to see a real doctor. The unfortunate part is that to get into the good clinic in town takes time. My introductory appoint is scheduled for August 23. Because of this, I am off my medication. Not just my antidepressants, but my blood sugar medication as well. The effects of the antidepressants are gone, going through the withdrawal symptoms were fun, let me tell you. Plus, after being dumped by the woman I thought I was going to marry, the depression has come down on me like a hammer.

The night terrors have come back. Every night.

I guess I am writing this because I hate it. And I hate you. I can't tell you how many people, including my ex, would tell me they could just lie down and within 5 minutes be asleep, and then wake up in the morning feeling great. For them, going to sleep is a reward. For me, it is going to war. I can take hours to actually fall asleep, then soon afterward wake up feeling like my life is ending. After calming down I manage to fall asleep again, but wake up 2-10 times a night to go to the bathroom (a symptom of the diabetes). My ex would drink coffee before going to bed. If I drink anything within 4 hours of bed I'll be up all night pissing. Sometime around 6 in the morning, after my cat has woken me up, I'll actually be able to fall asleep and get RESTFUL sleep. This is why I sleep to 11 every day, because it is only after 6 AM that I can get restful sleep. I may sleep 9 hours a night, but only 4 or of 5 of it counts. And every morning I wake up feeling like someone has spent the night beating me with a bag of hammers.

Sleep is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be pleasurable. It's such a simple goddamn thing, like breathing or eating it's something that everyone does every fucking day. But every part of it fails for me. It'd be like someone having to work like a maniac at breathing, or beating their heart. It's for this reason I hate going to sleep each night, because it's not sleep, it's war. And you know what? It's not fair. It's not fair I have to go through this. It's not fair that I am denied a basic human function. And I'm pissed off. And that's what a blog is for. A placed to put your pissed off. So here it is, for all the Internet to see. It's here on the virtual shelf. I don't sleep, and I'm pissed off.