[john mount]

The Learning Channel has a series of shows called the 99 Most Bizarre...this that or the other thing. Bizarre surgical mistakes, bizarre stunt disasters, etc. Tonight I watched the ?99 Most Bizarre Sleepwalking Misadventures?.

I watched it because my brother Charlie was interviewed on the show, as an expert on the strange case of Ledru, the famed French detective who supposedly murdered someone while sleepwalking, then got attached to the case and solved it by ultimately naming himself as the guilty party. This is Bizarre Case #93, and you can see it, and Charlie, at about the 53 minute mark in the show.

But I?m bringing it up here because I?ve always been a bit skeptical about some of the beliefs surrounding the phenomenon of sleepwalking. I?ve known people who said they had night terrors, and I?m pretty sure I?ve sleepwalked a few times myself. They had video on the show that seemed to demonstrate some bizarre behaviors by people who appeared to be asleep. One lady made snacks while asleep, another became violent, swinging pillows around and yelling and such. They have stories about people walking into lakes and jumping out windows, and sexually assaulting other people while ?asleep?.

I have no doubt that sleepwalking is a real thing, but it seems to me that a lot of what people blame on sleepwalking is really mental illness, bad behavior they?re trying to excuse, or other natural phenomena. One lady described a demonic/ghostlike thing kneeling on her chest, which sounds an awful lot like the semi-conscious experience of sleep paralysis. I?ve had that experience my whole life ? and it really feels like a demon is there, suffocating you, but since I learned about sleep paralysis I?ve been able to handle and end the experience calmly. So I know it?s a real thing, but it doesn?t have anything to do with real sleepwalking.

And of course they talked about the danger of waking a sleepwalker. I haven?t actually studied this, but this has always seemed to me to be one of those commonly accepted notions that can?t possibly be right. Why on earth would it actually be dangerous to wake a sleepwalker? If someone?s asleep and you wake them, they just wake up, they don?t die. Why would the concurrent act of walking change the situation so drastically? I don?t believe it does, and I don?t believe a lot of the things that are commonly accepted are really true.

But what do I know? Nothing! So, who does know something about this? I?d be interested to learn.

By the way, Charlie, they gave you the last word on that segment. And nice job with the tongue-twisting phrase ?homicidal somnabulism?!

[CharlieMount]

I had to practice saying "homicidal somnabulism" for ten minutes before they shot the scene.

What gets me are the people who cook and do other complex tasks while "asleep"? How can that be? Shouldn't we have another word for it? "Asleep" doesn't seem accurate.

[john mount]

Yes, right, exactly. Maybe it is a real thing, but is it really 'sleep' ?

I just read a fascinating essay on consciousness today, from the book 'Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement'. I'm not qualified to summarize it here, but I will recommend it because it helped me to look at consciousness in a very different way. I don't mean that the book explains consciousness completely, as that remains as myterious as ever. It's more about how consciousness may have come about. The way the writer describes how consciousness might have come about through evolution, and survived through natural selection, is a perfect example of how illuminating it can be to look at something in an unexpected way. I'd like to see someone apply that level of thought to the old sleepwalking assumptions. I think there's got to be more to sleepwalking than acting out dreams or dream fragments; it has to be some property of consciousness.

Well, it won't be me! Here's the amazon link for that book, in case anyone's interested.





Designhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307277224/sr=8-3/qid=1151919618/ref=pd_bbs_3/102-8328366-8535333?ie=UTF8

[chefcrsh]

Yeah it's strange ...it appears that during the deepest sleep these people become sort of automatons...it seems as if consciousness is not present when a person is somnambulating. The sleepers don't seem to possess any of the hallmarks of a self-aware person.

It begs the question, if the self is not present, where is it? Is it just turned off?

I have seen quite a few shows on Discovery and NGC (PBS and BBC productions) on this.

The wikipedia lacks sources but WebMD, The NSF and Stanford all have some good info.

