How I Learned To Live With DSPS

In: Lifestyle|Psychology By: Brian Armstrong

13 Jun 2009

Since this post became so popular, I just setup a discussion forum where we can all discuss further and meet other folks living with or researching DSPS.

Click here to visit http://dsps.ribbot.com

The forum is brand new, but please sign up, introduce yourself and post any questions you might have. Thanks!

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). (Edit: check out the comments below where people mention various remedies they’ve had success with. Taking melatonin has worked quite well for me, and I’d recommend it.)

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 take melatonin now to fall asleep earlier. A 3mg dose is effective and safe from what I’ve read on it. This has been by far the best solution I’ve found.

Adapting To Life

This shows up in my job where I prefer to work later and come in later to be more productive. Melatonin has made this easier but I still prefer not to work before 10AM.

I also rarely 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

Since this post became so popular, I just setup a discussion forum where we can all discuss further and meet other folks living with or researching DSPS.

Click here to visit http://dsps.ribbot.com

The forum is brand new, but please sign up, introduce yourself and post any questions you might have. Thanks!

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Tags: Psychology

255 Responses

Signor

May 31st, 2011 at 3:29 am

Has anyone tried Agomelatine?
It it supposed to resynchronise circadian rhythm and even phase advance it. I just read about it and it got me really curious, I am taking this up with my doc as soon as possible, just figured I’d toss a post here though if anyone has some experiences to share

Lisa

June 1st, 2011 at 9:15 pm

Wow!! I can so relate your story to myself in everyway…I really balmed myself for not havign enough self discipline or organization in my life to get to bed and sleep like everyone else…but my symptoms and situation is exactly like your experience and everything I have been reading about DSPS. I am sure I ahev been a suffer for at least 30 years..and can even see a hereditary link as my mother suffers the same way. I was always labelled as lazy, and not alert growing up. I once took a University course that was scheduled verye arly in the AM..only amde to three clasess the entire term! Its so liberating to know this is not my imagination or something I should easily be able to control with a little self disciplne. Gonna cancel my Dr’s appoinment for Friday and go get myself some Melatonin tongiht..and see if that will help! Thanks for your article :)

Diane Richardson

June 20th, 2011 at 6:05 am

Be careful with the melatonin. Watch for side effects. Look on-line for the info.

Sam

July 10th, 2011 at 11:32 pm

I’ve had this for the past 7 or 8 years… I can’t sleep before 4am, and sleep well into the afternoon. I did a google search today after waking up at 3pm… Normally this doesn’t bother me since I’m unemployed, but I seriously miss sleeping when it’s dark, and waking up in the morning.

Michelle

October 31st, 2011 at 9:47 am

I would post my own comment but Sam, you honestly took the words out of my mouth exactly :)

Nez

July 13th, 2011 at 12:33 am

This actually just made me nearly cry because it describes me so perfectly and I’m writing this at 1am (again). I’m 18 years old and this has affected me since I was a baby so much that my parents have told me that they’d sit up and watch me in my crib and I’d always fall asleep at 3am. Bedtimes have always been a nightmare and I’ve tried everything to go to sleep like “normal people”. This year I finished my a levels but as my classes were mostly in the morning I only went to about 1 out of every 5 lessons as I slept through them. My friends don’t understand why I sleep at 2pm every afternoon and get up at 6 and go back to bed at 4. It’s so nice to hear that it’s not just me and I’m not just mental xx

Jean Hacking

July 13th, 2011 at 5:32 pm

Nez
My heart goes out to you.
I am the mother of a sufferer who like you has always been the same since babyhood. She is now in her 40′s and has now left classroom teaching to teach one to one as a tutor at hours times which sit in better with her body clock.
I wish you all the best for your further studies.
Jean Hacking

Hine

July 28th, 2011 at 12:32 pm

Wow
Im not alone with this because it kind of felt like I was you know. I recently found out I have DSPS and at first I was happy because many thought I was and I quote ‘too lazy at school and irresponsible’ because I couldn’t sleep at normal times even though how hard I have tried.
Im fifteen and currently attend highschool and it is very difficult to wake up or to even concentrate in class (or stay awake. I tend to sleep later then 2-3, I actually usually sleep at 6am (I know that’s bad but I can’t sleep earlier and trust me I have tried) So I go to school with barely 1 hour sleep and it is affecting my school work. Since I have been barely sleeping I get these aweful headaches too (majorly sleep deprived). I can’t sleep in the weekends because I have sports.
It is cool to know im not the only one because at first I was glad to know I wasn’t lazy that I have a condition but then I was upset. Everyone else slept normally so I missed out on hanging out with my friends, my family sleep normally so at night im lonely and at day I mostly sleep it away if there isn’t school or sports the next day. So I went online to see if there was any one else. I glad im not the only one but my dsps seems worse since I sleep at 6am (only time I can sleep) and I awake at like 5pm if im not awaken for school. I have stayed awake for a whole day and the next day but when night came around I couldn’t sleep even then until 6am. It was frustrating, i gave up caffefine but it didn’t work and I have literally ten loud alarm clocks that don’t work.
But at least I don’t have something worse I guess.
Well bye

Matt

August 29th, 2011 at 3:10 am

Nice article. I’ve had (self-diagnosed) DSPS for as long as I can remember. I sleep at 6am and wake around noon. Looks genetic in my case as my grandmother, her daughter (my mother) and four (of a possible five) cousins have it too.
I’ve just lost a ten-year tenure as a senior lecturer on account of it but at least I can now get some sleep! My condition was actually quite popular amongst my students as most rather liked my afternoon lectures but my colleagues did generally take a different view.
I’m 47 now and it is getting a little better, mainly because I sleep less than I used to (I used to wake up at 1:23 precisely, so my circadian clock does work).
Not sure what I’ll do next but I’ll try to make it match my body clock. I’m considering moving to Spain as, in many areas, the locals stay up all night and some company would be appreciated after all these years spent alone. I reckon that I’ve earned that much.
Well, good luck people. You know who you are. You’re in my thoughts… Mxx

