How I Learned To Live With DSPS

In: Lifestyle|Psychology By: Brian Armstrong

13 Jun 2009

I don’t do posts about my personal life that often, but I thought this one might help some people.

DSPS is a sleeping disorder (Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome) and while I only found out it had a name years later, I started experiencing it around the time I entered high school (13 years old).

Here is a simple description of it:

The major feature of these disorders is a misalignment between the patient’s sleep pattern and the sleep pattern that is desired or regarded as the societal norm…. In most circadian rhythm sleep disorders, the underlying problem is that the patient cannot sleep when sleep is desired, needed or expected.

The symptoms are:

Regardless of how sleep deprived you are, you are unable to fall asleep until very late
Once you do fall asleep you can sleep for a normal amount of time, this differentiates it from other sleep disorders like insomnia
There is a relatively severe to absolute inability to advance the sleep phase to earlier hours

I first started noticing this problem around the time I entered high school. I’d have to wake up fairly early (7am?) for school every day and of course it was difficult. This in itself was not remarkable. What was remarkable was that I would be unable to fall asleep before 2 or 3am any night, even after five days of little sleep.

So you can imagine Monday goes by on 4 hours of sleep. You aren’t feeling great. You should be tired the next night right? Nope…I would be exhausted all day, but as 9PM started to roll around I’d finally wake up for the day and start to get my best work done. Hours would just fly by like nothing. Even at 2 or 3 AM I was wide awake and could have easily kept going. But I knew I had to wake up in 4 hours and would force myself to go to bed.

The second day goes by on 4 hours of sleep. You feel even worse. Surely, tonight your body should be wanting to catch up on sleep right? Nope…same problem (you’re exhausted all day but start to wake up at night). Even when I would “go to bed” at 10 or 11PM to try and catch up, I would literally lie there awake in bed for hours and hours (until about 3AM) bored out of my mind.

The entire week goes by like this, each day getting worse and worse (in the morning and throughout the day) as you are in permanent jet lag, yet you can’t fall asleep any earlier.

The best way I can describe it is if you’ve ever had to wake up in the middle of the night and do something in a deep sleep. It’s like if you suddenly had to start getting up for work every day at 1AM.

I was on an entirely different schedule than the rest of the world, and couldn’t adjust no matter how hard I tried.

The Worst Part About It: People’s Perceptions

By far the worst part of DSPS is the societal stigma around it. Obviously, most people (even doctors) have never heard of it. It only affects 0.17% of the population. And most people when you tell them about it think it’s bullshit or that you’re lazy/making excuses.

“It’s just a habit you have to get into.”

“I find exercise/light reading helps me.”

“You just have to give up caffeine.”

Yes, I tried all these things and all of them help me fall asleep faster: at 3AM. That’s just what my body considers it’s normal bed time.

It can be frustrating at times because people make suggestions about it that come across as patronizing. Sometimes you just want to scream “duh! this has been messing with my life every day for the last 10 years, don’t you think I would have tried not drinking caffeine and saved myself the trouble 10 years ago!!!”

But obviously, you can’t blame other people. If I was in their shoes I probably wouldn’t believe it either. People invent all sorts of limitations which are entirely mental.

After reading every piece of literature I could find and trying dozens of treatments to fix it over the last 10 years, I’m fairly convinced that it is a genetic predisposition for me though and not psychosomatic (possibly still curable but I haven’t found anything reliable yet).

Perhaps the worst offenders in the “people’s perceptions” category for me was my parents. Throughout high school (and partially even to this day, I’m not really sure) they did not believe it or fully understand it.

Obviously, after a school week of sleeping four hours per night (and falling asleep again Friday night at 3AM) my body was DESPERATE to sleep a full 8-12 hours on the weekend till noon or later. My parents weren’t happy about this and believed it was a sign of laziness. They would play all sorts of games to get me up on time (I was not amused – again, imagine being woken up at the equivalent of 1AM after a week of sleep deprivation – I believe the North Koreans use similar tactics in labor camps! :).

