Ahhh. The elusive hours of sleep. Sleeping habits are one of the traits that most autistic people have in common. The autistic only gets 3 to 4 hours of sleep, on average. Basically, the autistics are fucking sleep deprived.
I generally get 7 hours of sleep, but I wake up every 30 minutes or so, so not exactly restful. And it can take foreeeeeeever to fall asleep. It is really hard to be constantly sleep deprived, especially on top of all the other shit autistics have do deal with. I’ve taken some hardcore meds to get me to sleep, but even those don’t work. At one point, as a child, I was prescribed the dose of a grown man and it still wouldn’t knock me out. Weed helps, though, man. Weed helps me sleep. Not well, but better then my psychotropics.
I also get horrible night terrors. I will wake up screaming and crying. Whatever partner I am sharing my bed with that night has to deal with that. One of my boyfriends said that I look and sound like a puppy having a bad dream right before I wake up screaming. He thinks the night terrors are kind of cute. I think he’s a psychopath. Anyhoo, the night terrors really suck. Sometimes, when I am trying to fall asleep, my brain won’t let me. It starts getting paranoid about the fact that I will start dreaming terrifying dreams.
One of my colleagues and I have come up with a conspiracy theory as to why autistics can’t sleep. The government keeps us sleep deprived because they know that the autistics would come up with like the cure for cancer, or how to solve world hunger if we worked at full capacity. That’s money lost for them. Pretty plausible, hmmmmm?
I'm Not Drunk, I'm Autistic 