Living with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome

Some of my friends one day suggested that they wanted to try the Uberman sleeping schedule, so I decided to research it a bit, when I found reference to this sleeping disorder. It was like one of those magical movie moments where something new comes along and everything in my life comes together to make sense. Unfortunately, it seems this disorder isn’t well researched, but fortunately, progresses have been made; for example, recently a gene dubbed Afg (for after-hours gene) was found in mice that caused DSPS, so this disorder is likely largely genetic. I’ve never heard of any of my family members similarly afflicted, but this stuff is pretty new, so it’s possible they never knew what it was, or that they hid it from others or otherwise privately dealt with it.

During secondary school, this never showed up; I thought I was just a typical high schooler who stayed up too late to do homework and who would sleep in like all the others. But over the years, that sleeping in on the weekends got worse–first it was till 10, then 11, and then 12 and even 1 or 2. When I went to summer school away from my parents (who usually ended up waking me since alarm clocks had less and less of an effect), it went way out of my control. I was missing classes because I started getting up at 5pm. I tried fighting it, but I either missed classes by sleeping through them, or I was too delirious from sleep deprivation to learn or to go at all. I was scared. I blamed it on lack of self-discipline for not being able to go to sleep at the proper time, and for lack of a better explanation.

I got the usual advice: wake up earlier, then you’ll go to sleep earlier. Tried it, no game. Even if I woke up earlier (which was HELL, as it has always been), I still went to sleep later than the previous night–and the kicker was that since I was sleep deprived, I would sleep later, making the entire situation worse. Throughout all of high school I was very sleep deprived, and during summer break I would sleep 10+ hours every night for the entire 12 weeks.

Now that I’m in college, there are no parents to wake me, so this disorder truly revealed itself. I’m no longer wrestling with only waking up too late on weekends; now I’m fighting with the whole cycle. I go to sleep at 2pm one night, and the next night it’s 3, then 4, then 6, etc. I’ve tried fighting it when it reaches 8–the suggestion was that I stay up all night, take no naps, and then go to sleep at 9pm, which works for about 2 days, but then I’m back falling asleep at 1pm, as if nothing happened.

Fortunately, computer science jobs tend to have flexible hours and far less of an obligation to be in meetings and such, so I may be able to live with this in the future. Right now, though, I’m in college, which includes fixed class time, so barring drugs, I have two choices: fight it, or free-run. I’ve tried both this term, and neither is pretty during the out-of-sync part. The thing about college is that the work interferes with any therapy, so there’s little I can do except try to ride it out until my workload lessens.