To their credit, I know they only wanted the best for me, and they didn’t know. DSPS wasn’t even formally recognized as a sleeping disorder until 1981, a few years before I was born, so they had no way of knowing.

Still, it was tough.

A World Designed Without You In Mind

For a long time, I felt like one of those 7 foot basketball players where doorways and airplanes seats never fit you. The world was just not designed for me.

Teachers in high school would routinely harass me for not being alert. I remember actually having hallucinations (the medical term for this is a microsleep) while sitting in class fairly often – a common symptom of extreme sleep deprivation. I didn’t know this wasn’t normal. I figured everyone just “spaces out” sometimes. It’s a really bizarre feeling to have your eyes open while dreaming. You are frozen, almost paralyzed, for 10 seconds or so in a trance until you jerk back suddenly to reality.

College was better, I was able to schedule many of my classes in the afternoon. However, not all of them. Early morning exams were difficult. There is well documented evidence about the negative effects of sleep deprivation, namely:

Mental acuity decreases significantly
Healing – a 2007 study showed a 20% decrease in white blood cell count in sleep deprived rats as compared to a control group
A variety of accidents including the Exxon Valdez spill and Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown have been linked to sleep deprived workers

I remember one time in college I went to the gym (it was a small weight room and nobody else was there). I was laying on the incline bench, and put down a set of weights. A moment later I woke up and looked at my watch. An hour and a half had gone by. I had fallen asleep in the middle of the gym without even knowing it.

There were other incidents as well. In the mornings driving to school I would sometimes fall asleep at stop lights. When it turned green people would honk behind me and I’d wake back up. Obviously not the safest way to drive.

Again, all I can compare it to is imagine having to wake up at 1am to take an exam. You probably wouldn’t do quite as well, right?

This is probably what bothers me about it the most: I feel like I was cheated out of a lot of learning especially in high school (and partially in college). I mean, everything considered I still did pretty well, but if that’s how I did being under under extreme sleep deprivation EVERY DAY, just imagine how much I could have accomplished fully rested! Imagine the energy, connections, opportunities, clubs, etc. Ah well…

Discovering I Wasn’t The Only One

Years later (it was toward the end of college) I had become somewhat of a student on sleep disorders during my free time. I had read extensively on it and tried a number of experiments to try and correct it (including polyphasic sleeping, expensive light therapy devices which worked but didn’t have a long term effect, chronotherapy, and others).

One day I came across this wikipedia article on DSPS and I was absolutely STUNNED. It felt like it was describing me perfectly and as I read it, I thought “my God, someone else actually knows about this and has it…and there is a name for it”. It sounds silly but I think the most important thing I realized was that I WASN’T CRAZY.

My entire life up to that point I had always wondered if people were right, maybe I was just lazy or kidding myself. Finding this article at least brought some validity to my own experiences, and let me know there were people out their actively researching it.

Thank God for the internet. It allowed me to self diagnose what would have easily gone unrecognized by a dozen doctors due to it’s obscurity (DSPS is frequently mis-diagnosed as insomnia or depression, often involving the prescription of psychoactive drugs – thankfully that didn’t happen).

Despite my excitement over the article, I was somewhat disheartened to learn that even with the best treatments available today (light therapy, melatonin, etc) it is still largely incurable with 90% of patients seeing a relapse within 1 year. At least I knew I wasn’t alone.

Update 1: A new theory I have on this is that light from staring at a computer monitor can worsen this or even be the main cause of DSPS. It is essentially light therapy, but at the wrong time. Anecdotally, lots of computer scientists I know seem to have delayed sleep schedules, but I don’t have any hard evidence of this so it remains just a theory. If you have any experience with it let me know in the comments.

Update 2: I sometimes take melatonin now to fall asleep earlier and reset my sleep cycle if it gets too out of wack. A 3mg dose is somewhat effective, 6mg more so. I’m afraid of taking it on a regular basis and building tolerance to it though so I use it only rarely.

Adapting To Life

I’ve had to admit lately that a big part of the reason I’m an entrepreneur is that I have DSPS. It allows me to keep any hours I want, which still means sleeping at 3am (but I actually get to sleep as late as I want now – the full 7-9 hours I need). With this setup I am able to function 100% normally as a productive adult, and I’m very thankful for that.

