Posted on 10/15/2004 10:57:23 AM PDT by missyme
Sleep medicine experts have successfully treated a rare case of a woman having sex with strangers while sleepwalking.
The behaviour had disrupted the lives of the woman and her partner. At night while asleep, the middle-aged sleepwalker - who lives in Australia and cannot be identified for reasons of confidentiality - left her house and had sexual intercourse with strangers. The behaviour continued for several months and the woman had no memory of her nocturnal activities.
Circumstantial evidence, such as condoms found scattered around the house, alerted the couple to the problem. On one occasion, her partner awoke to find her missing, went searching for her and found her engaged in the sex act.
“Incredulity is the leading player in cases like this,” says Peter Buchanan, the sleep physician at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, who handled the case. But a combination of factors convinced him that the case was a real sleepwalking phenomenon, including the distress of the couple, and an in-depth clinical evaluation.
During that evaluation, the patient was assessed by psychiatrists, and checked for physical problems such as brain tumours, which may cause unusual behaviour. Neither of those examinations could find a cause.
However, she was found to have a history of talking in her sleep as a teenager and when monitored in the sleep laboratory, she was found to have a higher number of arousals from deep sleep than is usual. Both of these factors might indicate a susceptibility to abnormal sleep behaviour.
However, Roger Allen, a sleep specialist in private practice in Brisbane is sceptical. “Sex is a primal behaviour so it’s not impossible - men have erections in their sleep after all - but this case involved such complex behaviour it seems less likely.” He also points out that eliminating psychiatric conditions as a cause of the behaviour would be difficult.
But there are some extraordinary cases of sleep walkers leaving their homes, driving cars, or engaging in behaviours that they would not usually. In 1987, Ken Parks, drove 23 kilometres from his home in Pickering, Ontario, to his in-laws house, where he strangled his father-in-law unconscious, and stabbed his mother-in-law to death. He was acquitted of murder because he was sleepwalking at the time. Sleepwalking is often triggered by stress, and this may have been the case with the Sydney woman, says Buchanan. She stopped her night-time excursions after psychiatric counselling. Drugs such as benzodiazepines, which are sometimes used to treat sleep walkers, were not necessary.
Any type of sleepwalking is rare. It occurs in around 3% of children and young adolescents, and about 0.5% of adults. Usually it involves little more than walking around in a fairly purposeful way while asleep, although sleepwalkers may lash out if awoken.
The results were presented at a sleep conference in Sydney on Friday.
I wouldn't dismiss this out of hand. When I was a kid I had a severe sleepwalking problem. When I was about 10 years old I once walked right out the front door and down the street. I woke up about a half a mile away in a parking lot, freezing in nothing but my underwear. I was so frightened and disoriented that I knocked on the first door I came to and luckily the woman that lived there was a nurse and helped me get home.
After that I was so afraid of sleepwalking out into traffic that I literally tied my wrist to the headboard of my bed every night before I went to sleep. I still sleepwalked, its just that the sound of my dragging my bed across the room would wake up my family who would gently lead me back to the matress.
The point being this; you'd be amazed at what a sleepwalking person can do without waking up.
I bet there are a lot of men out there who wish they would have thought of this one.
Nah. I discovered at an early age that a more effective lure is to mimic the mating call of a bullmoose. It's loud enough to wake the dead, and is quite helpful in warding off the more timid companionship.
Wondering if she went on meds before or after the so-called 'sleepwalking' incidents.... ;)
Boy is this a strange sleep walker...I've heard of lots on sleep walkers...this is definitely and new one on me. ;o)
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm sure she'll get a "charge" out of it. She mentioned earlier that her battery needs recharging. :) LOL
Oh yes..This will proably give some men ideas for the future
How often do you get up at night?
You think plastic surgery would do anything for the old bag...???
Proof that O.J. would have been found "Not Guilty" in Canada too. I guess somehow the jury actually believed that a person could STAB someone TO DEATH, without waking up? You have got to be a complete moron to buy that defense.
The Whyisa moves to Houston, then on to Australia? I'm impressed.
She cleverly dogged that bullet. From another post:
an otherwise respectable Sydney-area woman who snuck out at night to have sex with random strangers while her live-in boyfriend slept at home
She was registering on the skankometer before her bare foot hit the pavement. But then, it would seem there's a green zone on the scale.
Hmmm, take "respectable" down another notch, Clancey.
Now, isn't it interesting that a lesbian would be "searching" for something else while not fully conscious........guess there is something missing in her relationship........ ;^)
"Woolcock Institute of Medical Research"
Sounds rather phony to me
Yeah, but how many female moose does it get you in Nevada?
I am soooo not buying this. I've been walking in my sleep since I was 10. If you live with somebody who sleepwalks, you know it - you can't hide something like that.
I can do some uncomplicated things when I sleep walk but nothing that takes a lot coordination or thought. I am fortunately baffled by double locks. People can't have coherent conversations with me. I don't respond to questions appropriately. My actions are not appropriate in context - putting a chair in the refrigerator, for instance.
She is conning this poor jerk.
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