Caragh

September 4th, 2011 at 10:46 pm

Hi i am 12 years old and i have dsps i have had it for about a year now and can really relate to all of you ! I am now really adjusting with dsps and i dont see it as a disorder i see it as if i just go to bed later ! Apparently it is a bit more unusual at my age! At furst when i got diagnosed my mum described it as special . I now have done some reading and just go with it ! I go to bed at 3 and wake up at 1 ! It dosent effect me because i think i have been brought up to think it could be worse! I do get stressed easily but anyone who is reading this and saying i feel so sorry fo my self and whatever think of this i am twelve i have still got my whole life to go through with this condition! My grandmother had if for her life until about 75 and the doctors told me mine will most likely be life long! My family have been so good and supportive as it has been very ammotional ! We are looking into home schooling as i am struggling but i am fine keeping fit and healthy! Thank u all for coment and for the post it has guided me more through this neverending maze!!! X

Julia

September 12th, 2011 at 4:29 pm

My boyfriend of 5 years has this and has had it since middle school. All through college, his schedule was off the charts, and he had terrible trouble waking up before 2-3 pm. It gets worse if he stays out late, of course. To “fix” his schedule, as he calls it, he routinely stays up all night and all day the next day in order to go to sleep at a “normal” time.

I know his tendencies will make it difficult for him to have a “normal” 9-5 life. He is very productive… at 4 am.

I am an early bird, so this makes our relationship difficult. Sometimes he stays up all night because he knows we had plans the next “morning” (1-2 pm), and he doesn’t want to disappoint me by sleeping till 4pm.

It’s hard not to take it personally when you want to see someone, and you know they are asleep and there is nothing you can do about it. I have to work really hard to be more diplomatic. After all, he is usually really upset when he sleeps past 3. Of course he isn’t just lazy or disorganized, but people often think that so I sometimes have to explain to them what the real issue is.

I know at 1am when I go to bed, he is still up organizing his music, designing websites for clients, doing laundry, and cleaning the house. He will do this energetically until 3-5 am when he finally starts to get sleepy.

If he were to be in bed in the dark at that time, trying to sleep, he still wouldn’t go to sleep until 3 am.

I wish there was a long-term cure, but in the meantime I want to be as supportive of him as I can. Fortunately his web design work allows him to be awake whenever is most natural to him… I do selfishly wish I could see more of my night owl, though.

delayed2sleep

September 12th, 2011 at 8:20 pm

Julia, a supportive significant other means the world! DSPS has split up many families. I hope your boyfriend appreciates you.

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bob

September 14th, 2011 at 7:45 pm

I haven’t read any of the comments, just the article. I too have been suffering from this since roughly age 13, it’s only been 2 years since i found that very same article on wikipedia, and yes, it was describing me.

During school 3.30-4am or sometimes 5am would be sleep time for me, no matter how hard i tried I eventually gave up trying and just accepted that 5am would be bedtime for me, and so made the most of this time initially by playing computer games (we were quite a geeky household) which eventually developed into learning web programming languages, just me, google, notepad and , very beneficial, even though at school I was absolutely shattered having sometimes only having 2 hours of sleep

bob

September 14th, 2011 at 8:06 pm

Anyway, college came along and I was able to turn to nights as it was an IT course, and I was well above average for my age… having spent every night programming and using computers for the past 4 years or so… whereas most other people had an hour a week at school (apart from the few that access to home pc’s!), so my lecturers were pretty flexible with me missing morning lectures, and if i did go i’d usually be done very quickly. I enjoyed perfect sleep from around 5am, and it’s remained at 5am since…

Uni came along and so did alcohol and my cure, weed. All through uni i was able to either scatter my sleeping around lectures or put myself to sleep using weed, and i’d sleep amazingly waking up almost as good as i would had i slept from 5am-1pm.

This had to end one day… and i started working life, to start with I was running on empty again, just like school – all the skills i could do perfectly and quickly were now taking forever – but getting the job was brilliant, uni taught me nothing, but the stuff i learnt while staying up all night in school from not being able to sleep have given me a fantastic job in IT, and started at a senior level at a very young age, couldn’t ask for more! except sleep…

So, I turned back to weed after about 4 months of trying without, nothing, at the time i wasn’t aware of dsps. Sleep now came freely, after a few years of working I was in a position to be able to switch to working nights, which was great… my body would naturally head back to 5am-1pm, and so I worked around this for about a year. My situation changed and I was back to working daytime, again, no sleep. Back to the weed. I really wanted to stop relying on it, but haven’t found anything better… admittedly I haven’t tried looking that hard, I went to the doctors and the first thing I said was, I don’t want sleeping pills, what do I get after a 10 minute consultation? Sleeping Pills.

I used them, and eventually realised I was having entire conversations with people and completely forgetting about them, and have no memory whatsoever, my number 2′s were less than desirable, and most of the time, and worsed of all no sleep came most of the time! I’d end up lying there, completely dazed and confused, but awake. I decided these were not for me. I decided to make a sleep diary before going back to the doctors, which I did, (I should point out i was still unaware of DSPS at this point), I was given more pills and sent on my way.

So, the reading began again, eventually stumbling upon DSPS on wikipedia, brilliant, this sounds likely, it matched. I haven’t been back to the docs yet, they weren’t helpful in the first place and they aren’t going to be much use if is confirmed as DSPS anyway. I will go back though, the sleeping pills are very helpful, although very annoying, on holidays where normal sleeping patterns have to be kept to stick with the group, they are a tolerable backup if no weed is available :s

Anyway, I just wanted to share my experiences of dealing with it, some of you may disagree with my coping method, but it works for me and allows me to lead a normal enough life – I will experiment with other solutions, and have, i’ve tried almost everything I’ve found suggested online (apart from medication, other than that i’ve already used).

bob

September 14th, 2011 at 8:12 pm

Forgot to mention I was able to achieve a 2 hour nap (sometimes) immediately after school… which meant I was getting roughly 4/5 hours during school, it was enough to cope, but mornings were a pain. On the occasions I was able to nap, it was unbelievably refreshing!

