Sleep Drunkenness Explained

Do you feel really disorientated when you wake up? 1 in 7 people suffer from 'Sleep Drunkenness'.

Research assistant: Zachary Towne
Thanks to @jjamesfilms, @davidmcraney, @mikerugnetta, @LearningNerd and @jus_de_fruit for sharing their examples of sleep inertia.

References
Dohrman, D. P., Diamond, I., & Gordon, A. S. (1997). The role of the neuromodulator adenosine in alcohol's actions. Alcohol Health & Research World.

Ohayon, M. M., Mahowald, M. W., & Leger, D. (2014). Are confusional arousals pathological?. Neurology, 83(9), 834-841.

Ohayon, M. M., Priest, R. G., ZULLEY, J., & Smirne, S. (2000). The place of confusional arousals in sleep and mental disorders: findings in a general population sample of 13,057 subjects. The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 188(6), 340-348.

Price, N. J., & Szuba, M. P. (2001). Caffeine eliminates psychomotor vigilance deficits from sleep inertia. Sleep, 24(7), 813.

Wilkinson, R. T., & Stretton, M. (1971). Performance after awakening at different times of night. Psychonomic Science, 23(4), 283-285.

Music

[jonahw]

I literally woke up at 1 am this morning convinced I had to save my son because he chose the wrong pokemon and I was convinced it would kill him, I'm a 14 year old boy and I don't have any children to my knowledge.

[FFRS]

I only get that when I take naps, and I feel like complete shit afterwards.

[lucashoffses]

One morning, I said "Dad, some verbs are cold."

[CherryzB]

What? This is actually a thing?! Man, I have some stories.

-One time I thought that every time that I hit the snooze button, I was hitting the buzzer to answer a game show question. I didn't realize my confusion until I got to school... a 3 mile bike ride later.
-One time I thought that my alarm was a bomb and I disassembled it before it could finish it's count down. Yay, me?
-Yes, I have talked to my alarm. I even tried to call it back when I thought that the call was dropped.
-Speaking of speaking on the phone, I once thought that the alarm was talking to me back. And it conveniently told me that my boss called me off work and that I could go back to sleep. (Fortunately, I set it to an hour early so things were fine.)
-I have walked into the shower dressed. I have also forgot what I was suppose to be doing in the shower. "...what's shampoo, again?"
-Yesterday I thought that by hitting the snooze I was bidding online for a Gucci... pillow. Because apparently my subconscious wanted a Gucci pillow.
-The best is when I literally jump out of bed and ram my face into the bedroom door. I do that one a lot. Putting my alarm across the room to force me to wake up has only made my mornings more... dangerous.

I think that I own about 7 alarm clocks including my cell.

[InnovumTechnology]

On many occasions, I'll wake up in the morning, but not want to get out of bed. It typically isn't that I'm too tired, or that I just don't want to get up. Rather, I get really confused, as if I am still partially dreaming, and start having extremely disorganized thoughts that often involve vague ideas about how lying around for another half hour will be good for me.

[Joland]

I usually experience sleep drunkenness when I go to sleep knowing I shouldn't sleep too much (for example in the evening if I fall asleep on the couch and I have to get up to go to bed). When it happens I wake up suddenly and start saying nonsense strange things, trying to say something, but cannot find the words, so I replace them with totally different words.

Once I tryed to say "it's still early" to my boyfriend, but I said instead "there's no clumps" (like clumps of dirt). Weird. I'm Italian and the phrase was "E' ancora presto" but I said "non ci sono zollette" so there's no way the words can look similar to each other.

Oh and sometimes I repeat things that I was saying in my dreams, believing they're relevant when I wake up XD

[michaelstevens]

This scares me sometimes, I wake up confused, I don't know we're I am, who I am, and my heart rate... it beats so hard, I often, when I come too, i pretend an action like I know am awake to play it off to my partner, it's happened to me for years and I never knew, I can't tell you how relived I am that I'm not alone 🥺

[RJCMaxification]

wow, I've experienced this a lot. This is the first time I've actually heard about it.

