[QUOTE=reverett123;336212]This is important stuff. Sleep disturbance can drive you bonkers. In the extreme, say meth addiction, you end up having conversations with the wallpaper and similar hallucinations. .. QUOTE
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And I went, and behold, I saw a white horse…”
The Beast watches and observes, looking for weaknesses, deciding when and where to attack; changing its strategy and tactics as it learns. It has explored our bodies and our minds; it has great power and we are very weak.
And after some time, it figured out the simplest thing: human beings get tired. We have to sleep. The Beast never sleeps. The Beast never rests.
All it has to do to win is wear us down.
And that is easy to do.
Sleep deprivation. The Beast came at me three months ago with a new tactic, a new symptom (that is, new to me. I found other Parkies on the internet who had been attacked in the same way, one of them at the exact same time as me). The new tactic is a game called “No position is tolerable”. It is very simple. Every position of my body is uncomfortable. And not like an uncomfortable sofa; more like being on a planet with crushing gravity. All positions are intolerable; sometimes after a few seconds, sometimes after a few minutes; not more than ten minutes at best. Cannot stay lying on my back; roll to the side and my hip bone feels like it is on hard cement with a very heavy weight on top - it feels likes my hip bone will snap, so I stand up but my upper body fills with cement and is too heavy for my lower body and so I start swaying out of balance in the middle, and then sit down on a chair but that is worse - just look at how your body has to contort itself to sit on a chair - or a toilet, or a car seat. Cannot tolerate it. So sit on the floor - no good - lie on stomach - that’s worse.
I am flopping around from position to position but there is no place in this world where I can rest for 10 minutes. And so, what could be more obvious: I cannot sleep.
The Beast started this new game and just has to sit and watch me get exhausted. That is all it has to do to conquer me, to destroy me. Just keep me awake, by making every position of my body impossible for me to endure. Such a simple plan - brilliant, really.
After three days and nights, hallucinations start. After 5 days, you are crazy, and it gets written down on your chart as “episodes of psychosis” or some such thing. Actually you are perfectly normal, ANYONE, a totally healthy person, not taking drugs, will start to hallucinate. That’s why sleep deprivation is used as torture. You would tell them anything just to be allowed to sleep.
How many Parkies have been given anti-psychotic drugs or institutionalized simply because they need to sleep but are judged to be insane?
“… testing lab rats with continuous sleep deprivation for about two weeks or more inevitably caused death of all the rats in experiments conducted in Allan Rechtschaffen’s sleep laboratory at the University of Chicago. The cause of death was not proven but was associated with whole body hypermetabolism.”...
…The brain's ability to problem solve is greatly impaired. Decision-making abilities are compromised, and the brain falls into rigid thought patterns that make it difficult to generate new problem-solving ideas. Insufficient rest can also cause people to have hallucinations, depression, slow reaction times, panic attacks, hypertension, slurred speech….
John Schlapobersky was tortured by the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1960s.
Here's what he said about sleep deprivation:
"Making a program in which people are deprived of sleep is like treating them with medication that will make them psychotic. I was kept without sleep for a week. I can remember the details of the experience, although it took place 35 years ago. After two nights without sleep, the hallucinations start, and after three nights, people are having dreams while fairly awake, which is a form of psychosis.”
"By the week's end, people lose their orientation in place and time - the people you're speaking to become people from your past; a window might become a view of the sea seen in your younger days. To deprive someone of sleep is to tamper with their equilibrium and their sanity."
In Chapter 17, we printed up cards, the size of business cards, for Parkies to hand out depending on the circumstances. For example:
I have Parkinson’s.
WTF is your excuse?
Or
I have difficulty undressing myself.
Want to be a good citizen?
And now we need a new card to hand out:
I am not psycho.
I just need to have a nap.
http://parkinsonsdance.blogspot.com/...hapter-30.html