Case Study of Sleep Deprivation and its Effects

So, sleeping, huh. Sleeping's weird, ain't it? Yeah man, ain't that the truth. I haven't slept in months and I'm feeling totally fresh. Every day I feel more and more less energized and find myself less and less paying more and more attention in class. Which is why I advocate not sleeping. You're saying to yourself, "Well, come on, Sean. That's craziness you're talking. No sleep? No one can live off of no sleep. Except for zombies, because they're un-dead."

Well, I don't believe that's true. You can easily go months with experiencing the sweet release of slumberland. Sure, the first week is pretty tough. You're body tries to trick you into sleeping. Blinking seems like heaven. You find yourself staring into the infinite void that is your bedroom wall etc. But once you get past, the headaches, the bodyaches, eyeaches, and finally the mindaches (which, by the way, are not same thing as headaches. Headaches are like pounding pulses in your brain. Mindaches are more like jagged shards of ideas that attempt to drown your brain in the sea of the absurd, but that's all very tangential, which is only the slope of this blog at one point), you feel this sense of renewal. Not renewal like you would feel if you took the long coma-style nap that you start hoping and praying for, but renewal in the sense that everything around you seems so amazing that you start to actually believe you're dreaming.

And that's when the pacing starts. First, you pace to stay awake. And then it becomes involuntary. You stare down at the ground, as if you staring at the same stretch of carpet for hours on end will suddenly lead to you stumbling on a long-forgotten Rolex that you failed to notice the last twenty thousands times you passed by the gap in between your computer desk and dresser.

Obviously the lack of eyerest (yes, a real scientific term, since I'm a scientist within the scope of this blog) will lead to your loss of spatial recognition (sounds positively sci-fi, don't it?). You stumble over and over again on uneven sidewalk (chronic feetdragging compounds this). You walk into walls of buildings and hit your funnybone on stray desks. Don't worry, noone else is onto you yet. They just think you're clumsy. Hell, those wounds are almost endearing.

Plus, the girls start noticing the deep bags under your eyes. Hey man, that shows you got the depth of a poet mixed with the internal turmoil of a struggling musician.

Then you float through the boring parts of the day, not entirely sure of how exactly you got from class to your room, since you have no recollection of the journey. But the wounds on your elbow tell of a treacherous journey (arithmetic: you + curb = face + sidewalk).

Don't let the seizures surprise you. Its just your selfish body trying to get back at you. The key is to predicting them before they happen. First, you enter a semi-dream like state. Let's see, how do we describe this objectively. It's like time slows down, but everyone else voices get higher in pitch. Think "The Matrix" without the stunts and Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus replaced with Alvin, Theodore, and that other tall nerdy chipmunk. Resist the urge to scream when you notice their laughs resemble "death giggles" (yes, another intellectual term, keep up).

I personally own 4 helmets, I would let you borrow one, but with the shape you're in by this point, you'd probably just leave it somewhere or get it dirty with blood. Plus, I'm uncaring. I'm an Aries, didn't you know? That makes me self-centered et al. (I read the astronomy section in the paper often, don't get behind, its important work).

And that's when your taste in music goes out the effin window. You start preferring the Stones to the Beatles, and this my friends, is the point that we shall label "of No Return" (easy math: Exile on Main Street != Revolver (side note to the side note: when placed in front of an equal sign, ! means "does not equal", as opposed to when placed after a sentence, which means "I have no sense of restraint" or "I underestimate people's understanding of context")). You now have the ability to speak in tongues as well. Which will come in handy if your lifegoal is to be a Pentacostal minister, which, if it is, means you might as well by those tongs for handling the snakes. I have a plethora of snake tongs. But with the shape your in...also the moon is lined up with Mars, which every discerning astronomer knows is the omen of all omens for us Aries.

So now we wait for your impending collapse into early dementia. Oh, there it is, coming 'round that corner. Your parents are worried, your friends avert their eyes as you pass them floating on your magic carpet of post-sleep euphoria. The snakes haven't eaten in months. Teachers complain about you knocking every goddamn test-tube over every day.

So the man who wear all white show up while you're enjoying your daily lunch of the crust off your lips. Who knew the sleep-deprived were so vulnerable to oversized butterfly nets? Well, they did. And they exploited that advantage.

As the drug cocktail numbs you, and you disappear into the gates of Slumberland, you begin crying. You were really looking forward to that piece of lip crust.

Such waste.