[HiEv]

And of course they talked about the danger of waking a sleepwalker. I haven't actually studied this, but this has always seemed to me to be one of those commonly accepted notions that can't possibly be right. Why on earth would it actually be dangerous to wake a sleepwalker? If someone's asleep and you wake them, they just wake up, they don't die. Why would the concurrent act of walking change the situation so drastically?

The only "danger" I can think of is that the person might fall over as they transit from sleep to wakefulness.

Although if it was a "Scanners"-type head explosion thing, that would be kind of cool. :twisted: :wink:

[chefcrsh]

And all the sites say the myth about waking them up is a myth. Some of them go as far as to stress that it is dangerous to allow them to continue somnambulation.

[Q]

My son used to sleepwalk when he was younger. He'd be up walking around as if to find something. My wife would simply guide him back to bed and he'd fall back to sleep... or whatever. He'd never remember the next day that he'd been up.

Q

[CharlieMount]

In the case of Rober Ledru there was more than sleep and fatigue going on. The Learning Channel didn't really use this part of the story, but Ledru was also suffering the effects of Mercury Poisoning from the rub downs he got as a "Cure" for his syphillis. This had been going on for years. Between the Syphillis and the Mercury the man was slowly going mad. So who knows if he was actually "sleepwalking" or just nuts?

The Learning Channel is running the episode again July 6th at 8pm and 11pm (Eastern Time, I guess) if anyone wants to see me. As John said, I appear near the end of the hour long show.

[strummer]

I always thought that the idea that it was dangerous to wake a sleepwalker was an old one and was a worry that the shock of waking up in an unexpected context would bring on a heart attack or the like.

[biochemist]

Wasn't there a story recently about a prescription drug that caused sleep walking/eating/painting in some of the patients? I swear I saw a video of this, but now I can't find the story anywhere.

[biochemist]

I figured it out: Ambien. Hard to say if this really qualifies as doing something in your sleep, but . . .

Here's a testimonial:

My wife also takes it and she experiences the side effects, which I would classify as bonuses for me. She was given a prescription for Ambien after having her third child. It helped somewhat when she took 1 to 1 1/2 on an empty stomach. Well one night when she took two, when I got into bed with her, I thought I was with someone else. She was very horny, very nasty, and extremely hot. She did things she normally doesn't care to do. She then began asking about all the people in the room. Well, I thought it was humerous, so I told her they were here to watch, and did she want to give them a show. She said she did, but she wanted other partners also. Trust me--not normal. So we both did some fantasizing, and we had an incredible experience, about which unfortunately, she remembered nothing in the morning.

[rosie]

that sounds more like a sort of hallucination :?
like the "hot" side effects of rohipnol :roll:

i sleep walk, etc. i remember being sort of aware that i'm really moving in my dream, because of how strange it makes the dream feel. sometimes it is this that wakes me up - sort of the realising i'm dreaming. similarly when i talk in my sleep, it's the sensation of my mouth really moving that wakes me, rather than the sound of my voice.

i've never done anything which seems to require care (like using my gas cooker), or which would seem out of my normal character (like trying to kill someone). maybe this is because i don't dream those things? or that my "awareness" is still there, and has woken me up before, or wouldn't let me? or maybe i just never have yet

i agree with charlie that the fact this guy had syphilis, and had mercury "treatments", is not insignificant in this particular case :wink:

[john mount]

Rosie, have you actually woken up while standing or walking around? I can't imagine what that must be like. When you become aware of moving, in the dream, is it a different feeling from a standard dream? I've often woken myself up after realizing I'm actually moving, or at least struggilng to move, but I've never found myself out of the bed. I usually just slowly become awake, and I become conscious of the sleep paralysis wearing off.

I had a few experiences many years ago that I really can't explain, where I seemed to be conscious but not in a normal way, I was walking around the completley normal, mundane house that I lived in, but the circumstances were a little odd, like all the lights were on but it was night and no one else was home, and I have no memory of an end to the experience. It was associated with the most terrifying nightmare I've ever had, but I'm still not quite sure how. I mean, I don't have any memory of a linear progression from one to the other. I've wondered if this was a sleepwalking episode, but I've never really hard a good description of what it 'feels' like to sleepwalk. How do you know that's what's happening unless you wake up, with a totally clear head, while you're standing up somewhere?

