Drink. Drive. Go To Jail.

Talk about having some highs and lows. Starting after my 1pm nap, I began to feel like I was coming out of the adaptation period. My body felt rested, and the fog that had set in around my head was beginning to break up; things were looking good. That is, until 11pm, when all of a sudden, I found myself locked in a battle with the sleep monster—I thought I had it on the run. Continuing pretty much till 7am, when I took Dizzy out, I was experiencing serious fatigue. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I couldn’t not concentrate on anything. It was bad.

During this time, I read a bunch of other people’s notes about their polyphasic experiments. It seemed almost everyone else was talking about their 20-minute nap, not their 30-minute nap. Maybe a little more research should have gone into this before I jumped in and gave it a try. Anyway, I went back to my primary source for how it works, Steve Palina’s Polyphasic Sleep, and found that even he clarified a few days into his experiment by stating in his Day 6 writeup, “30 minutes maximum with actual time spent asleep of 15-20 minutes”.

Oh really? I have more than likely been exceeding that with my pre-nap “relaxation” periods, which have become more and more nodding off into probably stage 1 and/or 2 of sleep. I’m going to start setting my countdown alarm for 25 minutes to see if I can shed some more of this drowsiness; it’s starting to get old.

Other than that negative burst, though, I am beginning to see how this might actually work. I still think it’s insane that I’ve only slept 9 hours in the past 3 days, but maybe it’s more insane to sleep 27 hours there, when you only need 9. Who’s to say?

Here are my notes for Day 3:

Nap 1 – 1pm-1:30pm Yay. For the first time, I was able to sleep during the 1pm nap. I actually fell asleep just before 1 and was woken by my cell phone at 1:30. I woke up briefly at 1:10, feeling refreshed and ready to go, but decided to stay in bed the whole 30 minutes; I then drifted off again. I don’t know what the right decision was. I’m just happy to finally get some midday sleep.

3:00pm Even though I’m starting to crash again, for the past two hours, I’ve felt somewhat normal. I mean, I’m not completely dragging like I have been for the past 20 hours or so. My body feels somewhat rested. My head is still a little foggy, and I know that if I were to close my eyes, it would be easy to fall asleep. Still, even this modest progress back towards normalcy is nice. I can’t wait until I feel alert for all of my 21 waking hours. This will rule!

Nap 2 – 5pm-5:30pm Ooh baby! I started the timer at 4:59 and woke up at 5:30. I remember wondering if I was going to sleep or not, but I don’t think I was wondering that very long. I woke up pretty groggy, but now, 25 minutes later (after tea and toast), I feel the best I’ve felt since I started this—easily a 7 out of 10.

One of the side-effects of this experiment is that I’ve become very conscious of my body’s routine right before it goes to sleep. I haven’t learned anything extraordinary, but being more aware of one’s self is always a good thing in my book. I kind of feel like I’ve bonded with myself. Ah.

8pm This is, hands down, the best awake period so far. I don’t really feel tired at all. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is having to physically prevent myself from sleeping and 10 is the equivalent of normal monophasic rested, I’d say I’m easily at a 7. Things are looking good.

Nap 3 – 9pm – 9:30pm It’s just a day filled with successes. I finally slept during the 9 o’clock nap! I didn’t slip immediately off, but I’m pretty sure it was within the first ten minutes. And again I woke up on time. I’m still a little groggy right as I wake up. I hope it wears off, and I have another rocking awake period like the last one.

Nap 4 – 1am – 1:30am Yowch! I’m definitely not there yet. While taken as a whole, today has been rocking compared to yesterday, the period between nap 3 and 4 reminded me that it ain’t over yet. Erin and I started watching a few episodes of Scrubs around 11:30, and by 12:30, I was literally pinching myself to keep me from nodding off.

The nap was pretty normal, though. I woke up once at 1:10am, realized I wasn’t oversleeping and then went back to sleep. I woke up at 1:25 because Dizzy, our black lab, barked some surely evil-intending people passing on the sidewalk—of all the nerve, to use our sidewalk. You tell ‘em Diz.

4:38am It’s amazing how tired I get just before a scheduled nap. I don’t know if my body is beginning to expect the nap, or if the prescribed nap every four hours is based on the ability to last between naps. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t go much longer than 4—at least at this point.

Nap 5 – 5:00am – 5:30am Pretty standard nap. I did sleep on my back this time, though. I’m very groggy as I write this (5:44am). I’m beginning to wonder if the 30 minutes are too long. Most sleep recipes like this suggest 20-25 minutes. I’ll have to read more Steve Pavlina, to find out what made him decide to shorten his naps.

Nap 6 – 9:00am – 9:30am I tried setting the alarm for 25 minutes instead of 30 to see if I feel any drowsier or not. It seems that most people suggest 20-30 minutes, allowing 5-10 minutes to get to sleep. Since I would go to bed 15 minutes before my actual nap time, I might have been experiencing some of the early stages of sleep before I started the countdown, thus slipping past REM and into a deeper sleep by the end.

So far, I feel a little more awake than normal. Of course, it could just be that the sun is out.

The Food

Breakfast Good ol’ oatmeal with flax seeds, apple juice, and chamomile tea.

Lunch Tempeh tamale pie and green beans.

Snack around 5:45pm Buttered toast and rose tea.

Dinner Vegetable Masala Stew and a whole lot of yum!

Desert A bit of vanilla ice cream.