Sleep Patterns While Manic - Can Anyone Relate?

Hi everyone,

I read all the time about people who are manic getting 2-4 hours of sleep, and that's it for the night. My experience wasn't quite like that, and I'm wondering if anyone can relate?

You see, for me normally my body requires AT LEAST 9 hours of sleep to feel OK during the day. 10 hours is even better. This is me at normal.

During my worst mania, I was sleeping 5-6 hours a night, and it was often broken sleep, and I'd wake up feeling energized and up for ANYTHING. When I am "normal", broken sleep affects me severely, but when I was manic, it didn't affect me at all.

Can anyone relate to getting more than 4 hours of sleep a night during mania, even if it was broken sleep?

Yeah, I normally need at least 8-9 hours in order to function. If I'm leaping out of bed after about five hours of light broken sleep more than a day or two AND preparing for my life (i.e. the next five minutes) like some people prepare for the apocalypse, that's a red flag that I'm hypomanic. If I let it go any farther, I'll stop sleeping altogether.

When I'm manic I don't sleep regular either. I run until my body just plain gives out, then crash for a few hours of tossing-turning sleep, then get up running again. But I have to have the 9-10 hours of sleep each night to function at my best even when I'm at my stable norm.

I start having problems if I fall below 5.5 hours a night for two nights running. Anything under 5 and I'm on my way to the moon, and end up averaging 3 hours/night for up to a week.

Normally I sleep 6.5 - 7 hours. 8 is more than enough to feel fully rested and I can't always sleep that long even if I do have the time to! If I sleep over 9 hours, I start getting depressed - or maybe the causality is in the other direction, but anyway. You get the idea.

I need a lot of sleep normally and know that something is wrong when I start to sleep less than 6 hours or so...
Also if I sleep more than 9 hours I know that depression is nipping at my heels...

I can totally relate. 8 hours is my normal. Less than that means I'm manic. When manic I can function pretty well on 6 hours of broken sleep, but less than that and I am mentally off-agitated, angry, etc.
Right now I am at the other end of the spectrum, wanting to sleep during the day, and taking naps when I can. I am up to 10+ hours on the weekend. I am still working through recent meds adjustments, so I hope after I'm settled I'm back to normal.
Bluemountains

This sounds like me almost exactly! At least the 6 hours broken sleep when manic and sometimes 3-4 which leaves me really agitated and angry too. I never get a solid sleep but normal sleep is about 8 hours with a few wakings.

Being depressed can sleep for 12+

I never fully stop sleeping while hypomanic either. Rarely, I'll get down to 3-4 hours/night. I have to be really up there for that. Usually I just sleep normally (7-8 hrs) or I get 5-6 hrs.

I get different sleep symptoms with each depressive episode. Sometimes my sleep is normal (though I'm always fatigued, during every depression). During my last episode, I slept 12 hours out of 24. A year ago, I had frequent awakenings and sleep paralysis.

I know that I'm weird.

Friday night I went for a cpap sleep study, and did I have vivid dreams! same thing last night, very vivid dreams, and then waking up at the end of them. I almost don't like it, because I feel like I am waking up in the middle of thinking, so how is that restful? on the other hand, I SO MUCH LIKE being able to breathe all day and night thru my nose, and my nose not constantly running - i'm wondering what the heck was stuck up there??! Anyway, gonna look up sleep cycles and see how this stuff is supposed to be working. I am feeling more refreshed, like "awake behind my eyes".

Haven't really been manic in a bit but for me a short interrupted sleep patter is that tall tale sign that things are going up.

This and I'll have a weird feeling of wanting to go to sleep but not wanting to go to sleep at the same time. Makes my skin crawl.

Wow, I had no idea that so many people actually sleep like me! My boyfriend tends to get mad at me because I require 10+ hours of sleep to simply be functional. Today I slept in until noon and that's normal for me.

How do you all get to where you can sleep less, or wake up more well-rested? Does your medication have anything to do with it?