Joan moran

September 28th, 2011 at 10:19 am

What an interesting article I am 61 years of age and for as long as I can remember I have been unable to sleep before the early hours of the morning and find getting up before 10 am very difficult
I raised 8 children and got them to school on time only by having everything ready the night before and teaching them to get themselves ready and often going back to sleep when the got on the bus
My sister once told me I was lazy when she found me in bed at 10 oclock and I pointed out to her that she had gone to bed at 9pm and got up at 6am which was 9 hours I on the other hand had not gone to bed until 5 and was now getting up at 10 which was 5 hours so whos the lazy one This is the main problem people thinking u r lazy or can teach yourself to go to sleep earlier My answer to them is y dont they try to stay up like me and see how long it takes them to teach themselves that

I have only had jobs that were shift work so I only had to get up early sometimes and ones that start at 9 and finish at lunch
My family know I will still be in bed till 10 am and r very good with that a couple of my daughter r the same as me which leads me to suspect it might be genetic My own Mother went to bed late and slept in late too
There were no computers or any kind of light in our house when I was young So I think the theory on computers written in the article may well be wrong
Thank u for sharing as it helps people to know they r not abnormal just a little different than a large percentage of the population and there is nothing wrong with that

Michelle

October 10th, 2011 at 5:46 am

Hi Chanced upon your blog. With regards to DSPS , are there any other methods which work

Samantha

October 26th, 2011 at 8:52 pm

I have just come across DSPS and what a relief it is to know that other’s suffer from this too. I first started having this problem when I was 12, it was extremely confusing to me, I was young and didn’t understand why this was happening to me. My normal sleeping time’s are from 5am-2pm. My parent’s had a hard time trying to understand what was wrong with me when I couldn’t make it to school and this made home life very tense and argumentative I became very depressed. In the first year of secondary school I was ok with sleep and waking times, until the second year when thing’s went pear shaped, eventually I stopped attending school completely, this caused problem’s with my parent’s being taken to court because they were being blamed for my poor attendance. I went to the Doctor’s on many occasion’s and was given pill’s, blood test’s for anemia, blood test’s to check for an under active thyroid and none were successful. My brother suffer’s too but he can’t sleep until 3am and can easily wake at 9-10am so isn’t as much of a problem for him. I now have two pre-school children and I’m petrified of how I am going to cope with school run’s and fear history repeating itself with getting into trouble for the children being late or worse not attending at all. At the moment my husband work’s night’s which help’s a lot as he get’s the children up in the morning and does breakfast etc, I feel like I’m failing my children by not being able to get up early and go to play group’s and soft play center’s so I am determined to keep pushing myself to keep my children in a healthy sleep pattern. I’m going to take this information to my Doctor, even if there isn’t a ‘cure’ and success rate’s are low for treating DSPS, if I am diagnosed with this then I’m hoping I can help the people in my life understand me a bit more, and I guess it’ll be an “I told you so!” moment and I can prove that it isn’t pure laziness. Are there any support group’s on the web for this? If not I think that could be a great way for us to communicate and help people to understand DSPS and to support each other

delayed2sleep

October 26th, 2011 at 11:04 pm

Yes, Samantha, there is a support group, a mail list called Niteowl. Members are people with DSPS and Non-24. You will be welcome. See bottom half of this page: http://circadiandisorders.org

Samantha

October 27th, 2011 at 1:10 am

Thank you, that’s a great help :-)

Manuel Zeh

November 1st, 2011 at 8:35 pm

Brian wrote:

>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.

This is obviously very true. I haven’t used light therapy in about half a year because I considered myself “cured”. I could easily go to bed at midnight and wake up at 7 am, without an alarm clock.

I’m now having a major relapse. It’s 4.30 am here and there’s no way I’ll be able to sleep. I’m going to have my green light and my blue blockers shipped to me (which are in another country right now). I do believe that the laptop is a major factor, but that knowledge doesn’t help me much as I do most my work on the computer recently… I guess I’ll have to use melatonin until the lamp and the glasses arrive in the mail!

As I wrote above, nutrition and exercise help as well, but obviously that alone doesn’t last, without light therapy and blue blockers to protect my eyes from the light that comes from the computer screen… interesting… at least now I know exactly what to do about it, and as soon as the mail man gets here I’ll be able to go back to a normal, productive life.

Tami B

November 18th, 2011 at 1:54 pm

I’m 41 and have had this since I was a young child. Like the poster…I have learned to live with it by adjusting my activities around my schedule. It does help tremendously that I work for myself. When I worked in corporate for 6 years I was tired most of the time, however, was successful…just very tired and would sleep for extended periods of time to ‘catch up’. I also use an alarm clock very little :) I also don’t mind dealing with the sleep deprivation occasionally when I can’t avoid early risings. I will add, that when I was younger I could easily manage on 5-6 hours of sleep….but as I get older I now need 7-8 hours. I have always just accepted that I am a night owl and believe that being born at 11:48pm may have some influence on my circadian rhythm. Great article…thank you :) Tami

Avery

November 18th, 2011 at 7:20 pm

Heyyyy, I’m 15, and for as long as I can remember I’ve had some trouble sleeping at night, but recently I feel it’s gotten worse. I’m hardly getting any sleep at night and this results in me being unable to get up in the mornings. My parents don’t seem to understand and they say it’s because I listen to what’s going on.
So I decided to take a look on the internet to see what I could find and like the article, I came across the wikipedia page, and thought this sounds just like me.
With all my exams and stuff coming up I feel more pressured and worry that I won’t be able to be as prepared as I need to be. Sometimes I can’t find the energy to revise and when I do, my mind is unfocused.
Great article… And it’s a comfort to know I’m not the only one awake early hours of the morning… Thank you!!

Pankaj

November 22nd, 2011 at 10:59 am

AAH well now I can proudly say I am not lazy but my sleep pattern don’t match to “normal” world but for me now all people suffering with dsps are my world and I don’t know what is gonna happen in future but I wanna open a business or work somewhere when i can start at 3 pm and finish at midnight I am a hard working person but waking up at 6 is killing my life and I don’t know how long I have to cope with this. I am trying melatonin I hope I SLEEP soon its 10 PM already and i had 5 tablets if homeopathic melatonin. BEST OF LUCK TO MY WORLD AND ONE DAY WE CAN CREAT WORK AND LIFE FOR OUR PEOPLE AS ITS JUST ANNOYING NO ON UNDERSTAND OUR PROBLEM JUST THEY PUT IT UP AS LAZY

iamakittehcouch

January 18th, 2012 at 11:24 pm

Booyah! I so agree with you. I’ve hit a wall here after so many years trying to do the “day thing”. I recently lost my vacation/sick day benefits because I keep showing up late in the morning. My office won’t credit the time I work through lunch or the 1.5 hours I stay late every day or even the 3-6 hours worked over the weekend from home. I just can’t do it anymore but can’t find a sufficient job replacement with desirable hours! I’m past my bartender years and I’m not an entrepreneur. But now I know it’s not just me. One day people won’t call us lazy and give attitude! *fist bump*

joe

January 19th, 2012 at 4:12 am

If you aren’t an entrepreneur, you are lazy. If you think entrepreneurship comes easy it doesn’t. It is tough. It is work.

