[Visioneer]

I thought I was going mad until a psychiatrist recently explained that the hallucinations I was having were related to a possible sleep disorder, because they happen when I am trying to go to sleep or when I am waking up. Sometimes I will wake in the night paralyzed, with a feeling of static all over my body and the sense that someone is there and I am helpless. Sometimes I believe I am awake, even getting up and moving around, trying to read a book, and the hallucination will go on for a half hour - sounds of things in the room that are not really there, like voices and a flock of birds taking off. Other times I will see things that are not real. I was sleeping with my partner and woke up, only to see his face melting in front of me. I screamed, which woke me up fully, and when I realized what had happened I just said, "Oh." and went back to sleep. He didn't, after having someone scream in his face.

It started when I was a child, and some of the more frightening ones were of a mime at the side of my bed trying to bite my fingers off, and waking in the night to someone trying to drag me out of my bed by my left arm, which was against the wall. This only made my insomnia worse because I was afraid to go to sleep lest whatever it was succeed. So I read all night instead, and fell asleep in class every day, FOR YEARS.

These usually occur during times of stress or periods of insomnia, and can be benign to odd, to terrifying. When I was 14 I started sleeping with a night-light, for the first time in my life, because I thought I heard the devil and demons whispering about me in my room at night. Turns out I just needed a good night's rest.

This is also related to Exploding Head Syndrome (I swear it's real, look it up!), which happens when I have been up for WAAAAY too long and then try to sleep. Every time I get to the brink of unconsciousness, a loud buzzing sound reaches a crescendo and feels like a lighting strike or a whip cracking inside my head, jolting me awake. At a time when my body and mind need sleep so badly, I just can't seem to break that barrier into the unconscious, prevented by this phenomenon.

I also often have dreams where I wake up in the dream and go about some activity and something eerie will happen (such as realizing the entire town has no electricity except for my apartment, or that everything outside the window is obscured by fog and may not even exist anymore, or women from a British television show knocking on my door wanting to redecorate my home) to make me realize it is not reality, at which point I will wake up again in the dream and go about the same or different activity until the realization hits me again, at which point I will wake again, etc. until the situations become so bizarre and disturbing (such as being held down and jabbed in the neck by a syringe) that I come through terror to the real world, screaming for someone to wake me up.

My brother recently told me that he has these hallucinations, and I had never told him that I had them before. He woke one morning thinking that he was being attacked by a wasp. He could hear it buzzing, and even see it. He tried killing it with his blanket but it wouldn't die. After a few minutes it disappeared and he was left wondering what the heck happened. Insomnia is chronic in my family. I believe my uncle suffers from these too, as after one particularly bad period in the 1980's he moved in with my family and still lives there, and won't ever turn his bedroom light off.

I often talk in my sleep, have woken my self up talking, laughing or screaming, and the things I say have made for amusing anecdotes among those who have heard them, such as "Tiny horses make sense for a children army," which when you think about it, does make sense, but is nonetheless ridiculous. I have had periods of sleep walking as well, once making it all the way to the front yard where my parents wanted me to see the aurora. When they asked me what I thought of it, I replied, "He's thiiiiiinkiiiiiing (maniacal laughter)!" I had no recollection of the entire episode when my mother asked me the next day, and I honestly thought she was making it up. I assume it occurred because I was "woken" from a deep sleep for the adventure, which often has disastrous consequences. I have been known to react with violent rage or utter wailing despair upon being woken from a deep sleep, and anyone who knows better will stay the heck away from me until I have fully roused my self.

Insomnia is a curse and it wreaks havoc on our emotional, physical and mental states. Without my medication I would be lost.

Anyone else had these experiences?

Wow, unbelievable, it is like you're describing my own experiences with sleep. The only thing I don't suffer is the paralysis you mention but I have done VERY bizarre things while asleep. I don't have any dx about them although I know their names, but would certainly like to know more about your own dx. Did your pdoc tell you what kind of sleep disorder you might have?

[Visioneer]

I have never done a sleep study, mainly because with the medications I'm currently taking I'm sleeping a lot better, so there doesn't seem to be a need. Even if they found out the exact cause of my sleep disturbances, the only thing they could do for me is medicate me, heh. I was on a medication briefly for insomnia when I was 18, and the doctor said I don't go through normal sleep patters; I wake up during REM, which is why I would vividly remember all of my dreams, and why I sometimes hallucinate when waking up. He gave me amitriptyline, but I found that its efficacy decreased quickly, so I stopped taking it.