Slaying the daemons inside. The hardware glitch

29.IX.2014. After a recurrence of the glitch

There have been years since it didn’t happen to me anymore.

Alike Bruce Lee, I have my inner daemons to fight with . They’re not consuming me,  they’re not striving to get out at any time, most of the  people that know me have never seen them, but I carry them with me, as part of my inner core  and from time to time they give me  boogie nights . Like last night.

They will not die until I do. They’re a constant  reminder that nature is  not perfect but full of errors, unfinished matters, things that just work .And that is itself  a thing that makes me outrageously slap the shit out of  any  naive dreamer stating that nature is perfect and reminding me about how   beautiful and well arranged it is in  its complexity . Well, how about the bugs , guys? 

Today we speak about a certain type of bugs that’s documented a bit , but because it has a rather rare occurrence there’s not so much written about it.

This is Recurrent Isolated Sleep Paralysis , or Sleep Paralysis.  

 Or this . Or , if you understand nothing of science  , you may have an idea  of Incubus/ Succubus .

It first occurred to me when I was  close to 14 years old.

The story.

Back in the day , I was oscillating between   sleeping  very little , like 3-4  hours a night and having weeks when sleeping afternoons and full nights.

I have found out later that this sort of sleep “schedule” can cause   occurrences of  this issue.

It happened  to me in an early morning .  I slept only few hours , while I had the clock setup to ring at , I believe it was 6:30.

I woke up when it rang  , but I was too tired and I went back for a 10 minutes nap. That clock was something alike  the one below . There was no snoozing option back then. You would have needed to  move the trigger and  to wind back the alarm for about 30 seconds ,  but while this time you would sober up. So I didn’t know anybody , back then , who would snooze this way.  Hence , neither did I. In exchange , one would have relied on his own internal clock to snooze . And we all know how reliable that is.  These clocks have marked my childhood,  but about this another time.

Nevertheless, I was, at the time ,  and even much later in life able to sleep in frames of  10-15 minutes.

This is what I have tried in that unfortunate day. I needed to wake up at latest at 07:00, to quickly dress up and go to school, so that would have meant 3 more naps of 10 minutes each .

Except that at the last nap I stalled between  being awake and  falling asleep. I knew all along that I was in bed , asleep, but I wasn’t actually asleep .  I could partly see the clock and the minutes passing, but being unable to move any muscle , or to wake up.  I couldn’t call this sleep , because there was no rest involved , neither loss of conscience , nor dreaming.  I have only fought to wake up for  40 minutes .  It was bloody hard to move the first finger , and although I would see the minutes passing by , the  perception was never of 40 minutes , but something like a couple of minutes , perhaps 5.  At the point I was able to move my finger  , I  got defreezed , I jumped straight on my feet and couldn’t believe that those minutes really passed that fast.

And from that point on , it kept on recurring through all the  highschool time .  I am not sure it was in any way related to the fact that I was  drinking , maybe  a bit  too much and I was smoking too back then. What is certainly , that during high school this would trigger only when I was oversleeping  in a period . And I did my best to avoid such times , by under sleeping.  Still , at list twice a year , I had to fight with it. The not so funny aspect was that if after such an episode  if I would immediately try to fall asleep again , say it would have been in the middle of the night , I would fall right back in that paralysis trap. That’s  at least annoying .  Nevermind the hallucinations with daemons riding me  and not allowing me to breath  ( see Succubus/ Incubus  marks above). Of Course they weren’t real, but imagine that  I had to figure out myself what’s the source of these  and there was no internet back then. Normally , one would be prone to fall into religion and think that these ought to be “real” daemons since there’s no  medical explanation at hand. But I always  searched for a scientific reason behind it , as I refused to believe that out of the blue some  daemon beamed up on top of myself and tried to strangle me.

I thought it’s maybe  some sort of epilepsia, so I looked into this direction.  But I wasn’t fitting any symptoms .I am pretty , pretty sure that should I have gone to the doctor  with this I would have ended up in a mental hospital , especially given the fact that there’s such one in my village.

One other reason that made me seek for medical , scientific explanation was that during childhood I also experienced induced/ sometimes self induced  syncope  .  I know you may read and ask yourself like ” What the fuck is that ?” , or “What the fuck is wrong with you, mate ?” To explain what that is ?  You may try to catch with both hands  your both carotid arteries  and keep them pressed . After a while you will loose  your consciousness . Of course if you press it yourself it is difficult to  trigger it , because your hand becomes weak and you recover while you lose your capacity to press your arteries , but if someone else does it to you ,  you fall down  within 15 to 40 seconds.  The experience is  mostly hallucinogenic  and in some  aspects interesting. Why did I do it ? Well, there weren’t too many drugs, or other substances to get wasted, available back then in a village , so we had to be inventive. End of digress.

One time, during high-school,  I wanted to let go.  I was living at my aunt with a cousin . I believe we both came from some late drinking , or so , and we were both sleeping in same bed.  I woke up for  no reason in the middle of the night and when falling back asleep I felt it happening. I wanted to let it happen this time , to see where it goes  if I don’t fight back. I don’t know how long it lasted this one.

All I know is that I felt myself colder and colder. I could hear my heart beating slower and slower ( this could have been only a perception). I felt like falling, although I am pretty sure there was no falling involved , so it must have been a hallucination , then I started to hear some background noise  and I got scarred . However , at that point , I had some sort of feeling that I will not be able to reset myself. I don’t know why, but I felt too fuckin’ cold. There was no way I could move so I wanted to scream . To call my cousin.   I didn’t call him , but I roared  something that he heard.  I heard him asking me if I am ok. I couldn’t say  that I am not , so I roared again something. Probably all I could do is to strongly breath like snoring , or apnea, or so.

But he moved me, while pushing me and this was all I needed to reboot .  I don’t remember  what I told him at that point. Don’t even know if he remembers even if he reads this, as I am not sure  he reads English that well. Maybe.  But from that point on , I am leaving with the feeling that if I am not fighting when it happens , I will die.

This night I was sleeping next to my child when it caught me . I am strong now. It only takes me few minutes to reset and I know how to fall back asleep without being trapped again .  But I wake up still scared. So , No!  nature is not perfect. Human nature …doesn’t even heading towards that direction. I just found a workaround.

The reason I am writing this in English  is just to make it useful for more people. If you research this on the internet  you find out that it’s not actually such a big deal . But hell it can be scary and misleading .
Anyhow, apparently, you don’t die from it, but with it. And there is no medication, but make sure you’re tired and not an insomniac so you can transition fast into the sleep state.
Shorter the transition, less are the chances to be trapped in the process.
Sex helps.
And for fuck sake the daemons you may see are only shadows of your imagination.

Not publishing now . Collecting data.

30.VI.2015

And it happened again .Damn. Wasn’t sleeping too much . Was not too tired. Don’t know what. Was a mild one , cause I caught it fast.

Still scared. My world is not  dark. But my mind.

Publishing it now , as I  forgot about it since too long. Just in case you wonder why the fuck am I  not sleeping at night like regular people.

For me , seems not a bug anymore , but a feature… like any programmer would say.