May 23 2006
A Cure For Sleeping
A drug is being developed to suppress the need for sleep, as noted in From A to Zzzzz:
Tests conducted on rhesus monkeys last year suggest that CX717 can wire users to remain awake for 36 hours without the jitters, euphoria and eventual crash that come after mega-doses of caffeine or amphetamines. Further down the line are even more radical compounds—stimulants that can wipe out sleep for several days at a stretch, and pills that deliver a whole night’s shut-eye in two hours.
The article states how to determine how much sleep you really need:
He [a sleep researcher] believes that everyone has their own individual “sleep need” which can be anywhere between three and 11 hours. “If you’re a three-hour-a-night person, you need three; if you’re 11, you need 11.” To find out, he says, simply sleep until you wake naturally, without the aid of an alarm clock. Feel rested? That’s your sleep need.
Brilliant.
I’ll never take medication to prevent sleep.
If there are no side effects until I’m 60 when I spontaneously combust, but for my entire life I only need 2 hours sleep, I could live with that. I’ll just shoot myself when I’m 59. At that time I’d already have lived to equivalent 80 years old.
I am a 7 hour type of guy. If I get less sleep, I am usually ok with that.