Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder (DSPD)

It's 4am. I've been in bed now since 11 and I haven't managed to fall asleep. My mind is racing, thinking about anything from how to break down a zone defense to how to correctly spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I have to wake up in two hours for seminary and after school I have basketball practice.

I had to endure the above situation countless times during high school and to some degree I still do. Out of desperation I once took 6 tylenol pms to help push me into sleep. It did nothing more than make it difficult to wake up the next morning. (And having weighed about 125 pounds at the time I'm lucky to have woken up at all) I would still toss and turn for hours on end. When I would finally fall asleep I'd have to wake up an hour or two later. You'd think it'd be easy for me to fall asleep the following night after having such sleep deprivation, but it wasn't.

While this would typically be classified as being a detriment under normal circumstances it proved to be an asset in others. In the Marine Corps they force sleep and food deprivation. The food deprivation was new to me, but I was all too familiar with sleep deprivation. Somehow my body keeps working at near 100%. There were many times in Iraq where we were on "alert," where no one was permitted to sleep the entire night. On one specific occasion we were in what could be described as Iraqi's Eastern Desert. We were well beyond the range of artillery and were essentially all by ourselves. There were about 100 of us and the nearest unit of 100 was about 1/2 an hour away. Not the best of conditions during war. We received word that a tank battalion with upwards of 60 Russian tanks were heading in our direction. For those who are unaware, when infantry goes up against tanks one side gets slaughtered. Other than a handful of missiles to shoot at them we were pretty much defenseless. We dug our fighting positions (or fox holes) as deep as we could. You see, a common technique used to tanks to kill infantry is by putting their tracks above the fox hole and spinning the tank. If the hole isn't deep enough, the man in the fox hole is no more. So obviously we dug our hole deep and couldn't fall asleep all that night. In the still of the night just about every noise sounds like distant tanks. Morning came and our unit of 100 men relocated behind a canal while a couple of A10 Warthogs flew over and took out any tanks that were nearby. As a result of our "relocation" our company commander lost his command. All in all, the first 30 days of the war I got about 30 hours of sleep. Most of the time we were bunched in the back of a moving truck with our knees in our chest. It was heaven when we were finally able to sleep horizontal!

Last semester I was taking a heavy load of classes and working 40 hours of graveyard. I was getting about 2 hours of sleep on average a night. I would often come home and not be able to fall asleep before I'd have to be up some 2 hours after I got home. While I'm able to get more sleep now, I usually still have trouble falling asleep, despite the sleep deprivation.

Casually looking through Wikipedia I came across Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder. It is often developed in late childhood or early adolescence and never completely goes away. It is often misdiagnosed as insomnia. The difference is those who have DSPD are able to get a full night's sleep once they fall asleep but are not able to fall asleep until much later than normal. It is believed that a delay in melatonin production is the cause. Melatonin is secreted through a gland in the brain in very minute amounts which causes drowsiness. It also is a very potent antioxidant. Your body does not produce melatonin in the presence of light and this knowledge has put working grave yards on a list of potential carcinogens.

I've been taking oral melatonin ever since I self diagnosed myself. That seems to help a lot. Which is good, because who likes carcinogens?