Has anyone ever taken a psychology course? If the answer is yes, think back to the chapter or chapters about sleep, dreaming, and sleep disorders. About REM sleep, REM rebound, the stages of sleep and insomnia. I'd like to focus on the last point in that list. In case you haven't taken any psychology whatsoever, the definition of insomnia (from Myers' Psychology textbook) is "recurring problems in falling or staying asleep." Now, I know plenty of people that claim they have insomnia because they can't sleep. Hell, I thought I did too until I took this class. But many people misconstrue this and essentially say they have when really they just like saying they have insomnia. I actually read that if you actually have insomnia, you're more reserved about it and less likely to admit to having the condition whereas if you don't you're more willing to openly say you have it. Now why am I telling you all this? Because as I stated before I thought I had insomnia and wanted to figure it out.
While in my state of "insomnia" a while back, I recalled a term used by a band my sister used to listen to. Even though I'm not sure you can qualify them as a "band" per se, Aly and AJ Michalka came out with a CD entitled Insomniatic with their own definition of the made up word. The official definition of the word, given by Alyson and AJ themselves is, "the state of mind where one becomes addicted to the deprivation of sleep caused by an epic revelation of joy." I thought about this and whether or not this was the cause of my "insomnia." In the end, I decided it wasn't. Why not, you ask? Because I wasn't always happy when I was awake. In fact most of the time, I was completely and utterly indifferent as far as my mood went. So why then did I not want to sleep?
That's when it hit me. I didn't want to sleep. I figured out the reason for my "insomnia" was due to the fact that I deplore sleep. The term coined by Urban Dictionary is someone called an insomniaddict. This is used to describe someone, such as myself, who is addicted to deprivation of sleep or stays up for no reason other than to stay up. They also say it's very common among people with this "addiction" to function even on minimal sleep, assuming you consider it a legitimate term to use. The irony of it all: I find it easier to sleep after this self-revelation.
WC: 433
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