Thread: Drug that replaces sleep - hypothetical

Hmm. That's an interesting question. My imidiate response is that I'd want to use the drug when I was having fun and wanted to continue doing that, and sleep when that felt better. However there would be political implications to this as well. Since you no-longer needed to sleep at night, would you be expected - or even required - to work some extra hours?

Originally Posted by khh

Hmm. That's an interesting question. My imidiate response is that I'd want to use the drug when I was having fun and wanted to continue doing that, and sleep when that felt better. However there would be political implications to this as well. Since you no-longer needed to sleep at night, would you be expected - or even required - to work some extra hours?

Oh man...that is the worst thing I've heard all morning.

Edit: To respond to the post, I agree. Its nice to shut off conscious thought. Then again that can be done through meditation. So, maybe pop a pill, manually shut off your thoughts for a half hour and then get rolling again? Could be feasible.

As the one above me said, though, if you're having a good time there'd be no problem.I assume I speak for most of the forum when I say I'd certainly miss my dreams, though.

Pop a pill, meditate for 8 hours.

If the pill has no bad side effects, I don't see why I wouldn't use it occasionally for certain things, like working through the night on a paper or something, but indeed, shutting off your brain and just letting time fly by is nice. Dreaming is nice as well.

There was an American Dad episode about this.

That would be the drug that would give you more 25 years of waking life, since that is more or less the time that we spend sleeping. I'd certainly miss my dreams but think about the stuff that you could do if you spent every night awake. Almost unlimited fun.
Although, there isn't a better feeling than lying down on your bed after a long day, and feeling that light pain on your back

If this drug existed you would be lying on the floor acting out memories as your brain processes them to see if they are relevant. So I'm guessing that it wouldn't be of much use.

I don't think a lot of people in this thread understand the premise. If the drug replaces sleep, that also means it replaces the feeling of needing to shut down the brain. Otherwise, the question is pointless.

It's hard to imagine what I would do with an extra 8 hours a day, but that's only because there's no chance of me ever having an extra 8 hours. Perhaps it would be more useful to think of the problem the other way: what if you suddenly needed to sleep 16 hours a day? How would your life be affected, how would it be limited? What sorts of things would you never even think of doing?

but but but but

this makes no sense to me, I mean yeah I get it its just hypothetical, but it really makes no sense!

dreaming is how the brain reorganizes itself - so if you take a pill to simulate sleep - wouldn't you hallucinate?? o.o

okay technical stuff aside, no, sleeping is so awesome

Originally Posted by juroara

but but but but

this makes no sense to me, I mean yeah I get it its just hypothetical, but it really makes no sense!

dreaming is how the brain reorganizes itself - so if you take a pill to simulate sleep - wouldn't you hallucinate?? o.o

okay technical stuff aside, no, sleeping is so awesome

hypothetically, the pill would reorganize the brain.
sleeping is awesome though

Originally Posted by TruMotion

hypothetically, the pill would reorganize the brain.
sleeping is awesome though

I don't think you got his point. Since consciousness is a product of the brain, reorganizing said brain necessarily causes hallucinations.

Originally Posted by cmind

I don't think you got his point. Since consciousness is a product of the brain, reorganizing said brain necessarily causes hallucinations.

Still, I don't see how that is relevant to the topic...

I think a drug like that is really a bad idea.

-Humans are bored so quickly in this world. We should see sleep as a blessing, it keeps us busy.

-This may sound a little silly, but a lot of idea's that helped this world came from dreams.

-People would probably 'abuse' it.

-Side effects

-Lucid dreaming would be even less populair then it is now. ()


Basicly my reaction:

Originally Posted by Heavy Sleeper

There was an American Dad episode about this.

Haha, yeah, I watched that a couple weeks ago and it's what made me start thinking about it.

I get what people mean who are saying the question doesn't make much sense. It's hard to know how much of that 'wanting to be away from the world' feeling is just a craving for the brain to organize its thoughts. And now that I'm awake, I almost feel as though I could take the drug.

