Intro to Polyphasic Sleep | First attempt (lasted 30 days) | Second Attempt (lasted 7 days) | Third Attempt (ongoing)

As I sit here writing this, I’m in a damn good mood. So I’m going to start with a relevant joke. I’m not a vegetarian, I’m just off my chops.

You see, ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, I think I’m getting past the horrific polyphasic sleep adaption period. But first, let’s talk about what I wrote in the title of this page – the minor setback.

Last night my girlfriend and I were watching movies, so we grabbed the mattress off the bed and had it in the lounge room as we do sometimes. We stayed up until about midnight, and she went to bed, I stayed up. I started feeling tired but I pushed it until about 3.30 without a nap. That was my first mistake. The second mistake is that when I woke up from my 20 min nap, I got up for a bit, but instead of turning the lights on (I couldn’t – didn’t want to wake the missus) I sat around in darkness. After about half an hour I went back to bed and napped a couple of times, eventually setting an alarm for the wrong time and oversleeping. Luckily my backup alarm woke me so I only ended up sleeping for an hour.

However, even just oversleeping by 40 minutes really messed me up. I had the biggest headache, extreme grogginess (I was more groggy than at the start of this experiment when I was massively sleep-deprived!) and I had nausea. Interestingly though, I didn’t feel like going back to sleep. The idea of it actually seemed horrible to me. Maybe my body knew it would make my symptoms worse?

I guess I was a little disappointed because I’ve been saying “there’s no chance I’m going to sleep-in” and the only reason I did was pure complacency/not being organised enough. I’m not hanging on to it though – oversleeping by 40 mins is not much compared to what some others have reported. I’d hate to wake up 10 hours later going “what the hell happened?”

So now the good. Want to know how I am right now, at the end of the night?

I’m f—ing excellent.

One of the benefits people report when they get over the adjustment period of polyphasic sleep is increased confidence, more energy, more alertness and often even euphoria. I’m here to tell you, holy sh– it’s true. As hard as I struggled on Day 2 and especially Day 3, from 10am today I have been INSANELY energetic, far beyond the point of manic. My brain has been on overdrive, I’ve had a billion photography ideas (and taken quite a few photos I’m really really happy with). I’ve been CONFIDENT, way way way way way more than I’ve been for years. I’ve been chatting to every stranger I meet, smiling at everyone, bargaining prices down at shops and have felt so confident in my skin. I have spent the entire day talking at a million miles an hour, I’ve had to slow my words down to make sure people can understand me. It’s like my brain is on overdrive. I’ve had a billion thoughts in my head all at once and it feels fantastic. I would go through a month of sleep deprivation for just a day of feeling like this, and the amazing thing is it’s only taken me 6 days to become adjusted to polyphasic sleep.

I decided this was the best time to test the limits of how far I can go without napping. Almost every other polyphasic sleeper mentions only being able to go 5-7 hours without a nap, and 7-10 if they have a coffee. I decided I’d be happy with anything around 6-8 hours without any form of caffeine, sugar or other stimulant to help me. It’s not like I want to down a coffee every time I want to stay awake (getting away from dependence on coffee was the reason I started this experiment!) Oh, and I’d be spending the day out and about, shopping with my girlfriend, so if I suddenly crashed it would take at least an hour for me to get home to have a nap. Bit of a risk maybe?

I can’t believe how wrong everyone was when they say 5-7 hours is about all you comfortably want to do. I had absolutely no trouble getting through hours of shopping, walking around, shopping some more, shopping a bit more and oh wait, shopping some more. Any guy will tell you the most sleep-inducing activity is following your girlfriend around a shopping centre; yet I had no problems at all. I did feel like I “should” sleep, but I wasn’t drowsy or about to fall asleep. It was more like my body was recommending that I sleep, like a voice in the back of my head, but one I could (and did) quite easily push aside.

So I figured I might push it some more and see what happens. My girlfriend and I went on a 2 hour walk around town and again, without any form of caffeine, I felt absolutely positively amazing. “On top of the world” would be the best description. I took a lot of photos, saw a lot of friendly people, found a lot of nice new locations around the place and had a generally-awesome time.

And guess what? It’s 9pm now as I’m writing this, and I still feel over-the-top energetic, happy, confident and on-top-of-the-world. I have never in my life taken drugs but I’m sure this must be a thousand times better. This euphoria hasn’t stopped for a single second in almost 12 hours so far. Polyphasic sleep kicks ass.

Phew! I’ll calm down a bit to talk about the next interesting thing this polyphasic sleep has caused. Earlier I mentioned dreaming and sleeping at the same time. I’ve experimented with it a bit and I’ve found I can induce this state if I meditate as I lay down to sleep. I slow down my breathing and every time I breathe in I say in my head, “I am relaxed.” As I breathe out I say, “I am dreaming.” It only take a few seconds (seriously, less than 30 seconds) and I’m straight into “sleeping/awake world.” In this state I’m conscious of the real world around me, and can hear things, feel things like an itchy arm and the sheet against my skin, I can even talk if I want or open my eyes. But while all that is happening, I’m also “dreaming”. The best way to describe it is it’s like I’m watching a movie play on a big screen right in front of my forehead. It starts with meditating being the dominant thing (I’m concentrating mostly on meditating) and it’s like I gradually become aware than there’s a movie playing in front of me but I’m not giving it all my attention. The longer I meditate, it’s like somebody gently turns the volume up and I start to focus on the movie rather than the meditation.

When I’m watching this movie, I can’t directly control the events but I can change the scene, or direct someone to do something. I can also change characters and become anyone I want to. I’ve tried pretending to be a soldier right in the middle of a warzone (that was awesome) and I’ve tried being a little kid in the middle of a classroom (this was very realistic – everything in the room seemed a lot taller than normal and the teacher was a little scary…) Just like watching a movie in real life, I have reactions to the events. If someone does something funny, because I’m also conscious while dreaming, I find it funny. If something weird happens (which happens all the time in dreams!) I’ll think about how odd that is.

As fun as that seems, I’m saving the best for last. When I was having my 9.30am nap, I was deep in the middle of sleeping and was having a dream. There were 2 friends standing in a store and one of them was talking to the sales assistant. Suddenly one of the men let out the biggest fart ever known to man, but bless his heart, he kept on talking to the assistant and pretended nothing happened. The two guys left and as soon as they were outside they started cracking up laughing, and as they cackled away I started violently shaking with laughter and woke myself up. Damn that’s cool.

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