Have you ever tried polyphasic sleeping? Check out the link below and read up on it, then come back here.

http://dustincurtis.com/sleep.html

I once did what he called “The Uberman” for about five days, and I gotta tell you it was the longest month of my life. I decided to schedule my naps for 12, 4, and 8 around the clock.

At first getting to sleep was the problem. I would just lay down for my 20 minutes trying as hard as I could to sleep. After my normal sleep time passed I would drift off for a few moments, but that was it. (I started during the day to make it easier) That first night was simply me staying up all night long, except by the morning I did actually sleep for one 20 minute period.

The second day I felt sluggish and tired all day long. I started sleeping the entire 20 minutes without too much struggle, but between naps I just couldn’t think straight. I was a little worried as the night approached - I was getting so tired I thought I might stay asleep past my twenty.

Staying up until midnight was tough. I went down for my 20 and it passed pretty fast. I willed myself out of bed and decided to drive to the Walmart to walk around for a while to stay awake. I was there for about an hour and headed home to do… something. I turned on some cable channel and forced myself to pay attention. I was never so happy for 4am to come around than ever before.

This time I hit the pillow and my alarm went off immediately. I sat up quickly to keep from passing out again and went to shower. I must have zoned out because the water went cold really fast. That woke me up! I shambled over to my computer to start the work day and realized I was about three hours too early (I worked from home anyway).

I sat there and was actually productive for a couple hours, but as 8am approached I was shaking with anticipation. As soon as the clock ticked over, I was in bed, lights out and asleep instantly. Once again the alarm went off almost before I laid down and I hopped out of bed.

Day three was excruciating. I was literally a zombie. I could not put a coherent sentence together, I drove like I was drunker than usual, and I frequently zoned out for minutes at a time. My nap times were like crackers being doled out to a starving man. It took every ounce of my being to sit up after a nap.

That night, while dreaded, did not end up being as difficult as the daytime. I did another run to Walmart but headed back pretty quick because there were some games I wanted to play on the Xbox. The 4am and 8am sleeps were exactly 20 minutes long, but I recovered better.

The fourth day was the turning point, and not in a good way. After the 8am nap I was in a fog. Everything seemed like it was a dream. My speaking difficulties reached a new low. Not only could I not use more than one syllable every ten minutes, but I slurred those few words that I might as well have just grunted. Maybe that’s what I’m doing.

My time between sleeps degraded into me just sitting on the edge of the couch, rocking back and forth while slapping myself occasionally to stay awake. The 4pm sleep was almost my destruction - I overslept my alarm for 20 minutes. When I woke up it actually made me clear-headed enough to get some work done, but that only lasted for a couple of hours. I spent the last hour or so of my wake period watching the clock.

The last evening of my experiment could not have been any more surreal than if I’d been on salvia. There were points when I couldn’t tell if I was awake or asleep. I would get up to get a snack from the kitchen, pause at the breakfast table and stand there for five minutes trying to remember what I was doing.

I would occasionally see small animals running down my hallway. I also heard noises - lots of noises. Buzzes, beeps, honks - all kinds of mechanical sounds. Walking around was physically painful at this point. The only thing that kept me going was the though that eventually I was going to break through “the barrier” - whatever that was - and be a productive member of society again.

After the 8am sleep, I just couldn’t function anymore. I couldn’t figure out how to put my clothes on for the longest time. Breakfast was a messy affair. I didn’t get any work done at all. I could only think of the upcoming 12pm sleep.

The 12pm sleep was the easiest one I’d done in a while. I woke up feeling fairly refreshed, but that was relative to the prior wake period. I was able to do more than just drool on myself and I thought that I might get through this after all. The 4pm sleep approached and I laid down again, feeling positive about things for the first time in days.

I did not wake up again for twenty hours.I declared the experiment a failure. Even after that long sleep I wasn’t the same for several days. I still experienced zone-outs, hallucinations, and other crazy stuff while I was awake. By the end of the week I was back to normal.

Now I have nightmares about polyphasic sleeping…