Every day, I spend about 30 minutes on the subway to go to school. Usually I'd just read or do something interesting to pass those 30 minutes, but recently, I've found that I've acquired an extremely annoying ability that replaces those thirty minutes for me.
It's the ability to fall asleep in subway train, while standing completely upright.
The moment my body falls asleep however, I lose balance and stumble onto the ground, inevitably drawing the attention of everyone around me.
And the worst part is, even with all my willpower, I still cannot help but fall asleep multiple times throughout a single 20 min subway trip, thus making me look like some kind of drunk schizophrenic schoolboy on drugs. (luckily I have never gotten into official trouble, although I am worried that it might happen if this continues)
Here's a brief description of my experiences of what it feels like to fall asleep in public.
When falling asleep, the first thing I notice is how I become unable to move my eyes. Like sleeping while standing, I've also learned how to fall asleep with my eyes open, although this ability has never really been that useful because whenever I do accidentally fall asleep, my unmoving eyes combined with my unblinking eyelids makes me look very awkward. Anyways, even though my eyes are asleep, my brain is still partially awake, which means I can still hear and feel things. The sense of touch however, also quickly goes away. If I was writing stuff down, I would slowly lose control of my hand as my writing goes from from straight, to a scrawl, to indecipherable scribbles before losing my grip on the pen. My legs are usually the last part of my body to fall asleep, and as long as I take a steady stance, I can keep myself upright, but once my legs fall asleep as well, they'd buckle and like a stack of cards, I would fall over, partially stunned from the fall, but moreso from the embarrassment that inevitably comes from the dozens of staring eyes.
So basically, as long as I am walking, I can remain awake and alert, but the moment I stop moving, I just completely nod off, even if I'm standing in the middle of a crowded public area.
I admit that I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately, but that's pretty much expected considering how my high school tests are coming up soon.
I prefer not to drink coffee because I get weird side effects from caffeine.
Sitting down keeps me from falling around, but then I usually become too sleepy to realize that I've already passed my station.
I also tried pinching myself awake, but more often than not, my drowsiness ends up overpowering my sense of pain.
So is there any way to stop myself from falling asleep in public and constantly humiliating myself?
edit: To clarify, I have no trouble keeping awake in class. I only fall asleep when I'm on some sort of public transportation.