I'm desperately trying to find information on what might be wrong with me. I've had troubles with sleep since I was about 5 years old. (I'm 25 now, in case it matters.) Mostly this means insomnia - not being able to fall asleep for hours on end regardless of how tired I am, and waking up a lot during the night. Conversely, once I get to sleep, I never seem to be able to wake up in the morning. No matter how many hours of sleep I've gotten, I never ever ever wake up feeling rested. Consequently, I've always been a kind of lethargic person. Especially as a kid, sometimes I'd get inexplicably sleepy in the middle of the day and drag myself around disoriented for hours - when I was younger, my mother would yell at me on a regular basis, telling me to stop being lazy, but I genuinely just didn't have any energy.
I tried many over-the-counter sleeping aids and was only once able to persuade a doctor to give me a prescription sleep aid (although it was a very weak one), but none of them ever worked for more than one night, and every time I managed to successfully sleep with one of these things, I'd be even groggier than ever the next day.
A few years ago I started having lucid dreams quite regularly. To this day I am constantly frustrated by how little control I have in these dreams. Most of them consist of repeated false awakenings - I'm in my own bed in my room and everything seems normal, but it doesn't take long for me to figure out that something is slightly off, like the location of a piece of furniture or my flatmate's hairstyle. They are very mundane and whenever I try to do something cool like fly or picture someone naked, it just doesn't work. I manage to wake up, and quickly realize I'm not really awake. These dreams are extremely vivid, though, and I have a full sense of touch (including pain) which often makes me question whether I'm still asleep or not. Often I can feel my body in its resting position in my bed, feel the pillow on my face and the blanket on me or the cat sniffing at my toes, and I can hear everything that's going on in the real world. When I wake up from these dreams I'm usually much more exhausted than I was when I went to sleep.
These dreams have also caused me to realize just how much I dream. Apparently a normal person only dreams for short periods during the night, alternating between this and the deep sleep which really rests your brain and first beginning after they've been asleep for a while. Whenever I wake up, I am *always* interrupting a dream, and very often I can actually feel myself fall asleep and feel the dream begin immediately. This leads me to believe that at the very least I dream a hell of a lot more than I am supposed to, and possibly I'm even dreaming for the entire time I'm asleep. This would mean I never get that "deep sleep," which would explain why I'm always so exhausted, at least mentally, no matter how many hours of sleep I get.
As I said, I've dealt with this since I was five years old. Some people suggest to me that it's somehow psychological, but although I didn't win any prizes for "happiest childhood," I also didn't experience anything so traumatic that it would mess with my sleep patterns for the rest of my life. Little kids are not supposed to have insomnia.
Although I've managed to get by and live a pretty normal life so far, over the last six to twelve months things have gotten much worse. I'm sleeping even less and dreaming even more. More and more of my dreams are lucid, and more and more often I'm having the lucid nightmare of being trapped in my own dream - I know I need to wake up soon, but I just can't. It's like my body is holding my mind prisoner, insisting that I remain asleep so it can get the rest it needs, but in reality it's not even getting it because I'm not sleeping properly. This is made worse by the fact that I can hear and feel things going on in the real, waking world, so I know I must be close to consciousness, but no matter what I do I just can't wake up. As I said, my sense of touch works just fine, and pinching myself, biting my fingers, or even slamming my head against the wall is plenty painful but doesn't wake me up.
Over the last couple of weeks, I've been starting to hallucinate slightly while I'm awake. I don't mean seeing monsters or talking to people who aren't there or anything, but if I look at a stationary object it will start to shift or warp, sometimes I can't understand what people are saying or text that I read, and there are often spots and swirls swimming in front of my eyes. The last straw came this morning. I am an English teacher (you can imagine how easy it is to be energetic and focused when you haven't slept properly in god knows how long) and my first lesson this morning was at 7:30. I have to leave my flat by 6:45 to get there in time to set up for the students and begin the class. I set not one, but two alarm clocks, and they've never failed to wake me up. This morning I was having a nightmare and struggling to wake up to get away from the zombies and plague and whatnot which were chasing me, but I couldn't. When I finally did wake up, it was already 7:45. I missed my first lesson entirely (and will be fined by my school for it in addition to not being paid for the missed class).
This cannot happen again. I need to figure out what the hell is wrong with me and how to fix it. I know I need to see a doctor, but my insurance only covers emergency services and, as a teacher, I don't make enough money to pay for any expensive treatment. I've been told there are a couple of sleep labs here in Prague, but going there is very expensive. If anyone has any ideas about what the hell is going on with me and what I can do about it, I'd really appreciate any input. Maybe I could save a few expensive steps by going to a doctor with a clearer idea of what's wrong and asking for a prescription for something directly rather than needing to be observed overnight.