When she hears this sound, Brielle wakes up with a sudden jolt and starts having a conversation
with her alarm clock.
Hello this is dog
Good morning Brielle
It’s just another morning being sleep drunk.
Sleep drunkenness or severe sleep inertia is when you wake up suddenly and you’re
extremely groggy, disorientated and life is confusing.
Research suggests it affects 1 in 7 people and episodes typically last for 15 minutes
after you wake up.
Occasionally Josh pours his cereal into the dishwasher.
When we sleep, we cycle through stages of light and deep sleep.
The first and second stages are light sleep and we can be woken up easily.
When you reach the third stage you enter deep sleep.
And following that is rapid-eye-movement, REM sleep, where your eyes actually move back
and forth and you’re most likely to dream.
You experience sleep drunkenness when you’re woken up in deep sleep or REM sleep.
All of a sudden Maria’s mom yells at her to get up.
She crawls out of bed and into the shower--still wearing her pajamas.
If you’re woken up from a deep sleep stage your brain contains more adenosine, a neurotransmitter
that travels from one nerve cell to another.
It promotes sleep and suppresses arousal—that’s why you feel so drowsy.
Mike puts his keys in the fridge and walks out of his apartment carrying a carton of
orange juice.
When you consume caffeine, it fights the drowsy effects of adenosine.
It speeds up the rate your nerve cells communicate with each other.
Caffeine may actually prevent or reduce the effects of severe sleep inertia if you drink
coffee or tea as soon as you wake up.
David pours his freshly-brewed pot of coffee into the sugar bowl.
If you can stay grounded, that is.
So the next time you start talking to your alarm clock, remember that you're not alone.
Sleep drunkenness is a recognised disorder but there's not a whole lot you can do to
prevent confused episodes.
Getting between 6 and 9 hours of sleep a night helps.
And so does your morning brew.
Have you experienced sleep drunkeness before?
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