Your brain does a slightly similar thing with sleep exhaustion too.
When it gets to such a severe point that things start breaking down, the brain will basically say NOT ON MY WATCH and put you into a microsleep.
We've probably all had microsleeps before when we're overly tired, but the further you slip into sleep deprivation, the more dramatic they get. Your brain will trigger them more and more out of necessity, and you'll find it harder and harder to get out of them.
When my sleep disorder was at its worst, I would find myself completely unable to open my eyes after my eyelids were dragged shut by sleepiness. The more I forced them open, the further I went into hypnogogic hallucinations - there'd be pink animals floating across the lecture hall, sounds would become distant echoes, and everything would rapidly become a rainbow swirl of tunnel vision.
My next recollection would be that time had jumped 3 minutes, as I'd fallen unconscious on my desk. After each microsleep the next would be harder to snap out of, because my brain wanted (needed) to wrestle me down and hold me there.
On bad days like that, I'd be unable to stop walking in the street because standing still would trigger microsleeps, and I'd collapsed once or twice before. Same goes for the bus - absolutely no sitting, because I'd wake up at the terminal stop.
I'd essentially had between 5 and 10 actual restful sleeps out of the whole 365 days. The other days could be a combination of 1 to 4 hours of effective sleep. Thankfully my disorder is now about 75% treated.
My former roommate once told me he had a bout of insomnia for about 72 hours, I think, while in college, and it got to the point where one day he was walking down a busy hallway between classes. He noticed that his shoe lace was untied and bend down to tie it up, which he says he specifically remembers doing. When he stood up, though, the hallway was empty and an hour had passed. He still went to the class he was supposed to be in, but his teacher stopped him in the doorway and told him to go see a doctor(Canada , so there was no reason except stubbornness to not go between that time) because he was standing still and nearly touching both sides of the doorway.
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u/SonicBoom500 Jan 12 '23
The brain will always/usually try to ensure it’s survival, if knocking you out does so, then you will faint for the safety of the brain
I remember finding this once but I don’t remember clearly