[anonymouscandle]

I've been known to have full blown conversations with my mum in this state. I never remember them once I do finally wake up but it's always a laugh hearing about it.

[zoeelizabeth]

i fell asleep on the couch and when i woke up i started getting mad and ruined my entire room. I then was crying because i thought i fell asleep for a whole day. I thought it was the next day and i was so confused and my mom told me i just slept for a hour lol.

[glennglog]

I remember my dad waking me up for school, and I was still kinda dreaming, so I said "Hold on, I'm testing this new cryptocurrency called chocolate", I had a dream where you throw chocolate at the computer screen and you can spend it like it's money, and of course, it's edible. xD

[marylovesyah]

i once woke up in the middle of the night thinking i was late to school then someone called me by my name and i snapped out of it

[killnspray]

Now I put two alarms (phone and alarm clock) because I realised that I sometimes (even if it was rare) turned my alarm off (after hearing it the first time) without realising it. When I had to wake up for work.

[ascotilla]

While living in UK (I'm spanish) I got up one morning by the doorbell. It was a delivery guy to whom I spoke in spanish for like two minutes while he stared at me with a weird look and smiling. I remember thinking to myself "he must be a foreigner and the poor thing doesn't understand a word of what I'm saying"...obviously he was thinking the same, and I just realised that when I closed the door...

[renzcruzmabalatan]

i watched this because i've been trying to get a clear point of what it is.i felt like i was dying.this is my 4th time experiencing it.it is like there's a riddle i consistently answerd wrong that costs my life.

[FirstRisingSouI]

After a few embarrassing incidents, I trained myself not to talk to my college roommate within the first 5 minutes of waking (especially if it was still dark in the room), and if I thought I had to speak, to think _really_ hard about whether what I was about to say made sense.

[hkandms]

As some others have mentioned your info on sleep stages is inaccurate....REM is actually the lightest stage of sleep. Quick Lesson: after falling asleep, you cycle from light (stage 1) and medium (stage 2) down to deep sleep (stage 3) ...You drift back and forth, dipping deeper with each cycle and will come back up to light sleep before going back down to the deep stage 3 sleep. Once you reach stage 3, you spend a good amount of time there, but the longer you are asleep the less time you spend in deep sleep and more is spent in light sleep and REM. REM can be thought of as a stage between light stage 1 and being awake.... One typical cycle looks like - repeat).. That cycle might repeat several times in a night. Early on, most of the time is spent in deeper stages but as you sleep longer and go through multiple cycles, you stay in the deeper stages for less time and longer is spent in the light sleep and, reference to the video, people are sleep "drunk" when awoken mid cycle in stage 3. Sleep deprivation among many other things can mess with this cycle, causing trouble getting down to deep stage 3 sleep, going straight to REM, not coming all the way up to stage 1 or REM etc - but waking from REM is actually easiest- which is way you are most alert when waking from a dream:-).

[suka]

all the time i wake up thinking im late for work i get up get dressed head to the bathroom about that time i realize its only 11 and i dont have to be up for another 6 hours. but then sometimes it happens multiple times a night. its super annoying

[PuissantPike]

When I worked at UPS we had to start at 5am, and a few times I'd wake up in the middle of the night, scramble to get ready for work, drive all the way to work, and then be really confused when the parking lot was empty.  I'd have to look at my clock several times before I realized it was only 3am and I didn't have to be at work for another 2 hours...  It was the worst feeling.

[justinallenification]

I experienced sleep drunkenness a few years ago, several times, where my Dad woke me up at 7 where I had previously gone to bed at 2 the night before. Me and him often talk and science and math and when we tried to have a conversation I remember saying such things as "that doesn't make sense seventeen times equals banana" one of the weirdest experiences ever.