My brief stint in corporate America was not easy (once again under constant sleep deprivation unlike in college where it was about half and half). It certainly wasn’t the only factor in my decision to break free (I happen to really appreciate having complete freedom for example, and I think it’s a better way to build wealth) but it certainly affected my decision.

So these days, having DSPS is NOT much of a handicap and the past is….well, the past. You can’t change it so no use worring about it.

It still affects me in small ways…for example I never schedule early flights and don’t attend meetings before noon if it can at all be avoided. I absolutely despise alarm clocks and consider it a matter of personal pride that I don’t own one and only ever use one (my cell phone) a few times a year for special events.

The occasional one day of sleep deprivation is manageable for special events where I need to get up early. Its the multiple days in a row that are really bad and cause the microsleeps (hallucinations), so those are luckily a thing of the past.

So that’s it. I’ll just close by saying that this post is not a “poor me” cry for help. On the contrary, if this is the worst genetic disorder life has to throw at me I’m home free – I got an easy one and it barely affects me at all today. Also, for some people it apparently fades out later in life. Older people naturally sleep less, so it may (or may not) go away on it’s own.

If you have any sort of similar health problem read the next paragraph:

Lots of people take a negative attitude toward these things and say “great, 0.17% of the population gets this and of course I’M the one to get it!” But that’s bullshit, there are tons of diseases/disorders you probably have a 0.17% of getting, and adding them all up means you have a pretty good chance of having SOMETHING if not lots of them. DSPS is much better than a lot of problems I can think of having, and I feel EXTREMELY lucky to have been born with all the other advantages I have in life. I’ve got zero room for whining on something like this.

But I thought I’d post it out there for a few reasons:

A lot of entrepreneurs I’ve met seem to have this, and don’t know they have it. They might feel like I did (like something is wrong with them) and this will help them to understand it. And…
So that if you ever invite me to a morning meeting, you’ll understand when I don’t show up… :)

Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong

Share and Enjoy:

Tags: Psychology

128 Responses

kiwi_girl

June 15th, 2010 at 3:02 am

I am from New Zealand – we can only get it here via Doctors Prescription – but there is a type of Cherry Juice you can buy at health stores that supplies a small amount of natural melatonin in it. I did notice taking the melatonin pills helped me to drift off to sleep a bit faster – it just increased that sleepy feeling a bit more and I am one of those people who is not easily affected by pills or things… all the best Brian :) hope it is helping you!

Alex

June 20th, 2010 at 12:29 pm

Great blog, just found out about DSPS tonight and it sounds like exactly whats been wrong with me for the last 10 years. I was hesitant to go to a sleep specialists because I couldn’t find a sleep disorder that described my symptoms and my psychiatrist simply diagnosed me with insomnia and gave me Ambien, Lunesta, and Xantax which helped relax me but did not help me sleep. Meltatonin has worked with varying degrees of success but mostly it just relaxes me as well, even at high doses. Found a clinical psychologist in my area who treats DSPS and can’t wait to go. I’ll follow up to share how treatment goes.

Brian Armstrong

June 23rd, 2010 at 5:07 am

Glad you found the site Alex!

kiwi_girl

July 13th, 2010 at 10:34 pm

I would be very interested in the results so keep us posted!

Michelle

July 6th, 2010 at 11:06 am

Wow!

I had the same reaction when I read the Wiki page just an hour ago. It described me perfectly. My mother used to shake me to get me out of bed for grade school. I dealt with college in the same manner as you.

Fortunately for me, the culture with software developers is often different than it is with a lot of the “real world” and allows them to come in later and work later.

It’s rough. Coming in late is usually not the path to success and promotions. I’ve been using three alarm clocks – including a Clocky (the alarm clock on wheels that runs and hides if you push snooze).

Adapting to a normal sleep schedule is possible for me – but very difficult. I go off a normal schedule at the drop of a hat.

When I sleep the way I want to sleep, I fall asleep easily, sleep for exactly eight hours, and my sleep is uninterrupted.