Iamakittehcouch

January 19th, 2012 at 9:22 am

@joe

Excuse me? I am not a lazy person! And I never said that being an entrepreneur was easy. In fact I said I wasn’t one. I’m not in a position to attempt to be so at this time.

Entrepreneur is defined as being:

1) A person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on financial risk to do so.
2) A promoter in the entertainment industry.

We are not all of us built the same. Not all of us have the means or desire to risk what security they do have to start their own business. This does not make me lazy. That is a rather blanket statement about someone you know nothing about. I work very hard. I don’t mind working for someone else. I simply wish it could be during hours in which I function at my best.

Next time please try not to be so condescending.

joe

January 19th, 2012 at 10:23 am

You are right. I was being a bit of an ass. I’m sorry for that. I’ll continue to be an ass for a moment though.

It is hard to see how people can complain and then not fight for themselves. I shouldn’t blame you for your own problems. I can only blame you for not having the desire to conquer them. Even that I can’t really blame you for. We can’t blame anybody for anything. We should all sit back and let the government feed us, clothe us, bathe us.

You want to have it easy. You want to work for someone else. You don’t want to take any risks. You just want the rewards. You might actually excel at something after all if you did take some chances.

I’m all for a little cushioning. But come on. Step up and take some risk. Really. I won’t blame you for not wanting to do these things, but come on. I don’t want to work either.

Out of college I was offered a nice salary from a company that I had Interned for two years earlier. You know what I did? I told them I’d take it on the condition they offered me slightly more. I had already been offered more than I was honestly worth… yet. I turned it down over a few grand.

What is the life lesson here? TAKE SOME RISK! I’m 27, five years out of school, four years having started a competing operation, and now own a successful company.

The company I was going to work for at its height was worth about 20 million US dollars with about 70 employees. In comparison we are only 1/70th the size although steadily growing. The market potential is huge. Most of my competitors are billion dollar operations.

Yea- so take some stinking risk already.

Cal

January 19th, 2012 at 6:56 pm

Joe, as a fellow entrepreneur I think you are way out of line on this one.

Entrepreneurship requires a mindset and a personality that not everyone has. If everyone did, how would anything get done? Being an employee is a completely valid and fulfilling choice to make in life, and there should be no shortage of options and opportunities for anyone who chooses that route.

I think better advice would be to suggest jobs that can be done at night or on a flexible schedule. Forget trying to start a business if the conditions are not suitable for it.

joe

January 19th, 2012 at 8:38 pm

Cal, your right.

I’m definitely not being constructive. There are certainly aspects that would potentially prevent one from taking on such risks. I’m young comparatively speaking still. I don’t have a family or any children who depend on me.

I still suspect that would change much if I did though.

In any case I’m quite frankly not sure what well paying positions one might get working nights. If you aren’t wiling to be an enterprising individual then you are quite frankly stuck I think in a low pay and boring job.

Night man? Do those still exist?
Warehouse worker
Fast food
Bartender
24/7 grocery store
Translator? Think that would require an enterprising spirit and unique skill

The trust is we can’t really recommend anything to this person because we don’t know what skills they have…

Bert

November 22nd, 2011 at 7:29 pm

Well.. First of all. I respect you all! I know it can be difficult and sometimes soo frustrating, because people just don’t understand. I knew there was something wrong and it took them (doctors) more than 10 years to discover DSPS. The funny thing was that one doctor said.. Dude, you just got DSPS. Well, he got me somewhere. Since then I did two things. First I started living in my own structure. Fell asleep around 6am and woke up around 2pm and I felt better than ever. Well.. I had to quit my study, because I couldn’t follow the courses anymore. But.. Physically I never felt better since my 14th. Secondly I started my melatonin treatment and first it was awesome. I lived like a ‘normal’ person and felt good, but after a while I became a little sleepy again. Lightheaded, body parts falling asleep, almost fainting and that fueled an anxiety-disorder. Now I know that it has something to do with serotonine and I mostly have it when I’m more tired than usual. Soo this gave me a choice.. Live in my own structure and feel 100% or study again with melatonin and feel more like 50 a 75%. I chose second and am in my 2nd year of anthropology at the University from Amsterdam. My study advisors are up to date and give me space when I need it. I do not have to follow every obligated college and I’m studying the best study ever. It’s my life and it gives me so much. The students are lovely too! But I know now.. when I finished my study, I will live by my own structure again.. But with a passionate job for me.

What I wanted to say is, that you always have a choice and sometimes you need to go trough a little shit to make it perfect after that. I also hope to give a little information about a melatonin treatment and the opportunities we can all achieve. Besides that I also had a question.. Do other people who are diagnosed with DSPS also have problems related to anxiety-disorders, physical things or other? If you have a question for me also, I’m happy to answer it.
Peace!

dave

December 12th, 2011 at 4:18 am

i have had dsps since i was 14. Recently i was diagnosed with ms. I’ve read a study linking shift work during adolesence to ms, question is, what is considered shift work for people like us… Being awake at night or a forced normal schedule?

Sarah

November 28th, 2011 at 8:44 am

So.

For as long as I can remember (and I’m 17 now), I have had a problem- not being able to sleep. As a kid, I remember laying there and listen to my sister snore through the night while I begged to fall asleep. And when I got up in the middle of the night (anyone who has this will know- you get hungry at about 11/12… I think that corresponds with dinnertime, but I digress) I would get yelled at by my father. He said it was my fault for not going to bed earlier on weekends. But I did try to go to sleep at normal times on weekends! I. Tried. Everything!

