Polyphasic Sleep: The End and The Why

Hello, audience. Last time we spoke, I was feeling pretty enthusiastic about this whole experiment and its potential for success. And a few days ago, that was the case. But in the last two days, a few things have come up that have changed my decision to remain on polyphasic sleep.


Thursday went pretty well, and Friday was okay too, until I left my phone at my Raven's house. She lost her keys a few weeks ago, and she didn't have the house key that day because her roommate was coming home late, while Raven was going to be at work the whole night and therefore didn't need the keys. This meant that my phone was going to be stuck at her house till at least the next day and maybe longer. I can live without my phone, something I've done for months at a time before. I'm not addicted to the social interaction. The problem was, without my phone, I had no alarm system to make sure I woke up on time, in case my brain failed to wake me before the alarm like it has been doing of late.


I ended up staying over at Poncho's boyfriend's house so that I could have someone around to wake me up if I accidentally overslept. The midnight nap was perfect, and I actually woke up exactly 25 minutes after I laid down to sleep, no alarm needed. For the 6am nap, I set an alarm on the computer that would ring loudly to wake me up if I overslept. Unfortunately, it didn't repeat, and I didn't hear it when it did go off, and my brain didn't wake me up either. So I ended up sleeping for about an hour before waking. It continued downhill from there, as I overslept at noon and 6 as well. After the 6 nap, I had become incredibly drowsy, completely unable to keep my eyes open for most of an hour, and then lacking the energy to want to move for the time after that.


The drowsiness was rooted in sleep inertia, which is the feeling of wanting to go back to sleep if woken mid-cycle. You feel tired and grumpy and generally irritable about everything, something scientists have actually proven during lab testing. Subjects woken during REM felt refreshed and optimistic, while subjects woken during other phases woke feeling irritable, and reflected that with generally negative responses when faced with a fill-in-the-blank word exercise immediately after waking. The only way to avoid this is to wake up during the REM cycle itself or the natural waking state at the end of an REM cycle.

Me, perpetually, when I don't have enough sleep.

First in my decision to end the experiment here was the fact that I would have to be slave to some safety net, else I oversleep and set myself into a self-destructive pattern thereafter because of drowsiness and irritability. I was without my phone for 24 hours and the entire set of progress I made thus far fell apart in no time. But, as I said, this was not the only deciding factor.


My appetite has continued to be completely insatiable, and I am never in a place where I can eat to fullness at every meal. This results in either constant or near constant hunger, and then feelings of being light-headed and weak due to lack of nutrition and proper sustenance. A major problem, because it means that I must always have a full, healthy meal at hand, which is not always going to be possible. And, in the future, it would mean my budget for food would have to be massive in order to accommodate my food intake, which is a very undesirable end.


Third, and the most selfish of the reasons to call this experiment done, was the major changes to diet I've been having to make. Not only do I have to eat more food at strictly regular intervals, I had to eat healthier at every meal to maintain good nutrition. Lots of fruits and veggies constantly, less greasy or fatty foods, and more fresh prepared meals. All of which are not easy to keep at hand all the time unless you have a majorly inflated food budget, mentioned before. Alongside that is the necessity to drop caffeine or high sugar intake in all forms. No soda, no energy drinks, no coffee, not even most teas. I was limited to water, juice, and milk, or nothing at all. This limitation was the one that really caught me, as I really enjoy drinking coffee, teas, energy drinks, and sodas, and I was not about to convert to diet soda to compromise.


I will die before I drink diet soda instead of regular soda or coffee. 


I want you to hear that sentence in your head in the most serious tone of voice you can imagine coming from my mouth. Or, those of you who haven't met me in person, them most serious tone of voice you can attribute to the voice you have given me in your imaginations. I love coffee more than almost anything else I ingest. I love Mountain Dew in all of its flavors, and as proof, I actually co-founded a cult formed around the worship of its holy citrus-based deliciousness. And Red Bull flows in my veins, not blood.


So, at the end of everything, I really did enjoy the extra hours I gained during polyphasic sleep. I was achieving success in the adaptation, and at the end of only five days I was starting to wake naturally at the end of my cycles. I was not drowsy except for the occasions on which I slept too long or had to push a nap back so I could fall asleep properly. Polyphasic sleep worked for me, and my experiment was successful overall. But at a high cost to my personal choices. One of the blogs I read, and probably the greatest source of hope for polyphasic sleepers, was actually written by a person who had been a practicing vegan for many years before he began the Uberman sleep cycle, so his diet was already perfect for the kind of restrictions polyphasic sleep demands. I, however, am not a vegan and wouldn't ever consider the change.


I'm an egoist at heart, and my decisions are always dictated by what I want in the end. In this case, I want to drink soda, coffee, and energy drinks, and want to keep my diet the way it is, more than I want to pursue the extra hours of sleep everyday. And that's all that really matters. As happy as I was with all that time on my hands, I wouldn't really be happy if I had to give up some of the things I enjoy most in life. Call me hedonistic, but  I have chosen personal pleasures over discipline and a more effective method of time management. I could swear by Ayn Rand's Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged, and I've just decided that I'm going to blog about how much I love those works and her egoist philosophy very soon, as they form a large portion of my own core philosophy and worldview.

Somewhere deep down inside, I am Hedonism Bot.

There you have it, audience. Polyphasic sleep does indeed have its benefits, but only if you are willing to discipline yourself so far as to make it work. And I know that there are many out there dedicated enough to make it work. As disciplined as I would like to live, I really enjoy being chaotic neutral more. I could never be a lawful alignment, as all of the restrictions and guidelines I would be submitting myself to would kill the essence of what I really was. At the end of the day, I'm a lazy, selfish, egotistic, and arrogant soul, and you can be damn sure I'm happy that way. I wasn't going to be myself if I sacrificed my favorite things to get some extra time to do things I wanted, and therefore, I chose to stop trying.


So, till next time my dear audience, don't settle for what you've got if you think there's something better waiting for you, and don't compromise what makes you truly happy for something you think will make your life better. Stay true to yourself and who it is you really want to be, not who you think you should be. End of story.

"...What else am I supposed to stand on?"