When I'm manic I rarely sleep at all. Sometimes 2-4 hours sometimes no sleep whatsoever for several days and at that point I get psychotic. If I sleep 6 hours when I'm "normal" I consider myself lucky. When I'm depressed I have no problem sleeping 12 or more hours and I have a real hard time getting up in the morning. Some mornings I get up just to take my daughter to school and the baby to daycare and go home and go right back to bed and stay there all day.

I can relate. I am a 45 almost 46 year old man and I am just learning I am bipolar. Well, they tried telling me this 6 years ago but I blew it off. I rarely ever sleep more than 3-4 hours. I am a manager of a company and we start at 6 a.m. It is nothing, absolutely nothing for me to sleep from 9-1, waking up every hour, and going into work at midnight or 1 or 2 a.m. and working. When my employees catch wind of what time I came in they all say I am crazy, which I am well aware of. I have thought for years and years this is normal for me, absolutely normal activity for me. I am now learning that while it may be normal for me it is far from normal.

I have been up 19 hours right now and for the past 3 hours have been thinking about getting dressed and going back to work. I have nothing I can do here at home, but atleast at work I can be productive and accomplish things.

I feel really good right now, I mean, I typically start feeling mania at around 3 in the afternoon and sometimes I lay in bed so awake and hyped up I will pound three or four beers just to get to sleep, and still then if I get three of four hours of steady sleep I am lucky. But I am reading I shouldn't do that, but I don't know what else to do.

As long as I can remember, I mean, since I was an adolescent I have not slept much. Don't get me wrong, I WILL crash and burn but never know when that is. When that happens I may sleep for 8 or 10 hours, and hard sleep at that. So it isn't like this everyday, at some point I have some hell to pay.

I know that when my sleep starts becoming irregular, and I start having problems going to sleep and/or staying asleep, I'm in for trouble. Typically this signals that depression is coming on for me. I need at least 6-7 hours of sleep or I'm feeling it typically.

When I'm hypo I require less sleep, but I still get tired and I get a funny buzzing in my head from lack of it. Like I have bees behind my eyes or something. Sleep is vital to us with bi-polar. They say regular schedule and regular sleep is one of the keys to staying stable.

I don't know. The main times I've become unstable is when I've gone off my meds for any amount of time.

Even during this last hypomanic period I slept a solid eight hours (uninterrupted). Now that I'm depressed, I seem to be getting about 6.5 to 7 hours of sleep, and that's usually waking up a time or two. It seems my sleep requirements don't change all that much no matter how my mental health is.

I sometimes sleep for 10-12 hours but feel horrible after, I've been told it's possible to sleep too much. When I'm manic though, I'm one of those 2 hours a night people. And even then, it's only because I force myself to. When I'm too manic to care, I might not sleep at all.

My last big depression was during the run of a play I was in, and I was getting home at midnight and I'd stay up until 1, but I would sleep until 3 or 4 in the afternoon.

When I'm in school and I'm actually going to classes, I don't have time to sleep 10-12 hours a night. I'll get 7 or 8 and that actually feels much better than 10 or 12.

So summary, I don't really know why I'm posting in here except to say I'm opposite - huge amounts of sleep make me feel worse, except when I'm depressed, because then I feel worse anyway, and when I'm manic I go on 2 hours or less.

I definitely find it hard to sleep when I'm... I guess I would say hypo manic. I tend to wake up every night around 4 or 5 when I'm depressed or cycling and will have anxiety about not getting back to sleep. I have a system now that makes it a little easier now though. So... About 8 hours minimum for those times and I really feel it if I get any less. I could sleep forever and still feel it tbh xD

When I'm hypomanic I won't want to go to bed until really late. Then I'll wake up at the usual time but instead of being anxious I'm ready to start my day! I feel a little tired sometimes but I have so many ideas to work on I forget about it. I'd say 3-6 hours a night there.

For normal I get about 10 hours of sleep but they're very interrupted. It's probably more like 8.5 or 9. And I feel ok.

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