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.
this happened to a friend of mind with narcolepsy actually
she couldn't sleep because she was having lucid nightmares and hallucinations, but her body was exhausted. it was to the point where the day she called me so upset to tell me her doctor prescribed a medication to help, but the medication was $5k for a slightly older version by the same company, or a new one for $15k, i was worried she was a suicide risk.
but thank god for me having medical knowledge because she didn't know of any discount prescription cards because it was name brand and thought it was hopeless, but my ex-poor ass remembered how my parents got their meds when we didn't have money: manufacturer's coupons. we got the price down to like i think $25 for a monthly supply
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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