Pigtails

Hi, I just realized there was a board for sleep disorders and wanted to share. I have night terrors that I've had since I was 12 years old (I'm now 30). They are adult night terrors, in some ways similar to the ones kids get but adult night terrors are much less common- only 1% of the adult population has them- and are usually indicative of past trauma or a personality disorder rather than being normal and temporary like in kids. It's like having a bad dream except that it comes 45 minutes to an hour after falling asleep, before REM stage is reached, so it's not really a dream but fears that manifest themselves in the mind somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness and then the body acts it out. This is sometimes sitting up or thrashing around in bed flailing, or other times I have ran out of the room or out of the house, I've even broken and climbed out of windows because I thought the room was on fire. I've drug people out of bed and covered them with my body to "protect" them or "save" them or get them out of harm's way.

The "dream" aspect is always something scary like the roof collapsing, ealier on fires but not anymore, someone shooting at me, an unknown person coming to kill or hurt me, etc. I'm always really hot, sweaty, my heartrate is really fast (I've read that it can triple and go faster than a person who is having a stroke), I'm disoriented and confused. I usually don't remember having them unless I wake up in the middle of one. Then I quickly fall back to sleep like nothing happens (but sometimes I have them again).

Nothing traumatic happened to me when I was young and it's not related to alcohol because they started when I was 12 and I didn't drink a sip until I was 18. However they seem to have always gotten worse so I'm sure alcohol doesn't help. Specialists tell me it's related to stress and anxiety. I do have bad anxiety issues and I think that is where alcohol comes in -- I drink not to feel anxious but it fuels my issues and creates a really bad cycle. So I am hoping that with my giving up drinking, combined with other positive lifestyle changes I've been making, I will have a reduction in night terrors or maybe somehow stop them all together. I just wanted to share in case anyone can relate and I will post my progress and see if I note any changes. Oh by the way alcohol is a trigger for them-- I am most certainly going to have a night terror if I drink alcohol before bed, but did that ever stop me? No. So now hopefully just the fact that I don't drink will mean I have less of them. Thanks for reading.