And there would be strange political implications. Perhaps sleeping would even be made illegal because it wastes time, and we probably would be required to work for longer hours. That relates to another question I was going to put in the OP. If the drug existed, but there were some minor consequences, maybe like those similar to not exercising and eating poorly, how common would sleeping be? I'm guessing that, like those other bad habits, society would do them anyway. People who slept every night would be considered a weird fringe and be looked upon as lazy. Sleep would be advised as a cure for depression and other things, but popping the pill would be so easy that hardly anyone would actually do it.

Imagine if the drug caused a dream build up, so when you finally went for some sleep, you'd have tons of extremely vivid and intense dreams. Man.

It's impossible to answer whether the need for sleep is due to needing some time away from being alert the rest of the time.
And if this drug did exist, it would have to take that away. If it did not, then we would still need sleep. Pretty simple.

And no I wouldn't take that. I love dreams. If I could take pill to make me lucid, I would. But not to keep me awake forever.
That said, it would be interesting to try. Just continuous consciousness for weeks. Then I'd stop.

But the mind isn't the only reason we sleep. Even if the pill was completely side-effect free, and you didn't get any adverse mental effects from not sleeping, the body needs rest too. Sleep is when most healing and regeneration happens. Now as far as I'm aware there's no reason you couldn't be concious during this process, but being awake and doing absolutely nothing for hours on end suck. We all know that from those evenings we just can't get to sleep.

This is why I find these types of conversation quite pointless. Except to correct people's bad thought processes.

We're assuming this drug would do everything sleep does. Including any bodily healing.

While most of the time, this hypothetical drug would be cool as fuck to use, there's really no better feeling than crawling into bed after an exhausting day and just falling asleep.

Originally Posted by tommo

This is why I find these types of conversation quite pointless. Except to correct people's bad thought processes.

We're assuming this drug would do everything sleep does. Including any bodily healing.

Soma! Soma!

Wait, soma's a real drug now? What? When?

There are already drugs that do this being researched, actually.

I don't think there's anything wrong with it at all. I don't sleep because I want to sleep per se, I sleep because I'm getting too tired to continue, not because I want my brain to shut up. Being an extreme night owl has also meant I'm very good at entertaining or occupying myself. This would be made even easier if most people were constantly awake as well.

Assuming it could be done with no negative health consequences I would only see this as a positive thing. It would effectively be the equivalent of giving everyone an extra 20-30 years of life (assuming 8 hours sleep per day).

Originally Posted by Photolysis

Assuming it could be done with no negative health consequences I would only see this as a positive thing. It would effectively be the equivalent of giving everyone an extra 20-30 years of life (assuming 8 hours sleep per day).

To most people that would probably be seen as a good thing. But to us, lucid dreamers, would those extra 20 years actually be worth it? No dreams?
You could obviously choose to take the pill one night, and not in another. But if you had to choose between having lucid dreams or having 20 extra years, what would you choose?
I'd choose dreams!
DREAMS FTW!

Originally Posted by TruMotion

To most people that would probably be seen as a good thing. But to us, lucid dreamers, would those extra 20 years actually be worth it? No dreams?
You could obviously choose to take the pill one night, and not in another. But if you had to choose between having lucid dreams or having 20 extra years, what would you choose?
I'd choose dreams!
DREAMS FTW!

Even if you had the maximum amount of lucid dreams possible 100% of the time, that would still amount to something like 4 hours of dreaming per night due to REM sleep only taking up a percentage of sleep. Then as you say, one can choose not to take the drug if they wanted to experiment with lucid dreaming.

As someone who finds it extremely difficult to have lucid dreams (something I find ironic given the level of control I have over them them when I do), I'd gladly take never having to sleep again unless by choice over the alternative.

I also don't have a lot of lucids, but I enjoy waking up and recalling a crazy-ass dream, even if it's not lucid.

I believe that's called meth