I learned something new today at work by chatting to 2x colleagues: “Stephanie” and “Suzanne”.
I was complaining about my insomnia – and Suzanne recommended I try “Night Nurse”, as both her husband and herself find it works during times of sleeplessness. So I bought a big bottle of the stuff on my lunch break from the Pharmacy!
We ended up talking about sleeping pills, and I described an experience I had when my wife gave me one of her’s which totally freaked me out. I was laying there in bed thinking “this isn’t working, I still can’t sleep”, when the next thing I knew – I was walking around my bedroom and things looked a little trippy.
The bedroom light was turned on, I didn’t remember getting out of bed – and my wife wasn’t in the room or in bed at all. That’s when I realised that I must have been dreaming, because I knew I should be laying in bed next to my wife in the dark.
It didn’t seem like a dream though because I could feel the floor under my feet, so I walked over to the bed to perform an experiment. I started rubbing my hands on the covers because I knew I would be able to feel everything I touched with my hands – as if it were completely real and I was actually there.
Sure enough, I could feel the bed sheet with my hands – every sensation was completely real – yet I knew that I was actually asleep. This started to freak me out. So I tried to wake myself up to prove that I hadn’t gone completely mad and that I was actually asleep in bed.
I began shaking my head violently and it took perhaps 40 seconds, which seemed more like 10 minutes at the time before I finally woke up – in the dark, still lying in bed next to my wife. I woke up shaking my head in bed and was panic stricken with fear. – I explained to Jacquie what had happened, but she just looked at me like I’d gone a bit mad.
After hearing this, Suzanne told me that both her husband and Suzanne had experience something called “night terrors”, in which you become completely paralysed with fear when you are asleep and you can only move your eyes. After Stephanie confirmed this, and said that it happened after breaking-up in a relationship and being on her own – several times – I realised that I too had experienced one of these “night terrors”.
MY NIGHT TERROR:
In my night terror, I was laying on my back in bed trying to get to sleep, and the next thing I knew – I head the bedroom door open and heard someone walking into my bedroom. The thing was I knew I was completely on my own – so I became very scared wondering who the hell was walking into my room in the middle of the night shortly after breaking up with my wife.
I wanted to turn my head to look to see if I could see somebody, or perhaps turn a light on or something – or even speak – but I was completely paralysed! – I was unable to move a single muscle of my body – yet I was fully concious.
Then, the footsteps walked around to the side of the bed that Jacquie slept on when we were still together – and I not only heard it, but I felt somebody climb into bed next to me. I even then heard a little moan of a voice and it sounded exactly like Jacquie’s moan as if she was pleased to be finally lying next to me.
I cannot explain the sheer and utter terror which filled me at this moment – I was unable to move, not sure if I was awake or dreaming and wonderfing if somebody had actually just gotten into bed with me. Perhaps 2 seconds after the moan – I jolted upright and I had control of my muscles again. I was sweating and completely out of breath with panic.
I turned the light on and saw that there was nobody in bed next to me, and nobody in the room with me. It took me quite a while to get back to sleep after that. The strange thing about it was that if I was asleep – then the point of dreaming and waking up were completely seamless – I was unable to tell the difference between the dream and reality and all of my perceptions were continual (including what I could see and feel and even the exact position of where I was laying at the time.
It kinda make me feel better knowing what I had experienced all those months ago – and seeing that other people have also experienced this phenomenon – at least I know I’m not completely crazy – but I can tell you that one was bad enough – and I hope to God that I never have another Night Terror as long as I live!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_terrors
Actually, upon reading Wikipedia – I think what I actually experienced was sleep paralysis which came with it’s own “very real” hallucination. This means I probably was awake and concious – but I was also temporarily paralysed and hallucinating too! – Shit! – That makes me think twice about trying LSD – I always wanted to try LSD so I could experience a hallucination, but I no longer think hallucinations are funny – they’re terrifying because you can’t tell the difference between reality and psychological trickery – and that is very frightening!
Then again, no matter how bad your hallucination is when taking acid – you can tell yourself that you’re hallucinating – you can expect it since you invited it into your brain. But when it shows up uninvited like that – it’s pretty freaky.