Until about two months ago, when at three in the morning I was researching sleep disorders and found this once. My goodness am I glad it’s not my fault, even if I am self-diagnosing. (Hey. If you have DSPS and read this, you know.)

See, the only way I, as a high school student, can get through this is by sleeping during the day. School bell rings at 7:15, and to make it by bus I have to get up at 5:30 at the latest. My normal bedtime is… between 3am (early) or 6am (late). That’s, if I go to sleep early, two and a half hours of sleep. more often than not, none at all. So I nap during the day.

The biggest problem is… well, that’s hard to say. I share a room with my sister, and because I have a large family in a small house, someone is usually sleeping in the living room. There is nowhere I can go to turn on a light besides the bathroom, literally. I can’t read. I can’t draw. I can’t do homework. The only thing I can do is use the laptop. And no one is on at three in the morning to talk to. The night can be pretty lonely, although one of my best friends- she’s in college- says up until midnight with me just so I have someone to chat with online. But the absolute worst is when your mother wakes you up at 9am- a reasonable time for most people- and asks me to go to church. That is one of two days where I can sleep eight hours at a time. She always argues, and says I just sleep after. Usually, she’s very understanding with my sleep cycle (letting me sleep after I get home at 4pm until 7 or 8pm) and not harassing me for staying up, but… Everytime she tries, I end up crying and begging for sleep and she ends up angry. Does anyone have a good way for me to tell her no, I physically cannot get myself out of bed?

Well. Thanks for letting me vent to you all.

-Sarah, 3:42 am and still wide awake.

John

November 28th, 2011 at 9:31 am

Right there with you. It is 4:13AM and I’ll probably be ready for bed when the sun comes up. I’m 27 now although I literally slept through morning classes in high school. It was so bad my science teacher thought I was coming to school high (drugs) every day because my eyes were blood shot and I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

I’m sure my eyes being blood shot was due to the lack of sleep. Keeping my eyes half open and not nodding off too frequently was the best I could do. More or less it was a token effort as nothing was gained from being in school during the morning hours. I was a good student in my mind to the extent my circumstances allowed.

As far as parents go… ugg.. My mom is a nut case too. She dragged us kids to church frequently enough. At some points every week consistently.

We should setup an online forum for people to meet. I’d love to get to know others with this sleep condition. It is apparent that there are a lot of people with this condition. Enough so that you could probably start small groups in even very rural areas.

Bert

November 28th, 2011 at 9:57 am

Hey John,
Good idea to set up a forum. I also think that we can diminish the lonely and isolated nights, because the ones that are awake, can talk to each other online or so. Besides that.. We probably all live in different time zones and we can use that in our advantage.
Bert

bob

November 28th, 2011 at 10:44 am

I can get one set up? I’m a web developer (which helps with night time working although I’m stuck working days at the moment so a bit of a struggle!).

Give me a nod and I shall get right on it!

John

November 28th, 2011 at 11:09 am

I posted the original comment using a fake email. I am getting comments here though by email. If you wish for me to contact you let me know how to contact you.

Do it! I was hoping someone would volunteer. It shouldn’t take long to setup. It is mostly maintaining the updates that is the pain.

Thinking about it maybe there is a better solution than a forum. A forum would be easy though. Or maybe you can come up with some way to organise it. I’d like a means of being able to reach out to other people in my area. Ideally meet people in the real world. A forum would be a good start although probably not scale well.

Maybe there is some way it could be setup organisationally so that people could add there contact information and some basic info about themselves.

Maybe a wiki would be a good addition too. Then people could enter something like

USA

NJ
Hunterdon County/Clinton : email, forum name, link to about me page
Mercer County/Annandale :email, forum name, link to about me page

Russia

Region/Town : email, forum name, link to about me page

bob

November 28th, 2011 at 11:20 am

John, can’t reply to your message for some reason, I have written a social network for something similar to this before so i can adapt it to work for this situation… won’t have time for a while but i’ll try and get something together! the forum is almost online, and i’ll install a wiki later on, link to follow, how on earth it will spread i have no idea, probably have to wait for google organic to pick it up!

John

November 28th, 2011 at 11:57 am

Bob,

Sounds good. Post a link here and I’m sure people will find it. Maybe we can contact the author of “How I learned To Live With DSPS” and he could post something more prominent at the top since Google has given this page a high ranking in its index. The number of comments people leave here alone is telling as to the number of people who will undoubtedly find the forum.

I’m not sure how social networking might be involved here as I do not use facebook, myspace, or anything similar. I don’t know how a community can be developed. However, I’d be very much in favour of working off the backs of a free/open source social network which has more respect for your privacy. It should provide more control too from my understanding (there is no central authority like with facebook). See link:

http://diasporafoundation.org/

bob

November 28th, 2011 at 12:03 pm

OK, we are good to go…

http://forum.dsps.me

I’ve never installed a wiki before so i will find one and get it installed, a blog section might also be good, as long as i can everything i install to use the same user database.

As for the social aspect it would probably be best to bolt something on to the forum – something for the future i guess!

If you want to contat me directly email forum at dsps dot me and it should come to my email.

Brian Armstrong

November 30th, 2011 at 2:20 am

Hi Bob…thanks for setting up the forum! However, I just released a new piece of forum software that I think you guys will like (and part of my motivation in building it was to have folks try out forums like this).

http://dsps.ribbot.com/

So I hope you don’t mind if I ask people to move over. Btw, I’m happy to make you an admin on that forum since you took the initiative. Let me know if/when you get signed up and I’ll set you as an admin. Thanks and sorry for the switch!

Brian

bob

November 30th, 2011 at 10:38 am

to be honest, i don’t like it at all

bob

November 30th, 2011 at 10:45 am

lol, that comment was cut a bit short! but no, in comparison to phpbb which has a very big following developing on it’s behalf with plugins and such things available, and integration with mediawiki possible, it seems like a far more logical choice, i’ve glanced at yours, and it’s like going back in time to early versions of old forum software!

i honestly don’t care either way, but i won’t use the other one, that’s for sure, i like consistency, and having used many other phpbb forums, i am just used to the layout more.

things have started picking up http://forum.dsps.me, admittedly not much, but i will be leaving it online for natural growth in any case.

