Eyes wide shut (Image: Kelly Dyson)
“I’M STILL alive.” These are the only words that appear in a diary entry I made on 1 September 1994. I flip back a page to find a vivid account of a death-like paralysis that had gripped me the night before. “My mind awoke but my body was still sleeping,” it read. “I could feel myself suspended as if caught between two worlds. It felt, I imagined, like inhaling one’s first breath of water when drowning.”
Although I had no idea at the time, this was one of the first clear indications that I had narcolepsy. If you’ve heard of this condition, which most people have, thanks to an abundance of voyeuristic TV documentaries, you will probably know that it is characterised by a frequent and overwhelming need to sleep. But a narcoleptic will also often have sleep paralysis – waking up unable to move – hallucinogenic dreams and cataplexy, in which laughter causes them to lose muscle tone, crumbling to the floor in a manner that resembles Obi-Wan Kenobi’s collapse at a sweep of Darth Vader’s light sabre.
In 1994, precious little was known about this disorder, and it took a while before I found a doctor who took my symptoms seriously. Thankfully, even although the cause of narcolepsy was still a mystery, there were drugs available. They have helped with my sleepiness and put a complete stop to the other symptoms. I think it’s because of this pharmaceutical assistance that I had never looked into the strange goings-on in my brain, despite becoming a science writer. But so much has…
