The abolition of sleep

Anyone who keeps a close eye on the times I make my posts on this site will have noted by now that my sleep pattern is far from conventional. But then my perspective on sleep itself is much the same. I try to spend most of my time doing useful things, and when fatigue works to rob me of that opportunity, I am offended.

For a while, I have found it very interesting that the worst people in society: the most violent, cruel and selfish, apparently have no objections to sleep. There are people who will happily kill a man for looking at them the wrong way, but I have seen no example of such people making any objection to a process that essentially robs eight hours of every day - one third of their life - from them. No doubt, it is too philosophical a point for such people even to consider, and in any case, there is no one for them to blame for it, to attack for it. I see things a little differently, as I said above. I would love to be able to do more each day, to be given much more time to read, write and work. What I wonder is why no one seems to be working on a way for these benefits to be extended to us all.

I believe that the virtual abolition of sleep would benefit every economy in the world, creating more growth, more jobs and more demand. There would be more entertainment, more necessities and more luxuries. People could be healthier and thinner, and insomniacs cured. Less seriously, everyone could also have much more free time to spend in all sorts of productive and enjoyable ways, educating themselves more, gaining expertise in their hobby or simply enjoying their freedom. It is a possibility worth examining.

I am not particularly well read scientifically, but I do know that most of those who say something is impossible turn out to be wrong. It was claimed that taking train journeys would do fatal damage to the human body as a matter of course. (No, these people did not forsee Railtrack - they were just wrong.) Similar claims were made regarding cars and aeroplanes. This pessimism was not restricted to transport. Bill Gates notoriously predicted in 1981 that 640Kb of RAM would always be enough for anybody's computer. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Patent Office was allegedly in danger because it was said that everything that could be invented had been invented by then. So although some things are clearly impossible, many things that appear to be so are not. I wonder whether scrapping sleep is one of them. Scientists do not yet know quite what purpose sleep has for the body. Some have postulated that it is an evolutionary anachronism like the appendix. They believe that many of those creatures that survived best in the distant past were those forced by their genes to spend the time in the dark in the cave rather than outside getting eaten by passing tigers or wolves they couldn't see (bats, because they see in a different way, being an exception that works to prove the rule). According to this theory, those creatures are our own ancestors, with all humans sadly inheriting their genetic laziness. Dreams perform a function for the mind necessary to retain a person's sanity, so sleep could not be ended for good. So if chemicals, medicines or some other treatment could provide for us the chemical equivalent of six or seven hours sleep - either fooling the body or giving it what it needs - and ensure dreaming in the time where sleep remains necessary, we would still gain the equivalent of three waking days per week.

Then there are the advantages to come. First of all, and this deserves emphasis because this argument is far from merely economic, everyone would have more free time. The free time of a man working eight hour days would effectively double. He would still require a couple of hours of sleep, perhaps, but the portion of his day it currently consumes: a third, or of his waking day, half, would be massively diminished. He would gain much more time to enjoy the fruits of his labour, pursue friendships and romantic relationships, teach his children important lessons in life and anything else he may enjoy. Suddenly given twenty-two hours of every day to fill in, everyone has time to enrich himself, to read, to learn to play a musical instrument, to become more cultured, to try poetry or anything. True scientific and historical research could be carried out as a hobby rather than the full-time commitment that sleep makes it. A more educated, literate populace would be the result. And there would be more culture and education around not only because there would be more demand but also because everyone else would be in the same boat. If Beethoven had not needed sleep, he might have finished his tenth symphony and written half a dozen more; if Shakespeare had not required sleep, he could perhaps have produced twenty more plays in his life. The heroes of culture today and in the future would gain such benefits. People would suddenly have time to become involved in more sports, to go to the local gymnasium or for the odd walk. Road congestion would be reduced because car journeys would be less necessary with people again walking to the corner shop for a newspaper or the local restaurant for dinner, because they now have time to do so.

Certainly, this is an optimistic view, and I do not deny that there would be some who would use more free time only to put in more hours as 'couch potatoes'. They would sit in front of the television many hours longer, and laze around much more. But is this really any worse than sleeping? I don't see how. If they are really so unable to use their time wisely, they can freely choose to stop taking any medicine that reduced the need for sleep, and they would only be back in the present situation, with everyone else improved. So clearly, for those who want more spare time, it would be better individually.

However, wider concerns than this motivate me to like this idea. Near the top of the list come economic reasons. With everyone gaining more free time, employers might ask a number of people to put in more hours. For some, this would be a welcome opportunity to gain more for their families; to earn enough to move into a better neighbourhood, save more or buy private education for their children. Others could quite reasonably refuse, and not being of the all-businessmen-are-ogres viewpoint, I do not believe their refusals would be met with much protest. Employers would soon recognise that sleep or no sleep, there is only so much productive work of the same type that one man can do in a day.