Bert

November 28th, 2011 at 9:52 am

Hi Sarah,
To answer your question. Maybe you can let her read all these stories an she can understand a little better. Or maybe she knows that’s a big thing to live with and people always underestimate this. To give a straight answer for your mother to read. There were times for me personally that I could even walk anymore and laid down on a bench in the street to just close my eyes. And after a little while a got up and walked or cycled the remaining way home.
Bert

Sarah

November 29th, 2011 at 6:05 am

Thanks guys! I’m surprised that I got answers so quickly, but I shouldn’t be. You guys are probably up right now, too, LOL. As for what John and Bob were saying, I’d love to hang out on a forum, too. There are only so many nights you can watch anime.
-Sarah

John

November 29th, 2011 at 6:34 am

The forum is setup:

http://forum.dsps.me/

I’ll be hanging out here :) when I have time.

I find myself watching movies and television a lot too. I do love going to the movies and watching certain tv series. I’d like to get out more although getting up at 5PM makes that difficult. Not to mention by the time I’m ready to go out and have fun most people are in bed.

Sarah

November 29th, 2011 at 7:01 am

Yeah, I’m on there too. I’m gonna be on a lot, probably. XD

And I totally feel your pain. When I wake up, it’s an hour until my weeknight curfew. Thank God for weekends, or I’d be a recluse.

Brian Armstrong

November 30th, 2011 at 2:23 am

Hi John,

Sorry for the change but I decided to setup a new forum with the software I just released: http://dsps.ribbot.com

I think this new style of forum will be better suited for this type of discussion, and I can support it more easily there. I really do appreciate the initiative Bob took though (I left him a comment above).

If you are interested – I’m happy to set you as an admin on the new forum. Thanks!
Brian

Mom

November 28th, 2011 at 9:55 am

WOW, this is very interesting, my son now 16 has had a problem sleeping for as long as I can remember. Even as a baby he needed very little sleep and as a young child – I would put him to bed at 8 and he would just lie in bed for hours befor he fell asleep. He could never sleep durning the day either and at creche during “nap time” he was forced to lie there until sleep time was over!
It has just got worse over the years and now he seems to have developed a kind of fear of not falling asleep even before he goes to bed. He keeps telling he must have some kind of sleep disorder. Thank you for the site and comments :-)

cal

November 28th, 2011 at 8:19 pm

http://wp.me/pxQSY-gy

Mike

December 5th, 2011 at 4:28 am

None of you have tried light therapy? Seems like a lot of people have had success with those. It’s mentioned in this article, but the author said it didn’t work past a year. That doesn’t mean it won’t work for everyone else. It is my only hope right now. I plan on getting the Philips goLite Blu.

Cynthia

December 20th, 2011 at 8:34 am

Woweewowwow!!!!

I was just looking up melatonin on Wikipedia and clicked on the hyperlink to DSPS.

I’ve had this problem since I was a kid!! It feels great knowing that it is an actual problem and I now feel justified to revolve my schedule around it I’ve always tried to fight it. All those therapies sound exhausting!! I think I will just change my work schedule. Lucky for me have the option to work 1 to 9 everyday. I will talk to my boss about changing it for the new year. Can’t wait to join a 24 hour gym!

Cil

December 27th, 2011 at 4:19 pm

O my God!

It is so good to know I’m not lazy. There was I at 2 AM googling for sleep disorders and stumbled upon the DSPS in Wikipedia. Damn… I felt a enormous relief. I’ve lived with this all my life. According to my parents, even as a baby. To be truthful, I don’t mind my hours. I usually sleep the requested 8-9hours and wake feeling fine. usually, I go to sleep at 3 AM and wake up around 1 PM… on weekends of course. What is bad about it is that I have a 8-6 PM (normal people hours in Brazil) work schedule and I can’t change it. Worst. I am a teacher and my hours are at 7-11 AM.

Melatonin is not sold in Brazil (it is prohibited here). So, I’ll go try the light therapy for work sake.

Judy

December 28th, 2011 at 8:59 am

I have done a lot of research on DSPS and one key to diagnosis is appetite. I am hungry at 3 am, can’t even look at food until after noon.

My schedule varies. 3:30 am-6 am sleep to 11:30 am-2 pm wake.

The light box made me very anxious and I had an anxiety attack so be careful of that. Melatonin makes me “feel bad” while I fight it and stay awake anyway. VERY groggy the next day.

I’m just going with my own body’s flow at this point. People with this disorder can’t “adapt” their rhythm like most people so no one else is ever going to understand.

Unless they are like my husband who has “ASPD” advanced sleep phase, he falls asleep at 10 pm on the dot, wakes at 6 am on the dot. We are like strangers passing in the night but we understand each other very well. It actually works well for our marriage. We get plenty of “alone” time.

Of course his sleeping is considered normal by society while ours is not. The NIH is doing a study and they may confirm DSPS as a “disability” in which case employers will have to accommodate us.

I’m not holding my breath. We’ll see.

When I can’t make lunch, I just tell them it’s my version of a nap. I roll over and go back to sleep. It is what it is. I can’t change it.

Judy

December 28th, 2011 at 9:03 am

I don’t know what time zone this post is in but it’s 4 am EST here. Not 9 am. You will never see anything from me at 9 am. I noticed a lot of morning posts so where is this site? Hong Kong?

delayed2sleep

December 28th, 2011 at 9:16 am

Judy wrote: “The NIH is doing a study and they may confirm DSPS as a “disability” in which case employers will have to accommodate us.”

That’s exciting news, Judy! Do you have a link with more about it? I’d appreciate it. Thanks.