It’s about 6 am right now and the only reason I’m awake is because I’m in the middle of a fairly unsuccessful chronotherapy attempt. (I learned that term only just now. I thought I’d invented it.)

I’ve wondered too : “Maybe I’m just lazy?”.

I’m not lazy. I’m not depressed.

I found your page by typing “DSPS sleep bullshit” into Google because although I instantly diagnosed myself when I read the Wiki page, I was fairly skeptical about how this is perceived in the world. After all, I’ve been dealing with it for my entire life and I didn’t know it had a name.

It’s great to know I’m not alone.

I, too, am beginning my life as an entrepreneur and for the same reasons. I have two choices:

1. force myself onto a normal schedule and live with my three alarm clocks and suffer.

2. sleep when it makes sense, get eight hours, and don’t schedule anything for the morning

I agree with you completely on, “worst genetic disorder life has to throw at me I’m home free”.

Thank for your post! Thanks to you and the Wiki page, I have confirmation that I’m not just being lazy. That’s incredibly important to me, regardless of whether I pick #1 or #2.

www.ManuelZeh.de

July 11th, 2010 at 2:18 pm

Check this out all you fellow night owls ;)

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200911/intelligence-the-evolution-night-owls

Brian Armstrong

July 13th, 2010 at 6:01 pm

I totally don’t understand their explanation but I like the implication :) Nice find!

kiwi_girl

July 13th, 2010 at 10:40 pm

It is interesting for me to read about so many of you having to set 3 alarm clocks just to get up. I have never had this problem, despite having suffered from DSPS for most of my life. I am an incredibly LIGHT sleeper – so often I’ll wake up literally the split second my alarm clock goes off – sometimes even a second before… yet that doesn’t make it any easier to get up awake and out of bed. I will really have to mentally talk myself into getting up “come on, not long till you get a sleep in… you can’t miss out on today…it’s important….you’ll feel okay in an hour” etc..

I have definitely learnt to accept my disorder. I did notice it was interesting to read it is strongly linked with depression. I suffered a bit from depression as a teenager but I am a very happy 23 year old – probably the most upbeat and bubbly out of all my friends. So for me – just like someone else mentioned – it isn’t a matter of being depressed.

I guess you have got to try and look at the good side. At least when I am married, I’m never going to tell my husband at night that I am too tired to have sex hahaha….

www.ManuelZeh.de

July 14th, 2010 at 12:51 am

Btw, I have pretty severe DSPS (my natural rhythm is to sleep from 4 am to 1 pm) but I have it pretty much beat now, and without drugs. Here is how:

I use 30 min of the bluelight from apolloghealth.com in the morning and 3 hours of the amber glasses from lowbluelights.com in the evening.

As long as I am active all day and don’t go clubbing at night to throw my rhythm of, I have no problem going to bed and getting up at any time I want (usually 1 am til 9). Also, 7 to 8 hours of sleep are fine now for me on many nights when I used to need 9 (I still do 9 hours sometimes).

Hope that helps some of you!

www.ManuelZeh.de

July 14th, 2010 at 12:02 pm

Whoops I just saw I misspelled the link:
http://www.apollohealth.com is correct

www.ManuelZeh.de

July 14th, 2010 at 12:52 am

P.S.: Btw, I had my rhythm set to 10.30 pm til 7.30 am for a while and that was fine too with the blue light.

kiwi_girl

July 14th, 2010 at 5:32 am

Wow I am so pleased to read this!! Will definitely purchase it when I have saved a bit of money (poor student right now). I live in New Zealand… will I be able to buy these lights online?

www.ManuelZeh.de

July 14th, 2010 at 12:01 pm

Yeah, they ship internationally. I had the bluelight shipped to Europe and the glasses to Brazil, no problem.

Good luck!

Alison

July 14th, 2010 at 2:13 am

Thank you thank you thank you!

In a nutshell, I am a night owl. Always have been. Slept through college but still got my degree.

Here is my rant.

I am 42. My parents have always called me lazy and recently my mom bitched that I am a chronic underachiever.