Now with nearly everyone having much more free time, there would be more demand for all those things that people like to do in their free time. There would be new markets for television programmes and films, for novels and academic works, for music and plays, for swimming pools and football games, fot streetlights and car headlights: for just about everything. So this new demand would create many more jobs, reducing unemployment dramatically, and cushioning any recession. Most employers would find it more productive to train two different men and have them both work the normal number of hours to meet increased demand than to demand more from a single man. Hard-working teachers or doctors would suddenly have time to devote themselves to their dream of a small business, creating many more jobs along the way. With more time for economic transactions, and more work and demand to fuel them, everyone would be much richer: those who gain new jobs, those who choose longer hours, the businessmen required to meet new demand and the consumers who value the new products and services on offer more than the price demanded. The gross domestic product of the whole world would rocket.

Healthwise, there would be less of a problem treating the sick because fewer people would become sick. They would be spending much more of their life up and about in various ways and much less of it lying still on a mattress. Except for those gluttonous people who would use their free time to eat even more, abolishing sleep would reduce unhealthiness by providing much more free time for exercise, or for anything that burned more calories than sleep. Equally, all manner of medical research would be advanced by the time amateurs and others would now have for it.

Crime would also surely fall with no longer any real opportunity to rob homes while people inside sleep, or shops and public buildings while they are deserted, because they will in many cases be open all day to meet the demands of a people requiring no sleep. And even if many a shop is not open twenty-four hours a day, there will often nearby be a number which are, ensuring there are few places quiet enough to make a robbery - or even a mugging - practical. The criminal life itself may be less necessary with people as a whole being richer and employment opportunity being much greater.

A richer and freer world would also certainly be a more charitable world. People would now find time and money to give more, share more and help others more. The wealth of Western capitalist countries could reduce third world starvation and famine, providing more opportunities to people in those countries, who need them most of all. Far from impoverishing the starving, industrialised countries will be benefitting them and helping them by becoming richer.

In my view, the case is overwhelming. Without people needing to spend a third of their lives sleeping, the world would be richer, unemployment would be lower, people would be more educated and healthy, cultured and charitable. Crime could fall, famine may be more easily dealt with and even road congestion might be reduced. I have little faith in the power of government to ensure productive research, so I rest my hopes in any businessmen or scientists who think this idea is possible. The inventor of the technology or medicine that could end man's need for so much sleep would be a hero to history and as wealthy as any creator or inventor has ever been. They should start researching now, and keep on going until this idea is either established as truly impossible, or implemented in full. I eagerly wait.

Yep only 4 hours of sleep, and no weekends off.

Yeah, I hear you. When I was in the Army, I lived 60 miles from post. PT was at 0630 in the morning. The drive took one hour, so I usually left at no later than 0515 (and I was running late if I left at that time). I usually organized my stuff the night before and was able to wake up at 0445 and still be able to leave in time. We were normally released for the day at 1630-1700. 1800 by the time I got back home.

If I went to bed at midnight, that only left me with 6 hours of free time. I just didn't feel like that was enough, so I made it a point to never turn in before 0100- often 0200. True, that only gave me an hour or two more but it was worth it. In the two hours I spent driving daily I started listening to language tapes or buying audio books (although I much prefer reading)- I figured I should try to make something of that time as well. My French still sucks, but at least I felt like I wasn't wasting the time.

I didn't need to work weekends normally and I found this rhythm to be quite ageeable. I would normally hit a low energy level at some point in the day but it would usually pass in an hour or two.

Of all the jobs I have had in my life, that job rates the worst.

I joked about it at the time, but when I did go to bed, I didn't sleep, I would die for four hours. It isn't much of an exaggeration that I would be asleep in under 10 seconds.

One knows a job sucks when the option of sleeping overrides the need to shave. (Five minutes shaving or an extra five of sleep?)

After falling asleep behind the wheel and waking up to the site of a semi 300 hundred feet away, I finally decided the money wasn't worth it. It is one thing to risk my own life, quite another to endanger someone else's.

When I was in my early twenties my first wife and I also came to this conclusion (sleep is a waste of time). We would just not go to bed. We stayed up 76 hours once using only coffee. But we both noticed we'd start to hallucinate after about 50 hours. Since I worked with power tools, I started thinking maybe this wasn't a good idea (still got all my fingers ;-).