Alexxx

January 6th, 2012 at 2:49 am

What about this one: I am a very poor unemployed guy living with my parents help and my 50 bucks monthly social help (Crappy Eastern European Country)… I live with my wife in a crappy one room apartment (250 square feet) and since we’ve met (6 years ago), we never go to sleep before 4-5 AM, sometimes we stay awake even more than 24 hours. We are not insomniacs, because we usually fall into a deep sleep immediately after we go to bed and we have a marvelous 8-9 h daytime sleep. We both have a Masters degree in Public Relations and we’ve graduated “magna cum laudae”. I never missed a job interview, but since this country is like Middle Ages, employers usually seek engineers, programmers, doctors s.o. or uneducated, brute labor hand (most of the labor market here is filled with no salary, 1-5% sales scams etc) . Our families perceive us like social garbage, but I really say that we are very creative and we do our best to fit in…We have very few friends and we’ve started to hate people who say about themselves that they have reached the secrets of success in life, especially when they interfere within our lives and patronize us with imperative advice as: “You won’t get a job if you sleep all day long, nobody likes lazy people etc.”… We’re not depressed (as in suicidal thoughts or morbid thinking) and we’ve never seek for medical help in this matter because we won’t be taken seriously here (medicine resumes to heavy injuries or, in the rest of the cases, hypochondria diagnosis)…We’ve stared though to fall into “their” traps, because we’re thinking sometime seriously about the “normal sleepers” as being better than us… Nevertheless we really want to take a walk in midday while sun is up (it’s free :D) but we’re usually too tired and we need a sleep. Any suggestions ? (P.S. We don’t see ourselves as losers and we love each other very much.) P.P.S. Great article!

joe

January 6th, 2012 at 3:22 am

I am going to assume your problem is no job. That is what it sounds like to me. Not so much the sleep issue. That sounds like it just makes it more difficult. I sell niche products world-wide. We grossed $36,000 USD last year. This was the first year it took off though so you can probably double that number. Internationalisation rocks. It makes working at night possible. You don’t have to be a genius/engineer coder or anything.

All I did was develop a web site and create a brand. Then import stuff from China (not entirely, largely though, I do have to get the parts from wherever I can get them). I largely respond to tech support emails, some phone calls, and ship goods. I just have to do the shipping before the post office closes in the evening. If I miss the post office closing I can always hit it up before I go to bed in the morning.

Here is a good example:

http://store.era-ele.com/

They operate off of being cheap and having a niche product. We order parts from them. They make money from China! We then target a niche audience with those products and support. We basically test software with the hardware.

Anyway. There are lots of other opportunities like this out there.

You speak multiple languages? What about setting up a web site to do language translation? We spent $32 USD to have like 3 pages translated to Spanish.

There are lots opportunities like that.

You live in a shit hole country? How about setting up a movie download service with advertising.

Alexxx

January 6th, 2012 at 4:32 am

Great advice Joe, I’ve been thinking about some of the ideas you have generously shared but everything seems so complicated, since my computer literacy doesn’t touch a level to be proud of (HTML and other languages are Chinese to me) and, of course I wouldn’t know where to start with that movie download service (which is brilliant I must admit): legit multimedia providers, online banking, contracts, legal stuff as setting up a business, registering myself as self employed, buying a domain and other stuff that I don’t know and could come up might cost me more than I could afford (just think about it: 1000 $ is a fortune to me) and I could work only into the creative field, producing content as movie reviews, opinions, surveys, discussing on movie staff (directors, writers, actors, etc.)… But I will do all the research and I will give it a shot! Thanks Joe, God Bless!

joe

January 6th, 2012 at 5:19 am

You don’t need much more than a domain name. Registering a business is probably simpler than you realise. Chances are you don’t need any special licenses either for most types of things you would be doing. I would guesstimate we got off the ground for:

$50 USD filing fee (registering the legal entity)
$15 USD domain name
$20-$30 USD hosting month (there are pre-made shopping carts- no html required, you might need some help figuring it out, pay someone!!! any techy should be able to figure it out even if they haven’t done it before, yahoo store is an example)
$100 USD – $200 USD – paying someone else to set up a basic web site
$10 USD phone number- probably be a lot more the second month- maybe $50 USD. that is what we were paying within 3 months.
$50 for business cards-if you are connected to the off line world
$75-150 for a printer/ink if you don’t have this
$400 for a PC if you don’t have this

spamming every forum and contacting every person who might be interested in your products- free!!!!! you got to do it nicely though.

and lets not forget if you don’t have the money- for the computer or the internet connection go to a internet cafe. nothing says you can’t cut corners like that in the early stages. we used a cheapy inkjet printer we already owned for a month. we used a computer we already owned … still am.. lol

$370 usd… and I bet you could cut a few more corners still on that. like fail to register the legal entity for a few months. use a cheap phone number forwarding service and forward it to whatever number you use now. be even less than $10 usd a month. i think i can get it down to $255 for absolute essentials. maybe even less still. cut out the hosting domain and don’t pay anybody. it’s called a book from the library and ebay

i have actually gotten numerous businesses off the ground since i was 13 (27 now). the 1st was offline, the 2nd was online, the third was offline, the 4th was online. 3&4 still operate. the first two were legally questionable or in a grey legal area. don’t be shy and don’t be afraid to take risks!

A.A

January 6th, 2012 at 10:26 am

If a “healthy” person without this “disorder” is told or desires (by means of pure experiment or job requirements) to wake at 5pm and sleep at 9am and they find it difficult, are they too labeled as having a disorder and being in need of treatment and should take some drugs to cure them?

delayed2sleep

January 6th, 2012 at 3:24 pm

Good question; the answer is no. The definition of the disorder includes the difficulty or impossiblilty of meeting “society’s expectations” in this regard, or wording to that effect. BTW, one properly refers to “management” rather than “treatment”, as no cure is possible at this time.

Seira

January 12th, 2012 at 12:10 pm

Thank you so much for writing this, I’ve had a problem as long as I can remember. I can’t fall asleep before five and now that I have two children, they wake me up at 7 every morning. I feel like a zombie all of the time. I lie awake for 8+ hours every night willing myself to sleep. I have tried literally everything and NOTHING works. I am actually in tears right now because I know my babies will wake me up in three hours and I already feel like a zombie. I haven’t even been to sleep yet!
I was starting to feel like I had lost my mind.

I wish I could just delay my sleep, I wish I could do shift work, I wish there was some way for me to stop feeling so useless and miserable all the time. I wish I didn’t have to be this way.

I don’t nap. I don’t drink caffeine, I don’t smoke, I turn off the TV and computer and just lay in my pitch black silent room for eight hours every night. Then I wake up every morning and take care of my kids, I excercise early in the day even though it feels like torture. I’ve tried sleeping pills, which didn’t work at all. My doctor put me on antidepressants, I took them even though I wasn’t depressed, just tired. I am terrified to take my kids anywhere because I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep at the wheel.