Why does this piss me off so?

I have a top-20 school degree in Chemistry. I was all-conference, all-midwest, regional all-american in lacrosse. I worked all through college. I won a coveted spot in a class of 80 (chosen from 8000) for a prestigious IT training program at a top-tier investment bank. 11 years later I was a Sr. Director of Operations (with 30 on my staff) in a 1500-employee company, topping out at $150k/year in comp. I sold my first home for $300k more than I bought it for.

When I was pregnant with kid #2, the company I worked for went bankrupt. I lost my job, as did 85% of the company. I decided to stay home with my kids for 4 years, then went back to work in a much easier job, more compatible with family life.

During that time I made almost 150 quilts, scrapbooked at least a dozen scrapbooks (50 – 100 hours each), renovated my entire house, including hundreds of hours of meticulous hand-painted spaces. During that time I was running regularly, and finished a dozen races on year, the longest being over 12 miles. And cared for two children.

Most of my friends would say they are *blown away* by what I have accomplished or finished, and now I have three kids. Well, 5 if you count my second husband’s children. I am a good cook. Sometimes I bake my own bread and everything is from scratch.

How does this equate to being “lazy”?

Simple: my sleep patterns do not match someone else’s expectations.

Given my own choice, I go to sleep at midnight to 2am, and sleep until 10 to 11 am. I am exceptionally productive after 4pm. can’t work for shit before 10am – my brain just won’t do it. Tried everything, for years and managed to still keep my head above water and excel professionally despite being chronically sleep deprived. Fortunately, my jobs were all based on deliverables – getting stuff done – and not about being seen in the office at 8am.

This all came to a head 4 months ago when my (new) husband tried to coerce me into his idea of a normal sleep pattern. I managed to go to bed at 9pm and get up at 7 or 8am for a month. What a waste of time. I was awake during the expected hours but my productivity went down the tubes and my work and home life seriously suffered.

I decided to switch careers two years ago, to a profession that I know is long-term compatible with family-life and my sleep patterns. I can do most of my work in the evenings, and I rarely have morning meetings.

Now, I expect to be diagnosed with DSPD, and probably PLMD or RLS and plan to tell the critics to stick their nose in their own business.

Thank you for letting me know I am not alone.

You aren’t alone, either.

Angela

August 8th, 2010 at 4:20 pm

I self diagnosed about a month ago. I knew it was me Ive been this way for 20 years but proof and (self) acceptance was and still is my issue. One of my good friends basically told me it was a way to get away with doing what you want and being antisocial, at the time I said nothing, but it hurt to think she thought I would DELIBERATELY make myself sleep deprived, depressed, hallucinate and unable to hold a job for more than a few weeks. I don’t know anyone who is that sadistic. My new saying is I don’t want to be normal if I have to feel like a zombie. Thank you for your article I feel better about myself knowing your story. It is very lonely.

kiwi_girl

August 9th, 2010 at 7:21 am

WAIT THERE IS HOPE!!!!!!!

I will try to keep this short because I know nobody likes reading the long posts. I have had DSPS for 13 years!! I am now 23… My mum used to come into my room at midnight when I was a kid – and she had put me to bed at 7pm wondering why the heck I was still awake.

In the past 7 years I have NEVER fallen asleep before midnight. In the past year – I would usually go to bed at 11.30pm and on a normal night I would not fall asleep until 2-3am. I understand this might even be MILD compared to some of you? But believe me it was a huge pain in the you know what, especially since this year I had to be up at 7am always for study and work.

Now a couple of years ago my doctor recommended me trying Melatonin pills instead of the heavy duty sleeping pills. I was VERY sceptical because I had tried every “natural” sleeping pill on the market and they all had no effect whatsoever on my DSPS. Well I took his prescription and got a very light dose of 1mg melatonin and tried taking them before sleep. I noticed a slight improvement. This was the first time anything had actually worked…even just a little bit!

However… once the prescription run out…I got lazy…I didn’t renew it…kind of played down the effect it had had…and didn’t turn back to it.

UNTIL NOW.

