Sleep, glorious sleep

I remember when I took my very first philosophy class at BYU, there was a foreign student that entitled one of his creative philosophical writings, "Sleep, oh you pieces of death."  Turns out that it is a plagiarism of an Edgar Allen Poe poem, "Sleep, those little slices of death; oh how I loath them."  Whether or not this foreign philosophy student got the title correct, he caught the meaning: if man (or woman) didn't have to sleep, we could get so much more done!  He went on, in his writing, to talk about all the things that you could accomplish if you didn't need to sleep.  Poe, and presumably that student, were a little bit crazy--as in there was something neurologically wrong with them!

Sleep, in truth, is a little gift to man (and woman).

I, personally, experienced what happens to a body (my body) when it's deprived of sleep--a small bout of the psychological illness called mania.  If I didn't sleep, if a human being doesn't sleep, they will die!  After my coma (how many of you can begin a sentence like that--"After my coma..."), when my son and his mother left me alone at home to go to California, I spent two weeks with little or no sleep.  I was manic.

During that period of no sleep, I did experience grandiose ideas (ideas that are magnificent and seem like a good idea to the temporarily insane, but to a rational mind they are simply delusions or delusional), although mine were not on a scale anywhere near what some documented cases have been written about by psychologists: "Since real estate is so expensive on Manhattan Island, it would be a great idea to make a huge profit by buying 100 square inch pieces of land right on the corner of Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue, that go up, vertically, above the street.  Then sell them when the cost increases!"  Imagine, a column of real estate that increases in value as time goes on, and that you can sell once the price is right to make a windfall profit!

Sleep, however, is the antidote to most illnesses.  Sleep can be the elixir that anyone and everyone needs for that which ales them!  As I went through my Abnormal Psychology class at UVSC (that eventually became UVU), I was amazed at the number of illnesses or disorders that had the root cause or a contributing factor being lack of sleep!  I imagined doing a Thesis for my Master's Degree on the effects of not getting enough sleep and the pathologies that stem from it.

Sleep, glorious sleep.  I know that all I needed to do to not have another manic episode was to get enough sleep.  I taught myself to be able to sleep under any condition (given that it was a time to sleep and not the middle of the day or the middle of an event that I was doing...), and that has been an answer to any sleeping trouble that I may or do have!  Sleep, glorious sleep.

Everyone knows that one of the things that your (that's right, even YOU!) body needs to stay alive and well is a certain amount of R.E.M. sleep.  You didn't know that?  It makes sense though, and you think you might have heard something about that before, right?  Dreams are your body's and your brain's natural method of "decompressing" or "processing" the events that go on during the hours that you are awake and keep your brain healthy and active and healthy.  Everyone needs to decompress and everyone needs to process.  Your brain does too...

JPS