Mike Birbiglia got used to strange things happening to him when he slept—until something happened that almost killed him. This and other reasons to fear sleep, including bedbugs, "The Shining," and mild-mannered husbands who turn into maniacs while asleep. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks about his fear of sleep, and reports on other people who have very strong reasons of their own to fear bedtime. (8 minutes)Act One: Mike Birbiglia talks about the sleepwalking that nearly killed him. (13 minutes)Act Two: Producers Nancy Updike and Robyn Semien report on critters that can kill sleep: cockroaches and bedbugs. (11 minutes)Act Three: Joel Lovell explains why, as an 11-year-old, he trained himself not to fall asleep, and how that had some unintended consequences. (10 minutes)Act Four: Seth Lind explains how he ended up watching Stanley Kubrick's The Shining when he was six years old, and how it led to two years where every night he had trouble falling asleep and nightmares. (7 minutes)Act Five: For some people, the fear of sleep is linked to the fear of death. We hear from some of them. (5 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.
Chapter 1: What are common fears and experiences related to sleep paralysis?
Having dreams where anything at all can happen. Not in control of our own bodies. Listen to what happened to this woman, Denise.
It wasn't until I was maybe, I don't know, eight or nine years old that one day I woke up and it was like my eyes were open. I was looking around. I just couldn't move. I couldn't move my arms or my legs. I couldn't turn my head. And I felt this, like, weight on my chest. And the first thing I thought was, oh, my God, what happened to me? Was I in a car accident? It lasted for...
I don't know, maybe 30 seconds to a minute. And then I just kind of snapped out of it. And I was really freaked out, and I went and told my mom, you know, I think something's wrong with me. And my family's Mexican, and in Mexico they have this superstition that they say the devil is sitting on your chest when that happens to you. And she said, oh, don't worry.
It was just the devil sitting on your chest. Like, that's supposed to make me feel better.
Oh, oh.
As Denise got older, this paralysis has happened more and more. And sometimes when she's lying there, paralyzed and awake, she hallucinates. She sees family members who aren't there, or she hears them. And sometimes they're mad at her. Though the only time all this happens to Denise is when she takes a nap during the day.
I've definitely avoided taking naps, no matter how tired I was. I mean, I forced myself to survive on like five or six hours of sleep, very little sleep.
It's like that movie where, what's his name, appears as soon as you fall asleep.
Freddy Krueger.
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Chapter 2: How did Mike Birbiglia’s sleepwalking almost kill him?
I had an incident wherein I jumped out of my window. I am bleeding, and I need to go to a hospital. And I'll never forget his reaction, because he just goes, huh. And I thought, this is the best possible reaction I could receive at this juncture. And so I drove myself to the hospital. I checked myself into the emergency room. I had to explain what happened three times.
You know, the nurse and the doctor in the front desk. I'm the Hulk, I'm the Hulk, I'm the Hulk. And... The doctor, God bless him, worked on me until about 5.30 in the morning, and he put 30 stitches in my arms and in my legs. And even he's an emergency room doctor, and even he was like, you should be dead. And I was like, no, you should. I zinged him. I, uh...
And then about 5.30, I drove back to the hotel, and I checked out, and I actually paid for the window like any good window jumper would. And it was $300 for the window and about $49 for the room. And... And I went back to New York and I did what I should have done in the first place when I saw the jackal. I went to a doctor who specializes in sleepwalk disorders.
So now when I go to bed at night, I take a very strong pill and I sleep in a sleeping bag up to my neck. And I wear mittens. So I can't open the sleeping bag. And... So in closing, I think that if it weren't for denial, I wouldn't be a comedian. Because to be a comedian, you have to go on stage those first few years and bomb. And then walk off stage and think, that went great.
Because otherwise you'd never get on stage the next night. You would just think, human beings don't like me. But sometimes denial can kill you. Thank you very much.
Mike Berbiglia, he was recorded at The Moth, which of course has a podcast and a public radio show, their website, themoth.org. Years ago, Mike wrote and directed and starred in a movie based on the true story that you just heard. It's a comedy called Sleepwalk With Me. This American Life and WBEZ produced the film. I was one of the co-writers with Mike.
Carol Kane and Lauren Ambrose are in the cast. You can find it on Prime Video, Apple TV, and many other streaming services. I totally recommend it. It's funny. If you have a sleep disorder of the kind that we've been talking about so far today, there's very effective treatment. See a doctor, okay? There's a little pill called Conipin, like Rabiglia said.