[CharlieMount]

The show featured a woman who would frequently have a waking dream where she couldn't move, and thought she saw a scary woman approach her, and touch her, and she felt absolutely terrified, and completely paralyzed. It was interesting because it sounds exactly like the experience of UFO abductees. They talk about not being able to move, and strange people ("aliens") approaching them and touching them. I'm sure it's a common nightmare that occurs during REM when the body shuts itself, ostensibly so you can't hurt yourself moving around trying to act out a dream. (Maybe people who sleep walk and do complex tasks and see visions have this REM "shut-off switch" missing?)

[john mount]

Yes, that's the experience I've had many, many times. It really feels like a solid person or 'prescence' is sitting on your chest, stopping you from moving and sometimes from breathing. It's a terrifying physical sensation, and it's often accompanied by dream thoughts or images of darkness, moving things like shadows, and thoughts of malevolent intentions coming at you. It's awful.

But once I found out about sleep paralysis, I was able to think about that whenever it happened, and it was like a light turning on in my consciousness. By understanding the truth behind the apparent reality, I was able to make all the scary stuff go away entirely, and just relax as the paralysis wears off and I wake up. Once you realize it's happening, you wake up pretty quickly. I can totally understand how some people can mistake the experience for an alien probing or whatever. Just another case of science chasing away the bogeymen!

[CharlieMount]

I used to be a lucid dreamer. Every few months I'd have a crystal clear lucid dream that I could control. That was fantastic. I could fly, with complete control, and remember it all later after waking. I think it came from all the OOBEs I tried to induce as a teenager, and all the mediation and relaxation techniques I got from various acting teachers. I can't do it anymore. There's something to be said for losing your "magic" as you age. But I still have pleasant dreams. Ad I'm still so sufficently in control of sleep that when I do have a bad dream I can make myself aware that I'm dreaming, and wake up.

But I miss flying.

[GrouchyOldDave]

You lucid dreamers are lucky. I think I might remember maybe 2 or 3 dreams a year, and then only snippets, and those snippets disappear within a few minutes and are gone forever.

I'm as "unvisual" a thinker as you can imagine, and my ability to visualize anything, even very familiar faces or objects, is really minimal. I actually think in words rather than pictures.* I'm fine with recognition of objects, faces, etc., but fail miserably at actually visualizing and describing details. I wonder if that has something to do with my inability to remember dreams.

Anyway, it's easy for me to say you lucid dreamers are lucky. I should probably just say "different" because I might not enjoy it if I had it, and I'm not suffering for lack of lucid dreams.

* I am not saying my thoughts are literally words (how tedious would that be?), but I have heard many people describe the way they think in terms that are more similar to a motion picture, whereas for me it really is closer to an audio book with a few powerpoint illustrations.

[CharlieMount]

The only time I have trouble with dreams is during the onset of flu. I almost always have one miserable night, when the fever is just coming on, where I dream the same thing over and over again. I don't mean the same dream, or even sequence of events, over and over again. I mean the same thing over and over again. It could be something simple like turning on a light switch. But imagine dreaming that, just that, over and over again, hundreds of times, all night long. Switch on. Switch on. Switch on. Switch on. Switch on. Switch on...AHHHHHHH!

It's the Chinese Water Torture of Dreams.

[CharlieMount]

Extremism in defense of apes is no vice.
-- Planet of the Apes

Great quote. Isn't that from "Beneath the Planet of the Apes"?

[chefcrsh]

I think most of my strange derams (have had lucid as well as paralasis) come from things I ingested as a teen.

Seriously though I have read that quite a scary amount of people under anesthesia remain conscious but unable to move. Some even feel pain duirng surgery. I woke up in the middle of a recent endoscopy, but It just felt strange and was even stranger to see my insides on the screen (though they also gave me a dvd for later fun with friends) and the doctor looking intently at them.