So, I have a really interesting problem.<\/p>\n
Everyone in the external world.. Oops, not everyone, but a majority of people.. caution me repeatedly about sleep deprivation and how much damage it will do to me \/ my life \/ etc. About half the times that I have experimented with sleep deprivation – either because of the effects of drugs I was using, or because of a concious choice to go down that road.. I have ended up in a psych hospital.<\/p>\n
Now that I have heard the conditions for why one would end up in a psych hospital, I know that in fact for most of my life I have qualified for one of the conditions. “A danger to myself”. I had a really bad habit. I participated actively in my own ego-destruction because I didn’t want my ego to get too large, because I found people with excessive egos to be annoying.<\/p>\n
At this point, I’m no longer participating that way. I believe that I’m sane enough and a good enough judge of myself that I do not need to insult myself \/ tell myself that various friends don’t want to spend time with me \/ tell myself that people who have never given any evidence of hating me hate me \/ doubt people who have shown over time to be trustworthy. My mind is a much quieter place since I made the irrevocable decision not to hurt myself in this way any more.<\/p>\n
It astonishes me how easy this change was. Several of the previous changes that I have made in myself have been very difficult – ceasing using drugs, making the irrevocable decision to not think about or talk about suicide any more. (I did so recently despite my best inclinations on the matter, and I ended up regretting it)<\/p>\n
But sleep deprivation is complicated. I’ve seen amazing things, heard amazing things, and seen measurable growth in my dream life and my inner life every time I engaged in it. On the other hand, there’s no doubt that there is some period after 72-ish hours where my decision-making skills become poor, my ability to navigate is seriously diminished, and in general I’m not tracking as well as I normally do. However, I can’t shake the feeling – even though no one I’ve talked to has agreed with this – that there is some plateau hanging out after 100-ish hours at which I will return to my usual level of competency and just, well, no longer need sleep.<\/p>\n
One of the possible ramifications of being lost in plato’s cave – which I will readily admit that I am – I have no idea how much of the reality I experience is internally generated (“the map”) vs how much is externally generated (“the territory”). To put it another way, I’m pretty sure that a fair amount of what I experience is at least somewhat under my control, but it’s not under my *conscious* control. <\/p>\n
To add to the fun, I am not at all whether my subconscious mind is pro me getting the experiences I want, or against. It seems pretty clear that whatever part of my mind that is responsible for creating my dreams has a history of not liking the part of my mind that is experiencing those dreams as subjective reality, since the dreams that I have are often nightmares. I’m not sure what to take from the fact that most of these nightmares are about unsolvable problems.. I recently had a dream in which people were slamming cinderblocks against my head. One advantage of not sleeping is not having to deal with the dreams I have when I sleep. I have a few good dreams.. and a much higher percentage than I did a year ago, so I see improvement, and improvement is a good thing..<\/p>\n
Anyway, back to the debate.<\/p>\n
Here are some of the pros and cons:<\/p>\n
Pro: Intense and very good visual experiences (including starbursts, pretty lights, hallucinating the muppets)
\n Permanent improvement in my ability to visualize
\n Temporary improvement in kinesthetic abilities i.e. skating, dancing, playing the keys
\n Temporary periods of fearlessness which enable me to investigate the folly of most fear
\n Permanent improvement in number of nightmares I experience
\n Permanent improvement in my ability to think outside the box<\/p>\n
Con: Risk of harm? I haven’t yet been harmed by any of my adventures in sleep-dep land but large numbers of people keep telling me this is luck and could change at any time
\n Risk of incarceration (Mental hospital or jail, it’s basically the same animal)
\n Lowered considerably by my learning that mental hospitals do not in fact help me get better (although they can be fun) and understanding my legal rights in WA regarding
\n being placed in such places for more than 72 hours
\n Poor decision-making skills
\n Risk of losing friends (?)
\n Frightens my friends (:()
\n Do not always correctly respect other people’s bounderies. <--- BUG, must fix\n \nBasically, when I look at the cons, what I'm saying is that it's high risk behavior. Apparently considerably higher risk than, for example, taking a hit of acid. On the other hand, I've never found drugs to be anywhere near as mind-expanding as not sleeping. \n\nIf this does turn out to be a addictive behavior with only bad effects, or with more bad effects than good ones, I expect I can get free of it using the same process that got me free of my other addictions.\n\nThere is also the question of what would happen if I didn't sleep but also used a antipsychotic or other psych med to help compensate for whatever issues I have. There are people who claim that sleep deprivation will cause death, but then, you can find people who claim that just about anything will cause death, and thus far I haven't died, not even once. \ud83d\ude09 [In point of fact, if quantum immortality is true, I've died many, many times and just not experienced that death because as the subjective observer, I can never die]\n\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, I have a really interesting problem. Everyone in the external world.. Oops, not everyone, but a majority of people.. caution me repeatedly about sleep deprivation and how much damage it will do to me \/ my life \/ etc. About half the times that I have experimented with sleep deprivation – either because of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2235,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234\/revisions\/2235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}