The DVD that Dr. Carlos Schenck made explaining sleep disorders that we heard earlier in the top of the show is called Sleep Runners. Dr. Schenck also has this beautifully put together book about all this called Paradox Lost.
Talk a pill last night just to get to sleep Put me on my back, not on my feet
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Chapter 3: What are the tiniest enemies that disrupt sleep and how do they affect people?
Her face was sweet and chubby, and she wore a fighting Irish baseball cap over her brillowy hair. She put her arm around my shoulders as she led me into their house. It was dark in there, all heavy furniture and curtains, and there was Notre Dame paraphernalia all over the place. A Notre Dame blanket and throw pillow on the sofa. A Notre Dame latch hook rug on the dark-paneled family room wall.
Notre Dame posters all over the bedroom that the brother shared. The kid my age, the one I'd be playing the next day, he barely talked to me, and his older brother spoke only when he wanted to mock the two of us.
We sat in their TV room and watched a college football game while the father, who was also an assistant coach of his son's team, unleashed an endless commentary about blocking and short pass routes and the wishbone offense. Before dinner, I stared into my plate as they said grace. We had pot roast and potatoes, which my mother cooked all the time, but this didn't taste like hers.
Even their ice cubes had a weird smell to them. and after dessert and more endless football talk, we played Atari, which the mother told the two brothers to include me in. She must have sensed my discomfort, because before bed she looked into my eyes and said that if there was anything I wanted, they were just down the hall, that it was no bother to wake them if I needed to.
I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag between the two brothers' beds. They had NFL bedspreads and a Pittsburgh Steelers poster on the ceiling overhead. We talked for a few minutes about the game the next day, and the older brother went on about how my team was going to slaughter his brothers, which was kind of him. And then before long, we stopped talking and they both drifted off to sleep.
I don't know how much time passed. In my memory, it's hours, though that can't really be the case. I started thinking of home, wondering if my parents were awake and if my brother was still out. And then I started wondering if the mother here in this house would check on us. When it was clear she wasn't going to, I got up and went to the bathroom and hoped that she'd hear me in there.
I turned on the bathroom light and looked in the mirror, flushed the toilet and let the water run for a while. I didn't know what I'd say to her, but I just wanted her to come out and comfort me in some way, maybe give me something to drink or some more pie, or just talk to me for a while about my parents or school or the wishbone offense for all I cared.
I stepped back into the hallway and stood there in my pajamas, listening to the house. The parents were still awake in their room. A light was on. And so I walked to their door and knocked on it, thinking I'd apologize and then ask for a glass of water. I nudged the door open, and there was the mother on her bed, and behind her the father, red-faced and naked.
I had no idea what I was seeing, just that I shouldn't be. Her head was bent toward the sheets, and she never lifted it. He looked right at me. He was pale and fat, and there was a scar that ran vertically from his navel. Neither of us said a thing. I closed the door and hurried back to the boys' bedroom and waited for something to happen, but nothing did.
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Chapter 6: How does fear of sleep relate to fear of death and nightmares?
Well, yeah, it was hard, and I was worried that I was going to hurt somebody, like hurt my kids or my wife. And I felt miserable in a day thinking about, you know, what I did.
You must have dreaded going to bed.
Yep. You know, I mean, you're going to sleep tired knowing that this is going to happen. Yeah, it wasn't much fun. ¶¶
We have just witnessed a vivid example of a night terror or power nocturnus associated with violent behavior. This episode arose abruptly from slow wave or delta sleep.
Nocturnal seizures... This is from a DVD put together by Drs. Carlos Schenck and Mark Mahowald of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorder Center. The number of adults with troubled sleep, they say, is a lot higher than you probably think. Somewhere between 1.5 and 4% of all adults have had recent sleepwalking episodes, depending on what study you look at. That's millions of people.
Another 2% engage in sleep-related violence. People eat when they're asleep. They have sex when they're asleep. And one of the most affecting things to watch on this DVD that they assembled to educate people about various sleep disorders is a 51-year-old Japanese man who was videotaped while having a bad dream.
Oh...
The man later told researchers that in this dream, he's fighting off snakes. And in this kind of grainy nighttime footage, you can see him swat away snakes with his arms. He kicks at one with his foot. The metal sound you're hearing is the bed frame. Finally, he picks up a pillow like it's a rock and beats one away. There's something completely naked about this footage.
It's very strange to watch another person at a moment when they are so totally vulnerable and alone and terrified. Welcome to WBEZ Chicago. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our show, fear of sleep. We have five stories of people who either have a huge fear of sleep or, frankly, they should have a huge fear of sleep. Act one, stranger in the night. Act two, sleep's tiniest enemies.
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