Four weeks ago I went to a doctor and asked for more melatonin. This time I asked for it in 3mg pills. I decided I needed to give this a good shot again. Well – I am SO PLEASED to tell you…. in the past four weeks…for the first time since I was about 10 – I have been having a DECENT NIGHTS SLEEP every single night!!! WOW. I feel SOOO much better.

My DSPS hasn’t been cured completely because I am still what most people would consider an extreme night owl. But the difference and the improvement is huge. I can go to bed at 11.30pm and be asleep within 30-60 minutes – when it used to take me an average of 2-4 hours to fall asleep before. So it has reduced the time it takes for me to fall asleep but at least 2 hours!!

I can function fine on 7 hours sleep…so falling asleep at midnight and getting up at 7am is not a worry.

I didn’t want to post on here sooner in case it was just a coincidence that this was working the first week. But four weeks in and it has worked every single night. One night I forgot to take it and it took me until 3.30am to fall asleep. How do I know this is not just the placebo effect?? I have taken many natural sleeping pills before which have made no difference at all.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE try this!!! Take a melatonin pill of 3mg roughly 1 hour before going to bed. You could also try taking it a few hours before sleep…. try it over a period of 2 weeks and if there is no improvement I would be surprised. Studies show this does improve sleep habits in over 90% of patients. Good luck!

Brian Armstrong

August 10th, 2010 at 6:52 am

Yep I think you’re right – I’ve taken Melatonin as well and was pretty happy with it. No grogginess the next morning, and it made it easy to fall asleep. From what I’ve read it’s non-habit forming and safe. Will second your recommendation!

www.ManuelZeh.de

August 11th, 2010 at 8:32 pm

Does anybody know about the risk of eye damage from using bluelight therapy? I’ve been using the Apollo Health GoLite for 2 years for 30 minutes every morning and I’m starting to get a bit worried. My eyes have been a bit weird for the last few days, maybe it’s not related though. So I googled it and found opposing results:

1.) “BLUEWAVE poses no risk of ocular damage (Ocular damage occurs in the range of 340 – 390 nm, ultraviolet and near ultraviolet light)”
Source:
http://www.electronichealing.co.uk/articles/bluewave_technology.htm

2.) “Choose white light over colored light. Blue light has been proven to cause eye damage and has no known benefit over white light.’
Source:
http://www.truesun.com/proddetail.php?prod=Daylight_DL930

Does anybody know the truth?

delayed2sleep

August 20th, 2010 at 6:50 pm

And how is one to know? My impression is that the danger of blue light is that it can worsen macular degeneration, a serious eye disorder. Be concerned if you have that disorder in your family. After 3-4 years using the white light, I went to an eye doctor for a thorough check. Happily, she found no sign of that disorder. I think I’ll go back about every second year, just for the peace of mind.
.
The blue light is usually a smaller unit and less intense, isn’t it? That would be its only advantage. White light does contain blue light, of course.

www.ManuelZeh.de

August 21st, 2010 at 5:37 pm

Yeah, thanks… I’ll get a check up every year or two as well, that’s a good idea. What happened is that for the last few days I have been unable to focus my vision.

I think what really happened is that I overdid the work I’m doing on a project on the computer at the moment, I was basically staring at the screen from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep, for over a week straight. I made good progress on the project but I think my pupils fatigued, when I looked in the mirror I saw them fluctuating in size. I took some time away from the screen and it seems to be better. Will still get that checkup though.

And I’m still curious to hear if anybody knows any science behind the risk of blue light.

Thanks!

delayed2sleep

August 21st, 2010 at 7:22 pm

A firm which produces lamps with GREEN light for light therapy has a couple of papers stating the risk of blue light. For what it’s worth:
http://www.sunnexbiotech.com/I/I0.html

www.ManuelZeh.de

August 21st, 2010 at 9:32 pm

Thanks for sharing. I’ll order this thing to find out if it works as well for me as the blue light. Better safe than sorry in this case!

RDavis

August 28th, 2010 at 8:47 pm

OMG feel like Ive found a bunch of lost relatives. Thanks so much for this Brian. I now can put a name to what Ive experienced so my doctor will know.

