Sleep Paralysis Sounds Like the Most Terrifying Thing That Could Ever Happen to You

On this week's Macrodosing, we talk — and occasionally yell — all about sleep. It's a much more interesting discussion than I would have imagined.

One topic that certainly qualifies as interesting but definitely something you never want to happen to you, however, is sleep paralysis. Coley told us all about how it has been happening to him since he was a kid and still happens to this day. It sounds like anyone's worst nightmare — literally.

I get perturbed enough when I'm in that state of being just awake enough to know that I'm cold but not awake enough to do something about it. Now you're telling me it's that state of consciousness with horrifying hallucinations and I can't move or speak. Count me out.

And it's not all harmless, either. Donnie shared this story with us about a wave of sleep paralysis that affected refugees from Southeast Asia in the 1980s, some of whom actually died as a result, and how it inspired the creation of Freddy Krueger.

History — Craven found inspiration for the landmark horror film through an article that was published in the L.A. Times. He recounted the story of a refugee child from the Cambodian genocide, who was terrified to sleep for fear that he would be attacked in his dreams and never wake up.

“When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night,” Craven told Vulture. “By the time they got to him, he was dead. He died in the middle of a nightmare.”

The story Craven described wasn’t an isolated incident: dozens of Southeast Asian refugees in America died for unknown reasons in their sleep during the 1980s. The mysterious deaths were usually among young men in their 20s and 30s from the Hmong ethnic group, and affected a large enough segment of this population to alarm public health experts.

And now I'm worried that my brain has been thinking too much about sleep paralysis in the last 24 hours and that is somehow going to subconsciously make my mind decide to try it. Hopefully my dream scarcity continues so I never have to experience this.

But go listen to today's episode to hear us talk about this and anything else you could want to know about sleep, dreams and of course all the other random shit we always get into on this show. Also, please download, rate and review, subscribe on YouTube and follow on social @MacrodosingPod.

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