But it was still very hard to make ourselves go to bed and generally at least once a week we would go without one night's sleep. We figured this gave us that extra 6 hours in a week (or whatever) which in a month added up to an extra day. We also trimmed as much as possible off our daily sleep as well. That part's easy- you just go to bed late- you have to wake up if you want to keep your job.

We'd usually try to sacrifice Sunday night- making it a longer weekend. If we were really game, we'd go without sleep on Friday and Sunday night- making it a super long weekend.

I've noted some odd things about sleep though in my life. In very intense situations requiring an abnormal amount of concentration and also much adrenalin- basically situations that are so intense you lose track of time- 6 hours seems like 20 minutes- afterwards I will feel an intense desire to sleep. Even if I haven't been awake overly long. It's like my brain just says- "I need to shut down for a few minutes". I don't know what this accomplishes but it seems necessary- to me at least. This has happened to me many times, particularly while in the service and while deployed to Bosnia. So intense was the desire for sleep that once I leaned against a wall and slept for a quarter hour standing (I mean mouth hanging open and drooling). So there definitely seems to be some therapeutic value to sleep, from my perspective at least.

Another thing I have been taught is that sleep and dreams seem to be important in integrating experiences into long term memory. I don't know if this is true or not, but I dream vividly and often things that happened in the past couple of days are incorporated in my dreams. Of particular note- I read in my dreams- that is, I dream I'm reading and am actually reading written words in a book, magazine or LOL on Free Republic. It's really freaky because sometimes I can remember what I dreamed I read and it seems my brain made it up while I slept- complete with misspelled words. So obviously there were two parts of my brain at work- one writing the material for the other part to read. I can't figure what that's all about.

But I agree with you, if science could come up with a way to chemically provide you with whatever sleep accomplished- it would definitely be a boon to mankind.

It isn't much of an exaggeration that I would be asleep in under 10 seconds.

Knew a fellow in the Army that could do that at will. Anywhere, any situation, he could just put his chin on his chest and he was gone. I often envied him that ability.

I had another friend who died that way- sleeping at the wheel. Luckily he drove off the road and didn't endanger anybody else. Sad... That fellow had one of the best singing voices I ever heard. But what you say is right- it's quite another thing to bring hazard to another human.

LOL sounds exciting actually. What you said about reading was interesting because I once was so tired I forgot how to read. I would put all the letters together individually and get there in the end. It took me ten minutes to read the label on the front of my shampoo bottle. Luckily I was fine again when I woke up the next morning.

I think that you should have marked this post as "satire" because otherwise someone might take you seriously. Yes, we all agree that it would be nice if we didn't have to sleep. I struggle with insomnia regularly, and I would love not to have to worry about it at all. It's horrible to lie there in bed with a thousand thoughts chasing themselves through my head and berating myself because I can't do something that every idiot can do easily. The rosy picture you paint of a world where we don't have to sleep makes the humor of your satire really stand out. Unfortunately, if someone didn't realize that you were joking, he would think that you were just another idiot proposing another technological messiah to solve all of our problems. All of the arguments that you satirize here have been made about every time-saving invention of the past century, and yet we are busier today than ever before. Anyway, it was a fun read.

WFTR
Bill

There has been a lot of research on this. I read a book titled: "Sleep" by a sleep researcher 12 years ago. This M.D. runs a major sleep research lab that treats insomniacs. He started prescribing large doses of the amino acid Tryptophan because it seemed to affect sleep patterns. His insomniacs all got a lot better very quickly.

The M.D. was amazed and asked them how much more sleep they were all getting. The insomniacs all reported that their hours of sleep had not changed, they just felt a lot better on the same "deficient" amount of sleep. So the M.D. started taking the same "large" (2000mg ??) daily dose of Tryptophan himself. He quickly went down to only wanting/needing 4 hours of sleep a night--and this continued for six months while on this natural amino acid. The M.D. said that he got an enormous boost in productivity and free time, but eventually decided to stop since no one knew the potential long-term negative effects of this treatment and he had already proven to himself that most humans can do well with a lot fewer hours of sleep.

Bottom line: I bought a big bottle of Tryptophan and started working with it--didn't get to a big, big dose and did not really notice dramatic effects (I'm a 6.5 to 7hr a night man anyway)

Then some badly manufactured Tryptophan comes from the Far East and kills or cripples 25-30 Americans, and the FDA pulls Tryptophan from the over-the-counter market. Even though all the deaths were traced to one small manufacturer (Happy Dreams from Taiwan, or something), the FDA never has lifted the ban, even after 12-15 years. It's now an expensive prescription drug for sleep problems--a natural amino acid!!!

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