FacelessJ

September 1st, 2010 at 3:46 pm

I read about this on wikipedia a few months ago. It almost perfectly describes me. In high school I went to bed at a “decent” time (9pm) and would lie awake for hours on end and have to wake up at 7am for school. Every 3 or 4 nights I could manage to get to sleep before 12. I would go to weekend LAN events and easily stay awake the entire time (24 hour events)

Now in uni, I easily stay up until 3am and sleep in due to late classes (Although, the occasional 9am class would appear on the timetable, which is a nuisance as I’m a diligent student, with 100% attendance record in both high school and uni). However, the problem is, I still feel like I’m forcing myself to go to bed. If I don’t look at the clock, I can easily get surprised when sunlight suddenly starts shining through my windows. At this point, I generally force myself to sleep. I still go to LAN events (40 hours one, every 3 months), and easily stay awake for 50+ hours (Time awake before and after). I always hit peak tiredness around 8am, on both days. If I push through it, around 9-10am, I can feeling the sleepiness receding and am as usual for the day. In fact, most people at the LAN event have to actually ask me if I’ve been to sleep, as I’m more alert and behave more awake than anyone else there (And I’m the only one who forgoes sleep for the entire event). Hell, I even remain on top of the scoreboards in any games we play. Don’t experience any hallucinations and easily drive myself home from the event. I then generally go to sleep around 9m/11pm that night and sleep for a good 15 hours.

It’s that last paragraph that makes me question if I actually have DSPS. Like, I feel tiredest at 8am, so that makes me think that’s when my sleep pattern is, but on the other hand, I can shrug it off and continue the day as per normal. I guess my concern is, is if that is normal and I’m just attributing that ability to be part of a disorder? I think I may be doing that, as when I hear others talk of “pulling all-nighters”, they might be describing the same thing I do pushing through 8am (Haha, “pulling all-dayers”. >__>).

The other thing that makes me hesitant is that so many people I know online self-diagnose DSPS too. Which makes me skeptical, since the stats say 0.17% or whatever. So are they (and/or I) misdiagnosing themselves, or do I meet them in the first place because we suffer together and thus are online at the same time, thus making it inevitable that my online friends suffer from it.

FacelessJ

September 1st, 2010 at 4:14 pm

It would appear some text got cut off. >_>

I recently read the article here: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm which talks about “efficient sleep”. Which further gives credit to an 8am sleep pattern for myself, as even when I go to bed at 4-5am, I still can sleep til 3-4pm sans alarm clock (7-8 hours after 8am). But if I go to bed at 8am, I wake up around 4pm naturally (So 3-4 hours sleep less, and yet I wake up fully rested). Going to make for some interesting times ahead in my life if my sleep pattern is truly 8am. Almost a 9-5 sleeper. :D

tl:dr I think I have DSPS, but I’m hesitant to say I do and actually commit to my proper sleeping pattern, because I’m not 100% sure I have it (And kinda don’t want to believe it especially as I have no other health problems at all, and it feels screwy going to bed when my parents are leaving for work. >_>).

delayed2sleep

September 1st, 2010 at 5:20 pm

Hi Faceless. A couple of points for you:

You MAY grow out of it if you have the adolescent variety which goes away by about age 20. Most of those with that variety are boys. With the lifelong version there are equally many women as men.

Your all-nighters of 40 hours or so are a common feature of DSPS — called “a non-circadian day” in the literature. I always called it my “36-hour trick” until I learned the terminology. Mine aren’t according to some outer need but just seem to need to happen every now and then, like a reboot.

FacelessJ

September 1st, 2010 at 5:36 pm

Hrmm, I should be growing out of it pretty soon then if that’s the case (Almost 22). Would be nice.

And I forgot about non-circadian days (As I said, I read the article a little while ago). That would probably explain those events. I like the idea of it being the “n-hour trick”, I may have to steal that terminology. :P

Breaking Free

How I Learned To Live With DSPS

128 Responses

Leave A Comment

About this blog

Most Popular Posts

You should follow me on Twitter here.