How to stop sleepwalking? (1 Viewer)

[DeathStar1]

Is there any sure fire method to stop it? I go to sleep at 11PM, hoping to get up at 7 AM, and still manage to sleepwalk during the night with my full stack of sleep.

I usually remember half of it, like a dream. For instance, 95% of the time I remember doing what I set out to do but don't remember getting up or going back to sleep. For instance, most of my sleepwalking consists of swearing that the computer, wich I leave on during the night sometimes, is making a loud buzzing noise and I have to get up and turn it off. Yet when I remember the sleepwalking incidenet, I know it was perfectly fine.

I'm afraid I'm going to walk out of the house one day, or wake up finding myself doing something strange like...... pouring milk into a glass and put the milk back in the microwave instead of the fridge.

Even weirder, is that my strange mind tends to combine things I see during the day, and I tend to dream about 'em wich makes me worry about my sleep walking even more.

For instance, seeing a hammer laying around during the day, watching a Fix It show later, and then dream about banging an imaginary nail in the wall and messing the wall up in the process...

Any 'how to stop sleepwalking' tips will be greatly apprecaited, before I wake up or say something even more weird!

 

[Patrick Sun]

Sleep with your hand placed in a bucket of warm water.

 

[Max Leung]

That's cruel Patrick.

I think there are drugs that can help you. But then again, you really should see a doctor.

 

[Micheal]

I've been doing the same thing (sleepwalking) for as long as I can remember. I've never done anything that ended up causing a problem but I have come close. Once I ended up taking apart a lamp that sat on the table beside my bed. I did it without the use of any tools and just unscrewed the base and a few other parts that I was able to get at with my hands. Dangerous..... maybe.
But that's the worst thing I've ever done.

Pretty weird finding the lamp in pieces when I woke up and having my wife tell me that she wasn't sure what I was doing with it but that she noticed me messing with it a bit. I've been doing it forever so she tends to just sleep through it, she pays a bit more attention since the lamp. (Could have been one nasty shock)

 

[Aurel Savin]

I used to sleepwalk when I was a young kid 7-9 years old.

Few oddities that happened:

We used to have a balcony at our apartment building and I walked outside in the middle of the night trying to climb it. Needless to say we were on the 4th floor and if anyone would have woke me up I would not be writing this now. My mother told me this as she saw it happen and coerced me back into bed ....scary shit.

Another incident involved me doing #1 into a crystal ashtray ... I actually saw this evidence the next morning.

I do not recall seeing a doctor, but it was definetelly stress related as my father just passed away after a long battle with cancer and I did not take it well.

Have not done it since but at the time it happened pretty often. It is a strange phenomenon that I have never heard a logical explanation for.

Would be interesting to follow this thread.

 

[StephenA]

Try wearing bells or something. Could work.

I only know of one incident of myself sleepwalking. I only know about it because I woke up inside my dad's bedroom closet not knowing why I was there.

 

[David Preston]

When you get in bed take some thumb tacks and place them sharp side up right by your bed. I bet you will wake up as soon as you hit the floor. Couldn't resist.

 

[Patrick Sun]

How about about a bunch of marbles on the floor/rug around your bed?

 

[DeathStar1]

>Try wearing bells or something. Could work.>

I'm hopign exertion would help wake me up, so I push a 100 pound or so Jamma Arcade Cabinet that I have right next to the door, and lock the door as an extra precaution. Even though the cabinet has wheels, it's still a biatch to move, and this extra work didn't wake me up at all as I moved it during a sleep walking incident last week...

 

[Patrick Sun]

Sleep in a room that is locked with a combination lock on it.

 

[Ryan Wright]

I'm not sure locking himself in the room is the answer.

How about rigging up a motion sensor with a loud alarm? Point it in a direction away from your bed, so you can roll around in bed, but in a place where you'll walk past it if you get out of bed.

Beam sensors around the bed would work great for this, but they are expensive. PIR motion sensors are dirt cheap.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Or how about littering the bedroom floor with jumping jacks?

Or wear an invisible fence dog collar to sleep, and put the perimeter to be your bedroom.

 

[Paul_Fisher]

Heaps of broken glass on the floor would probably work as well.

 

[Scott McGillivray]

What a bunch of cruel (yet funny!) guys here!

I have never walked in my sleep (that I know of) but I had a roommate that did a little. One night, he got out of bed and got his hunting rifle. He woke up with it beside his bed the next morning. Yhea...I moved out not too long after!

 

[Max Leung]

Neil, have you considered setting up a video camera/webcam to monitor your sleepwalking behavior? Maybe if you do something funny, you can sell it or post it on the internet for some fame and fortune!

 

[Steve Schaffer]

I once openned the fridge in the morning to discover leftovers from a meal I'd cooked during the night but did not remember having prepared it.

It was chicken breasts sauteed in wine with mushrooms and veggies and some rice to put it on.

I also once woke up at 4 am alone in the back seat of my Toyota Corolla, parked behind the general store at Yosemite Lodge and could not figure out how I got there (lived in Fresno at the time--95 miles away).

Then I quit drinking and these strange incidents stopped.

 

[ThomasC]

A few years ago, I woke up to find out that my pillow was nowhere in my room. My dad said he found it on the kitchen table, so that meant walking down the stairs with pillow in hand, placing pillow on kitchen table, and walking back up the stairs and back into my room and back in bed. Creepy. I used to listen to the radio while trying to go to sleep, and my mom suggested I stop doing that to see if I would stop sleepwalking, and I guess I did.

 

[Khoa Tran]

handcuff yourslf to the bedpost....

i used to sleepwalk...i remember waking up on the toliet...kitchen floor...and outside once...but i dont do that anymore

 

[David Preston]

If I ever had pets I would do what Patrick said. I would put the electric fence around my HT stuff and they would know if they got to close. As long as it does not interfere with reception.

 

[Mike Clark]

Blah, had a long response all typed out, and it got eaten by a web gremlin :p

Forget trying to work around the symptom, find out the actual problem and try to treat that.

First, get your doc to send you for a sleep study including MSLTs the next day (Multiple Sleep Latency Testing)

For some reason, a lot of doctors just aren't interested in sleep problems and/or they just blow you off (luckily, that's changing somewhat)

Anyway, if your doc isn't of much help, get a referal to a sleep specialist (usually either a psychologist or neurologist) or at least a "general" neurologist.

Sleepwalking is related to Narcolepsy, as they're both caused by an abnormality in REM sleep.

Do any of the following apply to you?
1) Sudden onset of extreme sleepiness during the day, lasting 10-20 minutes.
2) A loss of muscle tone or control when experiencing a strong emotional response (any emotion). Often it can just be a feeling of your facial muscles drooping
3) Ever wake up and been temporarily paralyzed and unable to move for a couple minutes?
4) Hallucinations (visual, audible, or even tactile) when you're very tired?

Believe me, sleep disorders are no fun, and you don't want to screw around with someone who can't or isn't willing to help you. If your primary doc seems clueless about sleep disorders (any many of them are) then get a referral!