Polyphasic Sleep: Days 9-11
Yikes! I think I’m regressing. Today was the fourth consecutive day that I’ve been in and out of naps for four to five hours in the middle of the day.
Day 9: I was suffering some pretty bad insomnia up until around 7:30am, at which time my brain decided to go on strike, and never really came back to work until that afternoon. To make matters worse, some things came up and I had to delay my 3:30 nap by two hours. Thankfully, my naps that evening were pretty helpful.
Day 10: Lying down for my 7:30am nap, I felt pretty great. Waking up at 12:30pm, I felt pretty great. So great, in fact, that I almost didn’t realize I’d been sleeping for five hours. I still don’t know how I managed to sleep two alarms (I slept on the couch and didn’t use the water, which probably wasn’t the best idea). At this point, I knew that something had really gone wrong with my adaptation. The rest of the day, of course, I slept well.
Day 11: I took an extra nap at 5:30am in hopes of preventing the inevitable midday grogginess, but it was to no avail. I spent much of the morning lying down for naps, waking up from naps, and immediately deciding that I wanted another nap. My brain finally snapped out of it at roughly 1-something.
So, what happened? I was doing so well there for awhile. Why the regression? I have no answers - only speculation. (It’s times like this when keeping detailed logs really comes in handy.)
On the morning of Day 6, I had an eight-hour oversleep. I seemed to recover well, so at the time, I dismissed it as a negligible mistake. On Day 7, I had a one-hour oversleep between 8:00 and 9:00 that morning. On Day 8, I experienced some grogginess and extra napping beginning around 8:30… and it’s been downhill since then. My theory is that the Day 6 oversleep caused me to kind of “reset” my cycle so that my brain considers 4:30-12:30 as “nighttime”. If you’re experienced in pulling all-nighters (as many college students are), you know that it’s relatively easy to stay up an hour or two past your “bedtime”, even though you may feel a bit sleepy. As the night carries on, though, it becomes more and more difficult to keep your eyes open (unless, of course, you’re drinking caffeine 
) - and if you make the mistake of lying down for a “quick nap”, you may not wake up until lunchtime. Considering my recent patterns, this makes perfect sense. Even the insomnia bit can be understood if we realize that, being an “Owl”, I’m at my peak in the evening hours (say, midnight-4am on my current schedule).
The only way I can see to fix this is to essentially restart the adaptation, going through the sleep deprivation of Days 2 and 3 all over again. My body is already used to napping around the clock, so I don’t anticipate any difficulty (except, of course, with the all-of-the-willpower-has-been-drained-from-my-body-at-7:30am part 
). I start working on Monday, which I could see working to either my benefit or detriment. If I start falling asleep on the job, we’ll have to make changes, but until then… Carry on!
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