Thread by @outliersgeorg

thinking about how one of the ways growing up & living with delayed sleep phase disorder is, nearly all of my memories of mornings and things happening in mornings have been under fairly extreme sleep deprivation

and it's weirdly bittersweet. it's one of the first ways I learned to experiment with altering my consciousness.

but it fucks you up. & everyone demands it from you! think about what it's like when your family, friends, workplace, constantly pressure you to function impaired.

staying up all night can worsen non-24 sleep rhythms, but guess what's the only reliable way for me to be standing up at 8 am?

job interview, you say? congratulations you are semi delirious good luck 🤪

but it's more pernicious than that, and weirder, because these kinds of sleep rhythms are extra common in ADHD and autism, where there's often executive dysfunction; and the effect of acute sleep deprivation can be disinhibiting

so, if you experience excessive inhibition, the first experiences of the sleep-dep drug you are effectively being drugged with by your family and school are exciting and productive! kinda feels weird & bad but you can *do* stuff! you could function like this most days, right?

WRONG. THAT, MY FRIENDS, IS WHERE YOU GET CHRONIC PAIN FROM. Acute sleep dep is emergency mode; chronic sleep dep is when you deplete the reserves you were using. You can no longer heal your joints, fight off viruses, or digest your lunch.

Oh, plus all the stuff that happens if you are loopy and spacey and having weird exhaustion face all the time on the job. Which it turns out is not great for job retention & advancement.

It's a bait and switch. You feel competent for a short while, then everything gives out.

And sleep deprivation *is* normalized, so you don't understand, at first, what it can do to you. That, unmedicated, it's like driving drunk. That when other people come in yawning because they got 6 hours, and you got 2, your experience is fundamentally, materially different.

(Is it harder to find work if you tell them upfront you can't work mornings and avoid places that try to make you? Yes.

Is it easier to stay employed and in the good graces of the people around you once you have a job, if you do that? Also yes!)

Learning all of this has been de-gaslighting myself.

Now I feel like I have the beginnings of a much healthier relationship with sleep deprivation. I still have to use it sometimes, for a doctor appointment or important event, but I refuse to constantly wreck my body anymore.