My mom said something to me the other day and I screamed at her. I am the most docile person on the planet, I don’t think I’ve ever screamed at anyone.

Please someone give me some advice, I cannot live my life like this.

joe

January 12th, 2012 at 7:18 pm

Is there no one who can help with the kids in the morning? You NEED to sleep and are going to be almost useless much of the day otherwise. I don’t know what your finances are, if you are married, his work schedule, other family or anything of that nature although you need help and trying to solve the problem by taking drugs isn’t the answer.

I don’t know what country you live in either although some places you can get financial assistance to help pay for things like babysitters. Especially if you have a medical condition that is inhibiting in some way. Can you get a dr’s note- or whatever is required? Fill out the needed paperwork and see what happens.

Alexxx

January 14th, 2012 at 12:53 am

first of all you have to start by thinking positive: 1.You have been blessed with two beautiful angels, so that makes you very special and happy, 2. You are not crazy, so you really don’t need all those psychiatric treatments, 3. you are NOT USELESS, because you have a purpose: your kids must become your pride and your greatest work of art in the years that will come!
Then you must really calm down and do what ever you can to “steal” all the rest you can get: so if your babies are sleeping daytime you should sleep along with them… So, napping, as you will see in time, it’s not something bad, it might just save your life. And when the night comes and your angels get their longest sleep, dedicate your time to yourself: be pretty (or beautiful), cook (or learn how to), read, chat, do whatever you want or feel that you can and wish to do… When your batteries are going down, just crush in your bed and sleep at least 2 hours (from 5 am to 7 am for instance…or from 3 am to 7 am, when your babies wake up…3-4 hours is best, especially when you KNOW you’ll get some more during day). You will see in time that some small improvements.
As you can see, turning your TV and internet off and laying awake in darkness, in my opinion, it’s not a good idea…it’s more than depressing. Do not exercise in the morning! Do it in the evening, or late evening, when you’ll eventually wake up after your babies last nap. Tire yourself by loving yourself and your babies.
Make your room “sleep friendly”: nice colors that can suggest sleep in your subconscious (blue&white), pillows, comfy matrix and anything else which would be associated in your mind with the desire to sleep…
It’s not much, what I’ve said, it might be stupid or too idealistic, but I really tried to help, with a small piece of advice, as other good people did when I asked for!

joe

January 14th, 2012 at 3:28 am

Nice try. I think you missed the problem she is having though. She needs to find someone who can take care of her children during the hours in which she is able to sleep. She says she can’t sleep during the other hours. Which is understandable. Nobody is saying she isn’t dedicated to her children. She would be doing them a disservice by not handing them off to someone else for looking after. It isn’t the amount of time you spend with your children. It is the quality of the time that matters. She is just going to be in a bad mood and/or non-functional if she doesn’t get the sleep she needs. That isn’t good for anyone. Trust me. I have a mother who is… umm psychotic and a large part of that stems from the lack of sleep. She doesn’t need drugs. She needs help with the children so she can sleep.

Mike

January 14th, 2012 at 3:58 am

Alexxx, Your posts have a very religious undertone to them and don’t help very much for someone who is seeking medical advice. Trying to keep a positive attitude in life is a great thing to do, but positive thinking isn’t a cure for all of our problems.

For anyone who’s interested, there’s a great book titled ‘Bright-Sided — How Positive Thinking is Undermining America’ by Babara Ehrenreich. She talks about how this way of thinking has brought on disaster (financial crisis) for America, and other parts of the world.

Stuart

January 16th, 2012 at 6:11 pm

Hi there, I believe I might be suffering from it as well, I can’t fall asleep until 5am not mater how hard I try, I just toss and turn untill then and wake up at 5-5pm every day, I currently live with my dad as my sleep problem is really impacting my job search, I hate it when he calls me lazy, he just doesn’t understand, and it’s so frustrating when people look down on you, by the way I’m 20

joe

January 16th, 2012 at 11:22 pm

We need to call these people out for what they are. Ass holes. You go first!

I know how hard it is. Especially when these people are your survival.

Brad

February 1st, 2012 at 7:58 am

I’ve had this for almost 10 years now too and am also just finishing up college. I haven’t tried anything yet but really want to try melatonin/light therapy. Unfortunately being college and having no money prevents me from doing so.

Instead, for the past few years I have been learning how to make money online. I also just started up an Online Reputation Management business. I am doing this to break away from the “normal people” schedule and live my life the way I want it. I am going to embrace DSPS. The only thing I don’t think I can help is the lack of accomplishment. Even if I get things done I still feel like I always have so much to do and so little time.

Hopefully once I’m done school and begin to make a career out of what I’m doing that will go away. I sure hope so.

Also, I really, REALLY agree on how annoying it is when people call you lazy. I’ve been getting called lazy (upon other names I won’t mention for the sake of keeping this post clean) for as long as I can remember. Friends don’t understand. In fact, NOBODY understands. They all say “It’s not that hard to wake up man everyone has to do it. Just get up”. The truth is I almost physically cannot wake up before 2PM, and usually get up much later than that. It would help me feel a lot better if people could just understand what it feels like feeling immobile in the morning, even when I have an exam to write. I have failed courses due to DSPS because of missing exams or missing almost every class. Do people know what it feels like when you’ve worked hard an entire semester and fail the class because you missed one exam? I’m not a softy but it’s times like that I almost burst out crying wishing I could go back in time and write the exam I could pass in a heart beat.

Sorry for the long rant I just really needed to get this off my chest. If anyone needs a DSPS buddy feel free to email me at x_-f8-_x@hotmail.com.

Cheers,
Brad

delayed2sleep

February 2nd, 2012 at 10:59 pm

To Brian and all commenters:

Circadian Sleep Disorders Network is a new non-profit organization promoting awareness, accommodation, support and research for the Circadian Rhythm Sleep Disorders and their sufferers. The website (under construction) is at http://www.circadiansleepdisorders.org (shortcut: csd-n.org).

Those affected by DSPS (aka DSPD, Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder) are welcome to join.

Breaking Free

How I Learned To Live With DSPS

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