How Poor Sleep Drove Me Insane and My Long Path to Recovery

This is such a sad story most of the way through, but it's amazing you were able to eventually get to the bottom.

I also got diagnosed with OSA (AHI 32) after crashing my car falling asleep at the wheel in stop-and-go traffic. It tooks years of progressively feeling worse to get there, though.

I had not considered the allergies angle, it might be worth adding some portable filters inside of my apartment...

I also have sleep apnea thanks to a tongue that slides trivially into the back, and a uvula that loves to go up the back of my nose.

It took me a week of bedtime mental biofeedback to train myself to sleep exclusively on my side, which brought my sleep apnea down from several severe incidents a night to maybe a threshold incident a week or less.

This biofeedback - intense visualization of the objective right before falling asleep - is also what I use to consistently wake up at specific times with no need for an alarm. The only nerf to this technique is extreme lack of sleep previously, and lack of sleep on the night of. So if I try to wake up after only four hours of sleep while also suffering from an existing sleep deficit, imma gonna still wake up far enough to form memories of waking up, but then immediately fall back asleep.

Yeah, it’s not perfect, but as something that never needed much effort it’s actually quite a nifty superpower.

That, and the ability to pop out of bed like a piece of toast with full and instant wakefulness at any level shy of severe sleep deprivation. That alone is deeply annoying to my wife.