This story is C-R-A-Z-Y coooool!
I found this article while searching for something to write my English report on (which I still haven't written) and thought I'd share it with the rest of you so here you go! It's rather short, and worth the read, trust me!
Tired? Can't sleep? How about a sleeping pill? What if that pill only puts part of your mind to sleep? Welcome to James Faber's world.
As we walk up the stairs James Faber tells us, "now we're getting closer to the lair of where all these paintings come from."
He's not kidding. He shows us two groups, those he painted while awake, and those painted while he was asleep. Asleep. Well, he thought he was asleep, but was really awake, sort of. Yes, it is confusing, beautifully confusing. While some of us dream of painting, James Faber paints of dreaming.
Faber has always had sleep problems, but he just didn't know what was at the center of his sleepless nights. He simply figured, if you're tired but can't sleep, why not take a sleeping pill? Funny thing, hardly anyone talks about the side effects of sleeping pills, other than some residual grogginess. No one happened to mention that patients can sleep walk, sleep talk, and in this case, sleep paint and sleep write.
But, a funny thing happened on the way to a good night's sleep. He'd take the pill, lay down, and then somewhere in the night, he'd get up and paint, journal, write poetry and the like---without knowing he was doing it until the morning light (and his wife Gretchen) confronted him with the evidence.
"I was traveling once with my father-in-law and he said, "Did you get up and go somewhere last night?" And I said, you know.... I think I did. And I had these memories, but I didn't know if it was real or a dream," Faber remembers. The brochures and other goodies laying in his hotel room betrayed his nighttime escape. He was unnerved, wondering how he'd ever found his way back to the hotel room.
He's saved journals filled with writings, some of them notes he left to himself explaining what the heck he had done overnight. Deep in his subconscious he knew he wouldn't remember enough in the morning to realize what his detailed notes really meant (especially the notes he left written in a language invented in his sleep state.)
After nearly seven years of this unusual behavior, and a lot of visits with various doctors, Faber finally found a sleep specialist who put him through a sleep study. He was stunned to be diagnosed with narcolepsy. But once he started taking the wake-up drug Provigil, his days and nights settled back into place. He's no longer taking the sleeping pill Ambien.
His doctor, Robert Ballard at National Jewish Medical and Research Center, says indeed sleeping pills can have strange side-effects for some people, including nightmares, sleep paralysis and more. Most side-effects aren't this unusual, but the fact is the mysteries behind how our brains sleep are much more deep than our understanding of the way our minds seek respite.
...I wish I could do that...
Tired? Can't sleep? How about a sleeping pill? What if that pill only puts part of your mind to sleep? Welcome to James Faber's world.
As we walk up the stairs James Faber tells us, "now we're getting closer to the lair of where all these paintings come from."
He's not kidding. He shows us two groups, those he painted while awake, and those painted while he was asleep. Asleep. Well, he thought he was asleep, but was really awake, sort of. Yes, it is confusing, beautifully confusing. While some of us dream of painting, James Faber paints of dreaming.
Faber has always had sleep problems, but he just didn't know what was at the center of his sleepless nights. He simply figured, if you're tired but can't sleep, why not take a sleeping pill? Funny thing, hardly anyone talks about the side effects of sleeping pills, other than some residual grogginess. No one happened to mention that patients can sleep walk, sleep talk, and in this case, sleep paint and sleep write.
But, a funny thing happened on the way to a good night's sleep. He'd take the pill, lay down, and then somewhere in the night, he'd get up and paint, journal, write poetry and the like---without knowing he was doing it until the morning light (and his wife Gretchen) confronted him with the evidence.
"I was traveling once with my father-in-law and he said, "Did you get up and go somewhere last night?" And I said, you know.... I think I did. And I had these memories, but I didn't know if it was real or a dream," Faber remembers. The brochures and other goodies laying in his hotel room betrayed his nighttime escape. He was unnerved, wondering how he'd ever found his way back to the hotel room.
He's saved journals filled with writings, some of them notes he left to himself explaining what the heck he had done overnight. Deep in his subconscious he knew he wouldn't remember enough in the morning to realize what his detailed notes really meant (especially the notes he left written in a language invented in his sleep state.)
After nearly seven years of this unusual behavior, and a lot of visits with various doctors, Faber finally found a sleep specialist who put him through a sleep study. He was stunned to be diagnosed with narcolepsy. But once he started taking the wake-up drug Provigil, his days and nights settled back into place. He's no longer taking the sleeping pill Ambien.
His doctor, Robert Ballard at National Jewish Medical and Research Center, says indeed sleeping pills can have strange side-effects for some people, including nightmares, sleep paralysis and more. Most side-effects aren't this unusual, but the fact is the mysteries behind how our brains sleep are much more deep than our understanding of the way our minds seek respite.
...I wish I could do that...